Today’s Progress
In the last couple of lessons, Skillcrush guided students throughout the process of putting together a website. It means changes with today’s lesson. Skillcrush is taking off the training wheels.
That means students need to figure out how to build most of this project on their own. Today also marks the start of a brand new project in this class. I already built this project before and have written about this in a series here on DEV.
So if you need extra help building this project, don’t hesitate to revisit this series. Skillcrush wants students to continue using VS Code to get practice using text editor software on their computers, but you can use what you want. I’ll be building this version in CodeSandsBox.
At the start of the lesson, Skillcrush introduces students to their client Jubilee Austen. Jubilee is a fake client who wants a portfolio site that gets employers to hire her. This is where they show students the design comp and tips to help them build the website. Don’t be afraid to use any cheat sheets and resources you have to help you build this project.
mailto
The newest concept in this lesson is the mailto technique. This allows users to click on an email address and it opens up their email address in an email. All you need to do is use the mailto link.
It is a link tag and the mailto parameter. Users can click on a link to open up the email application on a computer. All you need to do is put the email address inside the mailto parameter. It automatically puts it in the send field (on some platforms it will be the to field).
<a href="mailto:questions@skillcrush.com">questions@skillcrush.com</a>
Keep in mind that the mailto link will only work if the email platform is the default setup on the computer. This would look like Apple Mail on Mac or Microsoft Outlook on PC. If a user doesn’t have these email clients, they will encounter lots of prompts on setting one up.
This can be very annoying for users. Skillcrush mentions that mailto links are targets to spam bots. That can create security issues. While there are pros and cons, clients still request this so it is important to know this technique still.
Coding Activity
My laptop started acting out during this part of the lesson. It made my screen very blurry so it was very hard to read. So it was extra challenging reading code on my screen and reading what Skillcrush wanted to be done.
As I write this post, the text is starting to shake. This made it very tough to read the instructions on my screen. I was able to finish the coding objectives for today, but I had to go back and add things to my code such as link tags and attributes.
I didn’t put the links for the social media links due to all the graphics issues I am having. I might add the links later to make it fully interactive. It took me a long time to do all the objectives plus double check my code. I didn’t validate my code either but will go through and validate my code tomorrow to see how it looks on my computer.
Tomorrow’s Plan
The next lesson is going to wrap up the Jubilee Austen portfolio. It means that it is time to tackle the CSS. Now that the HTML is done it is time to add styles. Tomorrow I’ll be adding styles to this portfolio site.
Resources
How to Create MailTo Links
Visual Studio Code Shortcuts for Windows
Visual Studio Code Shortcuts for macOS
This post was written on December 31, 2024 during the 2024 holiday break.
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