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Ask HN: Recommemd an HTML CSS editor for an 8 year-old Girl?
So one thing I can have my 8 year old daughter learn tomorrow for "Bring Your Child To Work Day" is how to code HTML and maaaaybe CSS to build a website--which I believe is an essential skill to learn for her generation.
My Question is what do you think would be a great editor that will show code and results (design/WYSIWYG) for her to learn (and hopefully free)?
I know I can find some great beginner tutorials, but curious for suggestions on a kid friendly editor that allows for actual hard coding.
- jamesbressi 17y agoGeez, I thought by now someone would have chimed in. Yes, I searched around, but sometimes my HN family is more reliable than Google ;)
- apsurd 17y agoOk I'll bite. I think you should make one for her. Maybe not the answer you wanted but I've never been a fan of wysiwyg editing if you you want to learn how to program websites. What I mean to say is that it's good to be tied directly to the code and understand exactly what's going on through an actual development workflow. So having her sit in a text editor, then reload the browser page gives her that rawness. This also acts as a test to see whether shes is into the whole idea of being hackerish. I can tell you that writing "color:red" and reloading the page to see the color turn red was the catalyst that got me down the word to being a programmer. I never got the same feeling from using photoshop, which I think is a good analog to using a wysiwyg editor. No offense to designers but I think this approach eventually pays off a lot more than being handicapped by dreamweaver. Best of luck to you.
- jheriko 17y agoNotepad + some browser. Best to start with the simplest and most transparent tools IMO, + its not really difficult to save, switch windows and refresh the browser. I say this because a lot of HTML design tools take away the necessity to actually learn what goes on with the HTML and CSS, sometimes in subtle ways. If you want easy use MS Word and save as ".html" or FrontPage or whatever, but that won't teach her much about HTML or CSS directly... (EDIT: Also they are free and available on every computer with a Windows on it since 2000/ME I believe.)
- si2 16y agogive her Coda. Its fantastic for beginners! It will break down the CSS file visually so you can pick out each element you create. It also allows her to see all of the options she can implement and allows her to implement them without code, and then look at the code that was generated., AND it has a CSS book built right in. (plus others.) I started with Coda, and then switched to textMate once I felt proficient. good luck.. maybe teach her microWorlds..