Learning JavaScript

- Now that we've discussed learning approaches for HTML and CSS it's time to turn our attention to JavaScript, the third core web design skill that I keep mentioning. JavaScript is a scripting language, and that means the syntax is a little bit more complex than HTML and CSS, and there are more concepts to learn before you can write it with any degree of fluency. Now this typically means that for most people JavaScript takes a little longer to learn than HTML and CSS.

There're a lot of different opinions out there about what the best approach is in terms of learning JavaScript, and not all of them are going to agree with mine. However, I feel very strongly about learning JavaScript a specific way. You see, I learned JavaScript the wrong way. Essentially I just picked up bits here and there from a tutorial, or I would go out and copy and paste a code snippet which created a lot of gaps in my JavaScript knowledge that later on I had to go back and fill in.

So I want to recommend a path that's going to take a little bit longer for you to learn, but give you an overall better result. First, you need to understand what exactly JavaScript does. JavaScript is a client side programing language. Client side means that the code runs in the browser rather than on a server. It's designed to work with HTML and CSS, so there's a lot of built in functionality that makes it easy to control the behavior of your sites.

JavaScript complements the static nature of HTML by making it possible to create interactive elements, display elements based on multiple conditions, animate items, or any number of script related tasks. Learning which specific tasks that JavaScript is suited for is really important, because it'll teach you when it's appropriate, and give you a focus for what you're trying to learn. Next, avoid learning JavaScript a snippet at a time the way I did. A lot of people learn this way, I was one of them.

Now this is where you find a specific snippet of code to perform a task you need. You go out, you copy it, and you paste it in your project, and then you tweak it and modify it to get it working with your site. Now, you will pick up some JavaScript skill over time doing this, but you'll lose the context of why things need to be done a certain way, and you don't really fully understand the language and everything that's going on. I recommend learning the basics of JavaScript first before learning how to use libraries like jQuery.

Using jQuery is really attractive, because it's so powerful so many people use it, but if you learn it before you learn JavaScript you're making a bit of a mistake. There are times that a library is not the right solution, and if you only know how to use a specific library you're going to lack the ability to discern when to use it and when not to. This type of approach means that you should learn at least the basics of JavaScript in an organized and focused way using a resource like a specific course or a book.

Now, there are a lot of different tutorials out there that teach you how to perform a specific task or tasks in JavaScript, in my opinion, you need to have a solid foundation in JavaScript concepts and syntax so that you understand the why behind what it is that you're doing. Of course, not all web designers need to be experts at JavaScript. Designers that want to be seen more as a frontend developer need to be extremely fluent in JavaScript, but somebody that's more interested in user experience and site design might only need to know the basics.

Regardless of how deep your JavaScript knowledge needs to go, however, make sure you cover the essential concepts of JavaScript so that you have a working knowledge of it. Above all be patient, learning JavaScript takes time, and if you give up too soon you're going to forget all that you've learned when you need to use JavaScript in your projects. Be sure to check out the additional resources movie at the end of the course for some of my favorite JavaScript resources.