Welcome to your first week of your User Interfaces course, the second five-week installation in your Front End Development track! Let's jump right in!

Our focus this week will be three-fold:

1. Solidifying Fundamentals: First, we need to get really good at CSS basics. Before we can learn about crafting great site designs, we must be able to see an image or wireframe of a site, and create a coded, functional version of it. Not only is this a skill front end developers must to demonstrate (it's common to receive sketches/mockups and be asked to create a functioning site that looks the same), but this foundation is required before we begin exploring more advanced concepts in coming weeks.

2. Advanced CSS Features: Then we'll begin to explore more advanced CSS features like the flexboxes, pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes discussed in the pre-work. This will allow us to make bigger, more professional, and more dynamic layouts than we did in Intro to Programming.

3. CSS Pre-Processors: Then, as our stylesheets grow in size, we'll take our styling to the next level by introducing pre-processed CSS. CSS preprocessors like Sass allow us to integrate programmatic logic (like variables, loops, etc.) into styles. This functionality will make our styles DRY-er, easier to maintain, and more professional.

Independent Project Objectives

As usual, you'll demonstrate your new skills in an independent project on Friday. This week's project will be graded on the following objectives:

• CSS rules are created and organized using "outside in" best practices.
• Project exhibits understanding of box model best practices.
• Flexbox is used to efficiently present groupings of similar or related elements.
• Media queries are used to change rules based on screen size.
• Styles are written in Sass and well-refactored using Sass functionality.
• Project was submitted by the Friday deadline.
• Project demonstrates an understanding of this week's concepts. If prompted, you can discuss your code with an instructor using the correct terminology.