Treehouse 14 Day Trial (Day 3)

Today I finished off  the How to Make a Website course. It's the first course in the Front End Web Development track.

It was really well done. It took me approximately 10 hours to complete. I have taken 2 extension courses and worked through an HTML & CSS book. I still learned quite a bit. The course was well presented and fairly easy to follow along with.

One nice thing is that after you complete a course the teacher will email you to encourage you. I normally turn off extra emails but it is actually nice to receive these congratulations from your teachers even if they are automatically generated. Since you are watching the videos you start to get to know the instructors and it's nice to receive a pat on the back from them.

I was just starting the next course in the track. It's called CSS Foundations. During the first video he mentioned that if you wanted a more in-depth look at HTML you could first complete the basic HTML course.

I felt like I had this information covered so I was happy to see you can skip through the content and quickly do the quiz and code challenges. I don't recommend doing this but it is nice that they don't force you through content that you already have a handle on.

They also have a slider you can bump up to increase (or decrease) the playback speed of the video. The slider goes from sleepwalker @ 50% to chipmonk @ 200% in 25% increments. It's pretty handy if you need it.

Here is my referral code for 50% off your first month.
50% off at Treehouse Learn how to build websites & apps, write code or start a business.

You can also get 14 days for free here:
https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans

Treehouse 14 Day Trial (Day 2)

So today I went through and tried a sample of different content. Treehouse has a cool "ring" graphic that represents the different content that you have completed.

New subjects show up as different colors. For example here is somebody that has studied HTML and CSS

And here is my ring with some added content.

It's a pretty cool shorthand to see what the other users are into.

I also tried the "Treehouse Club" JavaScript content. This content is targeted at kids 9-14. Interestingly it seems to be less hand holdy than the regular content. I guess kids have less to unlearn and don't require long explanations for things. Just get in there and play with the code was the feeling I was getting. The teacher covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time. It was a pretty nice overview.

That's it for day 2.

Treehouse 14 Day Trial (Day 1)

I originally found out about Treehouse by watching the Foundation 14 episode with Ryan Carson. It sounded like a great idea but I wasn't ready to jump in just yet.

I have done some other online and classroom training and I wanted to see how Treehouse compares.

I started with the "Front End Development" track. This would be a good introduction to the site and let me practice my HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

So far I really like it. The sessions are quick and bite sized. You get a short video instruction, sometimes a quick quiz, and an opportunity to try out the code and submit it for correctness.

They also have a built in IDE called "Workspaces" that lets you save your work as you follow along. You can use this if you don't yet have a favorite IDE or text editor.

I'll try to check in each day and give an update and see how I like the service at the end of the 14 days.

Here is my referral code for 50% off your first month.
50% off at Treehouse Learn how to build websites & apps, write code or start a business.

You can also get 14 days for free here:
https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans