Front End Development track and absorbing the content

I think the CSS Foundations course covers an awful lot of ground so I would say the best way to consolidate it is to think of a couple of ideas for pages and try and build them...you'll probably find you need to go back to certain videos or looks things up on other sites as you do this but for me that's how it all started fitting into place. It's definitely a totally different experience when you try to build something yourself as opposed to just doing the quizzes/code challenges...I found there were things I thought I'd 'got' but actually making them work in 'real-life' has made it stick a bit more.

My approach has been to keep moving through the courses on here (I try and do at least something every day) and then building on the practice pages I've made as I come across new things I want to try. Sometimes you won't get something at first but you'll come across something in a later video that will make you go 'ah-ha'!

Albert,

Your in the same boat as most of us :-)

Once you get to CSS there is so much to retain.

What worked great for me was to make scribbles as I watched through all of the videos stopping them whenever necessary...playing with the code when helpful.

The most important thing I did was to stop progressing once I had watched all the videos and backtrack a little. I took a list of all the things I should be able to do eg-FLEXBOX-FLOATS-GRID LAYOUTS- and build a simple 1 page site using each of the subjects. There were probably 10 or so vital subjects.

Of course in the beginning I had to re-check the video or check the TREEHOUSE code but was soon able to complete each site with little or no checking.

This really helped me to retain what I learnt and made it -sink in-.

Hope this helps.

Good luck :-)

I recently finished the CSS Foundations track. My advice is to make sh*tloads of notes during the videos. For some videos, I've got almost everything down in note form, code included. My notes document is pretty damn big.

I then started a project (building my own website) and I use the notes as reference. My notes are invaluable. You also understand and retain the information better when you take comprehensive notes.

Has worked pretty well for me so far. Taking notes is crucial.

I'm now on the Design sections of the Web Design track. Not great since I don't have Illustrator or Photoshop. However, I downloaded Inkscape (which is free and reputably very good) and I suspect I'll be able to transfer much of the knowledge to that, with a bit of fiddling.

Thank you all for the advice! I really appreciate the help.

I am struggling with this at the moment and keep trying different ways to make sure the info sticks. Anyone else gt any more information on retention techniques ?, a friend of my suggested trying to get Ritalin as it helped him with he's studies and exams, not into chemical induced retention as there is no guarantee the information will stick.

I think I can help you, Jeffrey. I don't have a link on retention techniques, however, I have seen good literature on this in the past. A teacher once showed me an awesome graphical representation on how to commit something to long-term memory. Basically, you have to revisit the information periodically. As time goes on, the time-period between those visits can increase, but the revisits cannot be skipped. Eventually, you only have to revisit the information once every few months, and then even less. It's then fully committed to long-term memory.

Revisits are the key. The revisits can take the form of reading notes or, even better, interacting with the information (practice). At least read the info though. That's better than nothing.

So I make a point of, if not practicing with stuff I learned ages ago, reading old notes once or twice. Only take a couple of minutes and it does help.

Mindmaps are also awesome. It's a different way of taking notes, but they are awesome. I've used them in the past and they are UNBELIEVABLY effective.

I wouldn't go down the drugs route, mainly because it's just not necessary.

Also, maybe slow-down a bit. There's nothing wrong with wanting to get good quickly, but I recently came to the realisation that it's just not possible to get good as quickly as I initially thought. But, like a warrior, you just have to see that as an obstacle on your path to success to be overcome. Some people will give up, others will push forward and achieve. If you think it's still a goal worth achieving, push forward and achieve. If not, no problem - put your energy into something else. But it's got to be a cold rational decision.

Margin and padding: if two boxes (divs) are side by side and neither has any margin, they will be touching. Give one or the other some margin and they will be pushed apart.

Take a box (a div) with some content inside (text or an image for example). If the div has no padding, the content will be touching the edge of the div.

Padding creates a gap between the edge of a div and the content inside it.

Margin creates a gap between the edge of a div and stuff around the outside of it.

Think of padding as being inside the div, and margin being outside of it.

A div can have no margin and no padding, or some margin and no padding (or vice-versa), or it can have margin and padding.

There's a great visualisation of it here: http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_boxmodel.asp

Have a play with the margins in this codepen I've created for you: http://codepen.io/andrew_stelmach/pen/CGIyx

Notice how the top two divs are touching, because they have no margin.

Also see how with the black box, it has margin: 5px; applied, so it has 5px of margin all the way round it. Whereas the yellow div only has margin-top applied, so it's pushing itself away from the green div above it only - not from the left-hand side of the page also, like the black div is.

Have a play, use margin properties, and also margin-left, margin-bottom etc too.

I've made a codepen for you to play around with padding also. Check it out! :-)

http://codepen.io/andrew_stelmach/pen/CjqAa

Fire back with any questions!

Think i am going to have to get me a code pen account, thanks so much Andrew it's finally sunk in.

You're welcome mate. Thanks for the thanks. And yeah, codepen is really great for quickly messing around with concepts and techniques (and for sharing with people - it's just a simple case of clicking 'save' and copy/pasting the url). Good luck with everything!

it is a lot of information. Repetition always help. for CSS in particular, in my case, I know, there is no way I will remember everything, so I started using Anki decks (https://ankiweb.net/) and it has been pretty helpful. I try to write the information as I go along on the videos and exercises, and the way the decks work is pretty much repetition until you are comfortable with the stuff. there is a great read on anki decks here: http://sivers.org/srs and here: http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki-method.html.

but the basic idea is download the program and add question and answer and keep studying it.