Issue #10  (Learning Tools)09/26/13


(Skip to the tools section below)

Just to switch things up for one week, this is a special issue. Below you'll find a round-up of learning tools and resources — but first, I have a special offer if you're interested in supporting this newsletter.

On my primary blog, Impressive Webs, I've published dozens of CSS articles and tutorials. I've compiled all my CSS content into three separate PDF E-Books, for those who would like to have it all in an easy-to-read format.

The title and price (USD) of each e-book is listed below:

CSS E-Book Volume 1: Basics, Tricks and Techniques ($2.00)

CSS E-Book Volume 2: Properties and Features ($3.00)

CSS E-Book Volume 3: Concepts, Architecture, and more ($3.00)

You also have the option to buy all three in a single purchase, saving a buck:

CSS E-Book Package (Volumes 1-3 combined) ($7.00)

Click through to any of those links to view the contents of each e-book. In total, you can get 384 pages of CSS content for just $7.

Yes, all of this content (save for a few minor edits and corrections), is available for free online. But as is the case with donations, view this as a way for you to support Web Tools Weekly and to make sure this newsletter stays ad-free indefinitely.

And if you have already contributed something to this newsletter, I will be contacting you shortly to offer one or more of the e-books, free of charge, if you're interested.

Thanks in advance for your support. I hope you enjoy these offers.

Now on to this week's learning tools!


Interactive Learning Tools


VimGenius
"Increase your speed and improve your muscle memory with Vim Genius, a timed flashcard-style game designed to make you faster in Vim."

Regex Crossword
"Regex Crossword is a game similar to sudoku or the traditional crossword puzzle... In Regex Crossword you are not given a word to guess, but a pattern that tells you which letters are allowed."

Coderbyte
"Solve programming challenges, write algorithms for games, participate in competitions."

Codewars
"Earn honor and ranks, customize your training, crowdsource the best solutions."

Try Foundation
An interactive playground to help users get familiar with Zurb's Foundation front-end framework. Fairly simple stuff here, but a quick way to get introduced to a well-established framework.

Git Immersion
"Git immersion is a guided tour that walks through the fundamentals of Git, inspired by the premise that to know a thing is to do it."

explainshell.com
This looks really helpful. Just enter a shell command and this will give you a plain English explanation of what each part of the command does. Nice if you're copying and pasting from somewhere and want to ensure it does what you think it does.

nodeschool.io
"Install these choose-your-own-adventure style lessons and learn how to use node.js, npm and other related tools by writing code to solve realistic problems."

 

Developer Books


Power-up Your Front-End Development with Grunt
By Belén Albeza, a quick start guide to Grunt, a JS task runner. This book "serves both as an introduction to Grunt, as well as a collection of recipes on how to automatise some of the most common tasks."

Jump Start CSS
By me! This is one of my recent projects, a beginner's guide to CSS. Unlike the e-books in the intro, this is all unique content. Although the book is short, it teaches all the fundamentals of CSS while building a responsive sample one-page website step-by-step.

Responsive Design Workflow
By Stephen Hay. "Design workflow hasn't really changed, but best practices have. This book shows you how to adapt to the new paradigm and create sites for today's web."

Pragmatic Guide to Sass
By Hampton Catlin and Michael Lintorn Catlin. From basics to advanced, plus sections covering Compass and Blueprint CSS.

Principles of Object-Oriented Programming in JavaScript
By Nicholas C. Zakas. "This book is an exploration of the object-oriented nature of JavaScript. It is not specific to a particular JavaScript environment, so it’s equally useful for web developers and Node.js developers."


Free Courses / Guides


GitHub Training /  Git Videos
"The GitHub:Training team has produced several free educational webcasts and screencasts on using the features of GitHub and Git. We've additionally listed some of our preferred commercial videos that are generally long-form and more comprehensive in nature."

LevelUp Tuts Sass Tutorials
A YouTube playlist by LevelUp Tuts covering Sass basics, Sass advanced, and Compass.

egghead.io
"Bite-sized web development training with AngularJS." 50+ screencasts by John Lindquist.

Perfect Workflow in Sublime Text 2
A comprehensive Tuts+ video tutorial series by Jeffrey Way. Covers snippets, plugins, modifications, and more.

Think Like (a) Git
A very comprehensive guide to learning Git. Not for absolute beginners to version control, but looks great for those who have used Git for some simple stuff and want to delve into advanced concepts and features.

ADC Presents: SMACSS
A relatively brief overview video series by Jonathan Snook, discussing some aspects of his modular CSS coding methodology. Seven videos totalling just over 30 minutes of play time.

Airbnb JavaScript Style Guide
"A mostly reasonable approach to JavaScript."

DevDocs
This one is still growing and is probably already the biggest repository of developer documentation. Looks like it still needs some work, but a great way to do quick lookups for all sorts of JS/CSS/HTML features.


Suggest Your Tool via Twitter

Made something? Send links via Twitter @WebToolsWeekly (details here). No written tutorials or articles, please.

Let's Stay Ad free!

Help Web Tools Weekly stay ad-free by buying one of my CSS e-books (see intro in this issue) or by donating something small ($2 per subscriber would be more than enough).

Criticism? Corrections?

If you have an opinion on how this newsletter can be improved, or any corrections to report, feel free to reply to this email directly.


Before I Go...

Wrapping up this 'learning tools' issue, you might want to peruse a GitHub repo called frontend-dev-bookmarks. It includes links in a number of categories including guides, workflow, languages, frameworks, and tons more.

Thanks to all for subscribing and reading!

Keep tooling,
Louis
webtoolsweekly.com
@WebToolsWeekly
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