---
tags: mstu5003, tinker, html, css
---

# Tinker: HTML/CSS - Meow Mix

Team members: Ivy Wu, Zhanlan Wei, Jacqueline Atkins

See demonstration: https://codepen.io/jmk2142/pen/dVMRRq

**TINKER** - _attempt to repair or improve something in a casual or desultory way, often to no useful effect._

It's funny that the problem is called a "tinker" problem in that tinkering is usually messing around with stuff without a very planned way. I think, when we use the word tinker, it's really to emphasize the _spirit_ of the activity; that is to not feel too pressured into treating it like a test of your ability. It's really meant to be an opportunity for you to explore and have fun messing with stuff while using the guided questions to challenge your understanding.

So in some ways - while the spirit is about tinkering - I actually do want you to explore this in a directed way. That is:

1. Manipulate things to understand the causal effect and relationships it has on the results.
2. Think about the multiple manipulations you make to generalize certain key patterns that manifest across different episodes.
3. To generate hypotheses about how stuff works, and to test those hypotheses (through manipulation) to confirm or reject your ideas and refine.

As such, for each tinker problem which will be a "full" example - I will be providing you with certain guiding questions to help you direct your attention and activities to the _hidden_ things that are present. Think about it as if you just discovered a strange and fascinating new bug crawling across your table. You just want to poke it to see what it does. And I encourage you to do so.

## Tinker Tasks

As a general flow:

- First, take the base codepen and **fork** it.
- This will branch the original code so you have your own copy that you can edit and manipulate.
- Next, **compare** what you see in the code and **map** the relationships between the code and output.
- Then, use the guiding prompts and questions to **manipulate** the actual code **one thing at a time** and _see_ what happens.
- Be able to **articulate** your understanding and share your findings and insights with your weekly group and/or the class.

Note that I use Markdown as the format for these things as it is pretty `programming friendly`. You can get a basic understanding of Markdown in a few minutes using the following interactive tutorial: http://www.markdowntutorial.com

---

## Tinker GUIDES and QUESTIONS

I've divided this up into parts. Basically - as you explore the example and manipulate it in various ways there are a few themes that you should keep in the back of your mind:
1. SEQUENCE
2. HIERARCHY
3. ORGANIZATION (Semantics)
4. PATTERNS (Generalizable syntax patterns)

### HTML things

- Mess around with the sequence of different tags.
- How does _SEQUENCE_ affect the visual display of HTML elements?
- The sequence influences the orders of sections shown on the page.

- Change the hierarchy, the parent-child relationships between different tags.
- What are some ways that the _hierarchy_ of your tags will affect the end result / visual output?
- The hierarchy helps the editors readers to understand the code better, and it shows the relationships of each part of the code. The parent's CSS formatting applies to the child that is part of the element it is encased within.
- Add/remove/manipulate various `elements`, `ids`, `classes`, `attributes`
- What did you do and what did you discover in terms of the GENERALIZABLE patterns?
- Anything with the same id has the same color, font, ect. Class can be used multiple times, IDs are indivudal and get used one
- Attributes can help with accessibility and enrich elements. They have = in them
- Try to add an embedded Youtube video in the `section#videos` tag.
- Before you do, take a guess as to what you expect to see as the visual result. Were your guesses correct?
- The video will show up on the page
- Nope but we can copy and paste the embed code and it will work correctly
- `iframe` is the tag, attributes are things like width, frameborder, title, ect.
- Create some notes as _comments_ in this code.
- What are some ways that you can use comments to help you understand your code better?
- Comments are text that can be used to help other coders understand your code. They are plain text that do not show up in the code.

- Take a look at the following:
- What is the generalizable syntax **_pattern_** between all these tags?
- Knowing patterns, help you understand new tags as you find them. The tag comes after the aligator mouth. Attributes have ='s. Then you know how to look it up to underestand what it is'

<div id="mainStory">...</div>
<p class="important">Lorem ipsum...</p>
<span class="incorrect">Your answer</span>
<img src="https://placehold.it/50x50/4CAF50" alt="greenbox">
<input type="text" name="fullName" value="anonymous">

- Take a look at the following cheetsheets: [HTML5 Cheatsheet]
- Muck around with the page and try to add a new content feature using some _new_ elements you haven't directly worked with in FCC.
- How did you go about learning how to utilize a new element (process)?
- How can different `elements`, `classes`, and `id`s help to _organize_ our html content?
- They make it readable and able to be understood.

### CSS things
- Take a look at the following _almanac_ of CSS selectors and properties: [30 CSS Selectors], [CSS Tricks Almanac] and use some new selectors and css properties to change the visual look of the page.
- Why do we have so many different kinds of CSS selectors available?
- To be able to make the front-end of our design look the way we intend it to. How you make it look pretty
- Take a look at the following:
- What is the generalizable syntax **_pattern_** between all these css rules?
- Curly braces open and close the css rules

div {
	font-size: 10px;
}
div, span {
	color: dodgerblue;
}
div#myFavorites {
	text-decoration: underline;
}
div.incorrect {
	text-decoration:line-through;
}
div span {
	color: green;
}
div > span {
	color: lime;
}
div:only-child {
	font-family: cursive;
}

- Probably, no programmer knows every CSS rule and/or property by memory. I certainly don't, but I know a lot.
- How then, should you go about studying resources like [30 CSS Selectors] and [CSS Tricks Almanac] to help you become a more capable and efficient programmer?
- **Practice!** Talk to people and ask questions

### COMBINED and META things

- How might HTML sequence and hierarchy of tags affect your CSS rules?
- Sequence: different elements will impact how your page looks. You will format these and tags to change the design of the page.
- There are many things that can go wrong when you code an HTML/CSS page. Your HTML might be wrong. Your CSS might be wrong. It's pretty difficult to debug/fix when you have more than one thing wrong at the same time.
- Look for error message. Make sure your html is formatted. Check that parents and children line up right.
- Based on your understanding of how _sequence, hierarchy, syntax_ affects the page; What do you think are best practices to systematically fix errors in your code?
- Based on said understanding, what are some best practices to reduce errors _as you code?_
- Use tabs when entering opening tags so you also get a closing tag.
- Use the links provided to cheat sheets
- What is the _STRENGTH_ of FCC exercises and what is the _LIMITATION_ with respect to learning and understanding?
- strength: teaches you step by step and you can learn at your own pace. Can give you output directly to help you recognize your errors?
- Limitation: it tells you what your errors are so there is less debugging to do.
- What is the _STRENGTH_ of tinkering and what is the _LIMITATION_ with respect to your learning and understanding?
- Strengths: good practice and cool that you can see HTML and CSS at the same time.
- Limitation: you need to know what different parts of the code do before you can start changing it.
- Can be intimidating and dense
- What kinds of things did your group members learn, notice, experience that you did not and **why** do you think that is with respect to **HOW** you each respectively studied the materials?
- Can be afraid of messing up in front of others. Diffeent group members understand differnt pieces of HTML or CSS. Talking about it with others to understand each others perspective. Helpful to practice the words.Ja

### Tinker experience to Collaboration

This is your tinker activity. Play with this page and manipulate things to make it "yours" in terms of the understanding. The purpose is to give you a sandbox to try things in the guide, as well as your OWN ideas and inquiries.

This activity provides the anchor point for your collaborative discussion. As such:

1. Tackle each question _by yourself first_ so you can get a sense of what you understand and what you may not.
- TOTALLY okay to not be able to answer every question yourself at first.
- That's what the social collaboration is for.
2. Write out your responses to the questions to guide your collaborative work. I would like you to use Markdown format for your tinker-problem responses / submissions. (Using Word, Google Docs, is going to be very tricky and messy when it comes to writing CODE as notes.)
3. In your collaborative discussions, share your individual answers and use it as a starting point for your group discussions.
4. Use the collaboration tool like codepen to code together as you discuss and make examples of what you discovered together.
5. Generate a final _group_ response to each of the questions I ask above to come up with your _final answer_ as a team. It's less about what is right or wrong, more about being able to articulate what you learned and how you generated a deeper understanding by sharing what you individually understood into a bigger more comprehensive whole.

Additionally, you might want to also use that time (or times) together to help each other with the mini-problem or project of the week.

**_GOOD LUCK, HAPPY CODING!_**

[30 CSS Selectors]: https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-30-css-selectors-you-must-memorize--net-16048
[CSS Tricks Almanac]: https://css-tricks.com/almanac/
[HTML5 Cheatsheet]: https://websitesetup.org/html5-cheat-sheet/