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Comment by nhebb | Hacker News Reader

I like the idea, and I hope it does well. But what I would pay money for is a series of lessons on how to customize bootstrap. The whole reason I'm using bootstrap for my site redesign is because:

  - I can't find off the shelf themes that meet my needs.
  - I want to learn how to do it myself.
  - I want a solid foundation to start with.

A codecademy for CSS "cooking" with bootstrap would be great. A quick mover with good design skills could probably make a decent amount of money in a short period if they sold tutorials with focused content. [I'm just throwing this out there in case someone wants to bite.]

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You should not start with bootstrap in that case. I think especially in the beginning when you are learning CSS you should build something from scratch. Otherwise you have to learn both, CSS and how bootstrap is constructed.

CSS is not hard. I don't consider myself good at css, not at all, but give me a mockup and I can reproduce it, with a lot of Googling and trail-and-error. At least for me, though, what is really difficult is to make something from scratch without a mockup. It might be because I am not much of a visual thinker. I am a coder after all, not a designer. A professional designer might already have this mockup in her head. I don't.

So what I need to do is create the mockup in Photoshop first. There I can experiment, move stuff around, change colors, shadows, etc. When I am done, I reproduce it in css. I guess when you are either a very strong visual thinker or you are already very good at css, you don't need Photoshop. Otherwise I recommend you start with a mockup and then make a pixel-by-pixel reproduction of it. That way you can solely focus on the How, not the What. If you do that it's not hard at all, and you don't need a code academy for it. [That said I like the idea of a code academy for building a website from scratch for non-coders]

I will vehemently disagree with you on this, CSS is very, very hard.

And you even admit it yourself without realising it!

Trial-and-error is no way to code something. Programming novices use trial-and-error. But saying CSS is easy when you're still trial-and-erroring stuff just shows how incredibly hard it is. It's admitting you don't know what you're doing. And that's CSS all over. Few people can use CSS to do exactly what they want and know what they're doing.

Everyone else just finds something that kind of works and do the same thing over and over.

It's only recently been the case that you can view the source of websites posted here on HN that aren't a mass of nested divs just to get the layout right.

CSS is not "very, very hard" - I learned Rails after HTML css, and its simple as pie. I wouldn't classify myself as super smart. I just think the structure is such that is straight forward, <div class="something"> to .something {}

If you can code, then you should really be able to write CSS... and if you can't code, I don't think any of these products are really targeted at you anyway.

Edit: tpyo

I learned a lot by messing with the Skeleton Framework. I decided I wanted to alter every CSS element and in doing so learned a lot about structure, relationship and even naming.

I'm working on a series of CSS/design screencast tutorials that sounds like it suits your needs exactly. The series is aimed at developers. The series will guide the viewer through designing the most common pages like landing pages, contact forms etc. focusing more on design choices and principles rather than on CSS technicalities.

I wasn't planning on using bootstrap though because I think bootstrap offers too many possibilities to developers who don't understand design. I think keeping things simple and limited is the best approach.

Do you think not using bootstrap would be an issue?

I think introducing and leveraging bootstrap would definitely help the popularity of your lessons.

Shameless plug: Our company is currently reworking our UI Application Framework to use Bootstrap 2.0 and we're going to document the process in a series of video lessons. Sign up here: http://appframework.bigbangtechnology.com/

focusing more on design choices and principles rather than on CSS technicalities

I'd suggest using it specifically for this reason - that is, unless there is another framework that does an equally good job of getting out of one's way as Bootstrap. That said, it definitely makes sense to try to limit its use to a small subset for your tutorials.

Ok, well my series is focused on teaching developers how to create their own simple frameworks to suit specifics needs. It will also explain fundamental design principles using popular sites as examples of why their design works.

Anyway, I'm halway through making my series so I'm gonna launch that and if it's received well I'll probably do a bootstrap customisation series too.

Slightly controversial question, but how much would you be willing to pay for a series like this? I think I paid €80 for Michael Hartl's rails tutorial series and I was satisfied with that price.

There are different market segments in in the web design world. there are those that want to learn how to design something from scratch, and then there are those who want to learn enough to build upon the work of others (bootstrap, jQuery UI, etc.). I fall into the latter category, so I can't give any recommendation on the course structure or cost.

That said, there is a lot of buzz around bootstrap v2 now, so you might consider doing it the other way around - pick a few bootstrap customizations as a teaser class to help built market momentum for the full classes.

Yeah I'm kinda trying to cover both bases, offering enough to guide someone through the full design process from scratch, but breaking it up into segments so someone like yourself can skim through it.

Interesting idea, I may end up doing that.

Anyway, I'll probably giveaway a bunch of free subscriptions to help get it off the ground. I don't have time right now to build a launch page and get hosting, so if anyone's interested, shoot me your name and email address at colmtuite@gmail.com and I might get in touch when I launch.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Regardless of what price you end up deciding on, please provide people with a way of leaving their email address with you.

I am interested in your video series and may buy them, but right now:

- I have no way of finding out when you're done, except for polling you, which ups the burden on me

- I am likely to forget about you

- I am likely to miss your announcement that you're opening up shop

A simple "leave your email here if you want to be kept up to date" form would be awesome !

Ok so took your advice and threw a launch page up. You can leave your email and I'll notify you when I'm ready to launch.

http://www.designskool.com

You need a video series on how to customize bootstrap? It's just CSS + HTML5. Use the force -- read the source!

Same opinion here. I too need some lessons to customize as themes again need customization. Free themes with basic things like signup/Login users(customizable) and image uploads etc would be beneficial for even novice to kickstart his webapp. More advanced designs and features can be chargeable.

Maybe shoot Codecademy a message mentioning this to them. :)

I make you deal if you can ship some pizzas to an US address say via fedex I may able to teach you..

see my gh-pages sites:

http://shareme.github.com

Thanks for the offer. :)

FYI - Your carousel isn't centered, the follow shareme button is clipped, and the Android, Hello article has an extra </div> in the <section id="getsdk">, causing the remainder of the page to be left aligned. I like sausage, mushroom, and olive on my pizza. Did you want my address? <jk ;)>

Indeed, looks like shareme has more to learn from you about web design than you from him :-)

Nah. The world is full of people who can point out problems. Knowing how to fix them is where the value is. I claim no expertise in that regard.

typo: "Fragmentatin Proofed"

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