Web Development with Sushi Cards

This week in our Back to Dojo series, I’d like to talk about one of my favourite topics for new Ninjas to start with at a Dojo — web development. In particular, front-end web development with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

There’s almost no setup, since most Ninjas will have a computer with a modern browser (latest Chrome or Firefox, or IE 10+) and a text editor. While something like Atom makes this kind of coding easier, by highlighting the code, it’s not needed.

These languages provide near-instant visual feedback in the form of changes to web pages and their behaviours, as well as the opportunity to view the source code of any website in the world to see how a particular effect was achieved.

I usually start with HTML/CSS as they stand alone and also give the Ninja the ability to make their later JavaScript projects more visually impressive.

We have two tried and tested Sushi Card Series on Beginner and Intermediate HTML/CSS for them to start with and I’m happy to announce that today we are releasing an Advanced HTML/CSS Series that takes them through the process of building a professional-looking website.

Once they have an idea of how to build a cool looking website, they can dig into the JavaScript Sushi Cards and learn to add interactive behaviours to them. Again, we have tried and tested Beginner and Intermediate series and, yet again, I’m happy to announce that from today we have an Advanced Series that will take them through building a full-on web application (front-end only) for a to-do list.

This means that we’ve not got complete Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced content across these two topics and three languages. Ninjas can now earn the full set of badges by following these Sushi Cards!

However, that doesn’t mean we’re finished with these languages. I would love your feedback on all of our existing Sushi Cards in this area, new and old alike, since I’ll be coming back around to do edits and updates on them in the future. I’d also love your input on what other related Sushi Cards we should produce. I’m already considering node.js but I want to know what else you’d like to see. Let me know on our Back to Dojo forum thread!