Assessing your current skills

- [Narrator] DC creates graphics on a webpage, so you will find this course easier if you have a working knowledge of HTML and you've created and published a webpage before. There will be a quick refresher on HTML, if you're a bit rusty or if you're a complete beginner at the beginning of the next chapter. It would also help if you're familiar with CSS and JavaScript. CSS is the web's main formatting language, so it makes a line thick or thin, or fills a shape in blue or red. JavaScript is the third key web language after HTML and CSS.

It can handle data, make parts of your webpage interactive, and add graphics to your webpage, such as circles and lines. DC is written in JavaScript and a lot of DC commands look a lot like this underlying language. It's not absolutely necessary to know JavaScript and CSS before taking this course but it would certainly help. As I mentioned, DC is based on two other libraries, D3 and Crossfilter, so you might wonder whether you need to know them too. The point of DC, in a way, is to prevent you needing to learn D3 at all.

If you don't know D3 yet, I would learn DC first and then progress to D3. Crossfilter though is a different matter. I recommend you look at the course on Crossfilter before completing this DC course. Even if you're familiar with JavaScript arrays and objects, a quick look at Crossfilter's dimensions in groups will be useful.