Build a Virtual Lite-Brite

Thinking of a Lite-Brite may make you nostalgic. But these days, they are covered in germs. In this live, instructor-led workshop, you will build and customize your very own virtual Lite Brite that you can share with anyone around the world!

This will be best experienced on a desktop or laptop computer.

Goals

Build and customize a virtual Lite-Brite
Gain exposure and familiarity with some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
Determine if coding is something you enjoy doing and want to pursue further

Disclaimer: We won’t become experts in these languages today. And you may leave with more questions than answers!

Programming Languages We Will Use

Building the user-facing part of a website or app is referred to as Front End Engineering. Building a Front End requires the writing code in three programming languages, and making the code in each language “talk to” the code in the others.

It can feel like a lot, but let’s start by building an understanding of what each language is responsible for. We will make some comparisons to the human body to create context.

HTML

HTML holds the content we see on a page (text, images) and defines the structure and order in which the content appears.

We can think of HTML as the skeleton of our webpage; without it, we'd just be a blob:

CSS

CSS defines the look and feel of a webpage - it can change the size or layout of items on a page, change colors, fonts, and more!

We can think of CSS as anything that makes us unique and recognizable - our skin, hair, clothes, style, etc.

JavaScript

JavaScript is what lets the user interact with a page. For example, clicking a button and getting some sort of response.

We can think of JavaScript as the brain and muscle of our webpage, as it powers all the action:

Project Setup

We will work off of a starter kit that has already been created. Click this link to access the starter kit in codepen.io. Here’s how we will use this code:

Fork the pen using the Fork button along the bottom of the page. This creates your own copy of the starter code so that you can make and keep changes to the code!
After forking, substitute your name for NAME on line 1 of the html file
Click Save or wait just a moment for codepen to autosave and update the result (the bottom portion of the page).