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

# Tinker: HTML/CSS - Meow Mix
## Group Member: Lei Jin, Qing Tian, Ruihan Zhang, Zhixun Zhang, Yiming Zheng

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, as the name goes, affects the visual sequence of display from up to down. The tags written first will appear on the top of the visual display.

- 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 child tag will appear within the parent tag, meaning that they have a relationship of container and being contained. For example, the "title", under most cases, should be contained in the "head", so the general block and its inner content could match.
- Add/remove/manipulate various `elements`, `ids`, `classes`, `attributes`
- What did you do and what did you discover in terms of the GENERALIZABLE patterns?
>When remove teh classes tag, the boarder of the main content disappeared. But for manipulate ids, we didn't see much differents on the patterns. Therefore, it seems that certain codes had certain effects.
- Try to add an embedded Youtube video in the `section#videos` tag.
<iframe width="550" height="320" src="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYtFeRB3qtc" title="YouTube video" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

- Before you do, take a guess as to what you expect to see as the visual result. Were your guesses correct?

>Before I added the video, I ecpected to see the video on the screen. And also changed many different other links, but it didn't work.
- Create some notes as _comments_ in this code.
- What are some ways that you can use comments to help you understand your code better?
><--! -->the comments will make code easier to understand by explaining what is happening and help prevent portions of a program from executing.And usually it would be a remark, suggestion, or another form of feedback
>
- Take a look at the following:
- What is the generalizable syntax **_pattern_** between all these tags?

<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">

>1.All these tags have specific attributes(id, class, src and name).
>2.The tags img and input are self-closing tags.
>3.Text show on the screen and between opening and closing tags, however the attributes of id, class, type, name, src won't show up on the screen.
>4.All the values are orange.
- 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)?

>We just looked up the specific examples to learn the structures, use it in a div.and to learn elements and attributes's specific meanings for each one.
- How can different `elements`, `classes`, and `id`s help to _organize_ our html content?
> The `elements` use opening tags and closing tags to indicate where the content starts and ends.
> One`class`selector can apply to several elements, so it help with grouping and categorizing elements.
> One `id` can only be used once in a page so it can distinguish and identify a specific piece of content.

### 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 accurately target the HTML content that we want to style.
- Take a look at the following:
- What is the generalizable syntax **_pattern_** between all these 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;
}

>Selector{
property: value;
}
- 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?
>First, we believe we should have a systematic guideline for the study of CSS. It could be courses, textbooks or series of collections on Youtube channels, etc. to handle the knowledge that's often used. Then, when we come across some specific problem, we can always Google online, or search in CSS commuities, such as github. Sometimes a cheatsheet also helps.

### COMBINED and META things

- How might HTML sequence and hierarchy of tags affect your CSS rules?
> Sequence doesn't really affect CSS rule, but all child elements will share same CSS rules with their parents if the CSS rule is directly applied in parent element.
>
- 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.
- 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?
> The best way is always type in closing tab, use debug and constantly go back and forth to check the code.
- Based on said understanding, what are some best practices to reduce errors _as you code?_
> Pay close attention to details, and constantly go back to check the code.
- What is the _STRENGTH_ of FCC exercises and what is the _LIMITATION_ with respect to learning and understanding?
> FCC is one of the best ways to learn coding, the only limitation would be I do not have enough time to complete the assignment. 300+ subsession is kinda too much within one week. It would be great if we could spread it out at the begining of the semester.
- What is the _STRENGTH_ of tinkering and what is the _LIMITATION_ with respect to your learning and understanding?
> Tinker is a great tool when its everyone's interest to own the knowledge and take initative to learn, discuss and collobrate. Otherwise tinker only benefits people who are willing to learn.
- 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?
>I didn't get the different usages of different platforms such as HackMD and codepen at first but my group member helped me to figure that out. I suppose they really have taken time to practice with the platforms and analized what they have got as the results. By detailed comparison the difference would be more clear. I learned that I should also gain hand-on exerience instead of just looking at the instructions step by step.

### 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/