Preface

In today’s world, lots of people crave the experience of expressing themselves online. They can do that through fixed-format media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but for many people, these sites are too restrictive. Instead, they prefer to build their own presence on the web, and the way to do that with the maximum amount of freedom and creativity is to learn HTML and CSS.

In programming circles, many people believe that the best way to learn how to code is by coding. Reading about the language is fine and necessary, but if you really want to learn the language, you must use it. My own belief is that the best way to learn to code is to play with code. For HTML and CSS, this means two things:

In standard HTML/CSS teaching, you’re given some code—a tag, say, or a template—and are told how it works. In playful HTML/CSS teaching, you’re given some code and encouraged to play with it: change the font size, expand the padding, apply colors, and so on.
In standard HTML/CSS teaching, you’re given simple or trivial examples, such as the classic Hello World! demonstration. In playful HTML/CSS teaching, you’re given substantive, useful projects to build from scratch and customize to suit your needs.

This spirit of playfulness and experiment pervades Web Design Playground, and I encourage you to view HTML and CSS as tools for creativity and expression.