Review of HTML and CSS content

MDN Learn
#1

Hello!

My name is Jamie, and I’m glad to be joining in on the discussions here on MDN. This is my first day logging in to this sub and It’s absolutely awesome to see those who are managing and maintaining the open library of learning materials are also actively on this channel. I just wanted to begin by saying thank you to those in this community who have worked hard creating the open guides and tutorials available for learning web development. :slight_smile:

For a little backstory: I was originally directed to the MDN by way of a Udacity course I’m currently enrolled in, then I came to re-assert my interest in the guides once I got really stuck in my first project on FCC. After reading how useful these guides are from the blogger P1xt, I knew the MDN would be a site I’d be spending a lot of time on over the next couple months as I learn how to be competent with web technologies.

I have therefore begun something of a deep dive into the documentation, and have reached the point in the HTML tutorials where embedding video and audio content is discussed before the lessons on iframes and SVG. Basically, I am continuing through the Multimedia and Embedding main topic in the HTML guide and have begun questioning how much of this is truly core material for learning web development :slight_smile:

After finding my way into the forums here, my impression from reading a recent post about revising the content on SVG material is that at least this guide is due for some revisions. Can someone working on the materials in this forum post a list of which other topics are being considered for revision? Also, for these sections being considered, are there other existing recommended open resources I can consult for learning some of these core topics? It would be great to get this feedback in the open for anyone using these guides as their primary reference.

I realize a good bit of what currently exists in the MDN guides are likely the tried and true methods for creating web content and these methods will (probably) remain relevant for some time, but I am curious as to which sections in the Multimedia and Embedding are most practical to focus on as I am learning modern Web Dev.

I can appreciate how hectic it must be to maintain guides on a topic that seems to constantly be going through changes, so again, I just wanted to say thanks for what all of you are doing to keep this resource maintained and up-to-date. I’m really looking forward to the lessons on CSS grids once I get to that topic since I know it’s one of the more recent big shifts in working with CSS! :sunglasses:

Kind regards,
Jamie

#2

Hi Jamie! Thanks for your kind words.

I know @chrisdavidmills is planning on updating a bunch of the tutorials in the near future, but I suspect the multimedia ones are low on the list, at best.

If you’re interested in CSS Grid, you should check out Jen Simmons’s Layout Land channel on YouTube.

#3

Hi Jamie,

Again, thanks for the kind words — I (and others) have worked really hard on the MDN learning material :wink:

So to answer your questions:

  1. Multimedia and embedding — I would say this is less core web development (well, the <img> tag stuff is core), and more “nice to have” for the course. Basically, I included it because multimedia is such a bit thing on the web these days, and people will ask questions about it. This material gives them enough to get started, although to create a truly robust video or audio solution, you’d need to know a lot about streaming media servers, MSE API, EME API, etc. Which is way beyond the scope of this course and not really client-side web development. Therein lies the conundrum :wink:
  2. SVG. Yes. Our colleague Jeremie is working this year on heavily revising the SVG reference and tutorials on MDN, including creating a full-fledged Learning Area module for it. I am really excited about this, because Jeremie know loads about SVG, and it will be great!
  3. Other things being revised. I am keeping a master list at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Uw5frKniAGw9bG2u-6eWAQzD4Tps3Qh3LLyg1QwvnfE/edit# You are welcome to go in and add comments if you’ve got points to make, and I’d love any help you can give, as it will be a big job :wink: The stuff above “Raw notes” is carefully thought about (or in the process of being thought about), and the stuff below is not really fully considered yet. The very first bit I’m working on is the “adding modern ECMAScript features to the JS course”, and our friend Rachel Andrew is going to work on updating the CSS modules.
  4. CSS Grid. You can find a full treatment of Grids at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Grid_Layout, but Rachel is also going to work on the Learning Area Grid article to improve it, very soon.
#4

Hello Janet,

Thank you for sharing the link for Jen Simmons’s awesome layouts channel! Absolutely a perfect resource, and I subscribed after reviewing a few of her video topics. I’m sure I’ll be watching and re-watching these as I begin my learning of CSS grids in earnest.

If Mozilla is cooperatively hosting any similar channels or more are in development, I’d love to hear about them! :smile:

#5

Re: 1. I think what you currently have in terms of the range of topics is great. I would definitely agree that the guide on images and other common multimedia is core material. Also (Re, 2), since encountering the existing guide on SVG, I’ve begun noticing it’s a topic that comes up in a lot of other sites on important front-end topics, so I’m really excited there are plans to renew (+ possibly expand) this section.

In response to 3, I would be happy to check on this list and compare it to my take-away notes as I re-study them. Again, thank you for sharing this link. I’ll let you know if anything jumps out at me as I’m doing my reviews. I’ll be sure to try to keep my comments brief, since for one thing, I’m basically a novice, but I understand where you’re coming from.

-4, I have seen Rachel Andrew’s contributions to teaching Front-End topics in several places - For one, her live CSS class on O’Reilly’s Safari leaning platform quickly filled up, so I’m also very excited to learn that she’ll be making contributions to this guide.

Thanks Chris, for your response and I’ll check into the links you sent me today! :rocket:

#6

Thank you too Jamie — any useful feedback is always appreciated!