A few months ago, after helping to co-author HTML5 & CSS3 for the Real World, SitePoint asked me to do a related video screencast series on their new Learnable.com website.
I agreed, and the course has been available online now for a few weeks. It was a fun experience, and it’s motivated me to plan for some screencasts here on this site, too. I won’t go into great detail on the course here — you can review the course contents on Learnable.com at your leisure.
Basically, the course consists of 28 separate video tutorials that make up 9 full lessons. Most of the videos are about 10 to 15 minutes long, with a few under 10 minutes, so they’re pretty easily digestible. Lesson 10 is a “resources” section that I’ll probably continue to add to, and Lesson 11 is a “bonus voucher” (more on that below).
Target Audience
The target audience for the course is beginning to intermediate designers and developers who have yet to delve too deeply into HTML5 and CSS3 and want to get a good solid overview of the new stuff.
I made a special point of focusing on the benefits of HTML5 and CSS3, as well as making sure that I cover reasons why developers shouldn’t be afraid to start using these new technologies.
While I wouldn’t recommend the course for experienced HTML5 and CSS3 developers, I think even some experts would learn some stuff in this one. I certainly learned a lot while researching it, so I think the same would be true for many others.
The course includes a “Q&A” section where all course “classmates” can submit questions about anything in the course, or even stuff outside the scope of the course. I’m kept in the loop each time a question is posted, so I’ve been interacting with many of the registrants over the past week or so. All users are allowed to join the Q&A, and answers can be voted up or down and a single answer can be chosen as the “accepted answer”, similar to what’s done on many Q&A websites.
Special Deal and Voucher
The course is listed for $39.95, and it includes a bonus lesson “voucher” that lets you purchase the E-Book package of the book from SitePoint for only $4.95. The regular price of the E-Book package is $29.95. The E-Book package includes formats in MOBI, EPUB, and PDF.
Really, anyone that’s interested in buying the course should definitely buy both the book and the course, because there’s much more info in the book. As I mention in the video preview of the course, the information in the course is not redundant in comparison to the book; there are lots of things covered in the screencasts that aren’t in the book — so the course does work well on its own or even in conjunction with the book.
And there’s also the option to buy the print and/or digital version of the book from SitePoint and get the course as well at a good price. If you buy the print book and the course, you’ll save 31%. If you buy the print and E-Pack and the course, you’ll save 45%. Finally, the E-Book package (no print version), along with the course, will result in a savings of 35%.
So plenty of options for anyone interested in getting a well-rounded introduction to many of the features of HTML5 and CSS3.
Contest Coming Up
I currently have two extra copies of the print book, plus a few extra copies of the E-Book package that I’m planning to give away. I’m going to run an interesting little contest here on this site to give away one or more of those to some readers. So, to sound completely clichéd and cheesy: Stay tuned for details!
Unfortunately, I don’t currently have any info on whether or not I can do a video course give-away, but if that changes, I’ll consider having a contest for that as well.
In the meantime, check out the course and see if it might be a good fit for you.
