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Fuad Adetoro
6,490 PointsHTML EMAIL DESIGN
I really don't like teachers like Allison grayce and Fabio Carneiro, the way that they paste things in just makes it seem so stupid. I would like to learn not watch you do the work don't rush it take as long as you can the longer the better for me i believe that i gained nothing at all from this HTML email design course and i hardly gained anything from the responsive web design due to them pasting codes in then quickly running away from it explain what the code does don't just say well i'm going to add this now and then do it because that's not how people should learn i know i may not be making sense but it's because i'm angry!
Dan Gorgone
Treehouse Guest TeacherHi Fuad, I know we've exchanged emails about this, but I thought I'd mention some thoughts here. I know the course covers a lot of material and does so fairly quickly. I was initially mistaken to label it as a "Beginner" course, and have since reclassified it as an "Intermediate" course in which students should have previous knowledge of HTML and CSS, especially the basics behind table-based design. Fabio does a quick refresh on that topic at the beginning of HTML Email, but I know things move quickly after that.
With the project files available for download, our hope was that students would be able to follow along with the code if they decided not to code things by hand as they followed the course videos. It's different for every student, and many of the responses I've received have been positive, but I understand your frustration here.
My advice is that if you are looking to start from scratch - which is a great way to learn this topic - is first to make sure you're caught up on the topics covered in our HTML course (especially the Tables stage) as well as the first 4 or 5 stages of CSS Foundations. If you've got all those concepts down, you're ready to start making HTML emails of your own.
If you want some design ideas, check out Mailchimp's Email Blueprints collection. Otherwise, creating emails will depend upon the content: what do you want to send an email about? What is the goal of the email, i.e. "read me, join me, or buy me?" What calls to action do you want to include? Whether you start hand-coding your HTML, laying something out in Dreamweaver or checking out MailChimp's free service and coding stuff in their web-based tool, you should be able to try out a lot of different things to see what works best for you and your needs.
I hope that can help you get started, but as always if you have any other questions, drop us a line right here!
cc: Fabio Carneiro
Fuad Adetoro
6,490 PointsThank you for your advise i will go back and learn them now
6 Answers
Christopher Leonard
11,172 PointsI agree with OP here. This course is probably the worst offender of the "Imma just copy paste this entire 6 layer deep nested table right here and 2 seconds later we're gonna move on" practice. Some other courses do it as well "Responsive Web Design" jumps to my mind. I don't want to watch you do it. I want you to type a little bit of it, explain what it does, and give me 3 seconds to hand code it into my own text editor. At least with Responsive Web Design it wasn't so difficult to follow along, but the markup for these intensely nested tables is difficult to follow and hand code quickly without making mistakes.
I'd say that as a website whose primary purpose is teaching, copy pasting should be outlawed entirely in Treehouse videos. So far the teachers with the best cadence and speed in their videos are Nick and Jim. They say "I'm gonna do X." They do X. Then they say, "Ok, here is what, why, and how I did X." I get that at this point, I'm supposed to be familiar with HTML/CSS and tables, but the speed with which Fabio copy/pastes and moves on is too fast and vague even if I were using the provided code.
Fuad Adetoro
6,490 PointsCouldn't agree with you more!
ivomiranda
30,286 PointsI agree with Fuad Adetoro in a way and I also think it was good that Dan Gorgone changed the difficult level from beginner to intermediate.
I'll try to explain my point of view:
1) I personally find some parts of writting code (in some courses) very boring especially when I already know what it is about. But well... there is an option to speed videos 1.5x / 2x to speed that boring parts over and generally, it is very useful to go slower to people that still don't know it or have some doubts in a certain part. 2) I am against videos that show a lot of copy pasting as if it was self-explanatory. In this case I think the proper way to do would be like: "ok so I will show you guys how to do a specific row of the email and CSS it and then we will take a general look at the final code". It is confusing to do like: copy paste scafold, copy paste css in header and voilá...
I've watched most part of this course on a 2x speed but I still liked it to have an overview of e-mail design and the project seems to be well documented with comments and organized so I still found this course useful. So far I've enjoyed all courses and the 1,5x / 2x is a great feature so we can speed up the parts that are kind of boring :)
To the other guys that are making fun of the Fuad that's just so childish. Even if it was a totally senseless post (which it isn't in my opinion) you shouldn't make fun of others.
Gainsta Ant Collis
9,782 Pointsyeah he's totally mad.
Fuad Adetoro
6,490 PointsOk then Anthony, i'm mad. Why don't you go and try learning this since i've seen on your badges that you haven't tried. watch this video and tell me if you don't get confused after just 4 minutes of a 10 minute lesson.
Gainsta Ant Collis
9,782 Pointslol so you checkin'?
Fuad Adetoro
6,490 Pointsnope i checked someone else
Gainsta Ant Collis
9,782 Pointsbut your name is fuad tho...
Fuad Adetoro
6,490 PointsAnd your name is Anthony tho...?
Bert Rivers
284 PointsI love everybody :)
Gainsta Ant Collis
9,782 Pointswell bert isn't mad :)
Tyler Robertson
1,128 Pointsare you mad?
Fuad Adetoro
6,490 Pointsright now i'm looking for a comment that can help me with how to make a proper HTML email design i don't need negativity to make me even more angry.
Bert Rivers
284 PointsWhat up Fuad
Fuad Adetoro
6,490 Pointsi'm getting confused from this video because the guy keeps on pasting the codes instead of walking through it :(
James Barnett
39,199 PointsJames Barnett
39,199 PointsLooping in Nick Pettit (Teaching Lead), Fabio Carneiro (Sass Teacher), Dan Gorgone (Producer of Sass course), Ryan Carson so they see this feedback.