Front End Development Essentials

Write the HTML, CSS and JavaScript behind a fast, accessible site, from an empty folder to something you have published.

Level: Beginner
Duration: 10 weeks
Price: $469
Course code: WD-150

Overview

This course starts with an empty folder and ends with a multi page site you built, tested on a phone and published. There is no framework. Frameworks are worth learning, but they are much easier to learn well once the platform underneath them makes sense, and most of the problems people hit in a framework are really platform problems.

Ten weeks covers semantic HTML, modern CSS layout with flexbox and grid, responsive design that starts from a small screen, accessibility as a working practice rather than a checklist, and enough JavaScript to make a page respond to a person without reaching for a library.

You need a computer you can install a text editor on and about six hours a week. No prior coding experience is assumed. Students arrive from marketing, design, operations and support roles as often as they arrive from technical ones.

Who this is for

Complete beginners who want to build for the web properly
Designers who want to build what they design
Marketers and content editors maintaining pages they cannot change
Career changers wanting a real portfolio piece rather than a tutorial copy

Next Cohort

Applications open

Q4 2026Monday 5 October 2026
Q1 2027Monday 11 January 2027
Q2 2027Monday 12 April 2027
Q3 2027Monday 5 July 2027

Applications for the Q4 2026 cohort close on Friday 18 September 2026. We reply to every application within two business days.

Soren Klepacki

Interface design and front end craft

Nothing is finished until the empty state, the error state and the loading state are drawn. Those are the screens your users will actually meet.

Read the full profile

Beginner, no prior training assumed. One live session of ninety minutes each week, plus about three hours applying it to your own work. Sixteen seats. Full details on how enrollment works.

Apply for WD-150

Module plan

8 modules across 10 weeks.

Each module has one live session and one piece of practice applied to your own work.

Week 1
How the Web Actually Works
What happens between typing an address and seeing a page, and why that sequence explains most performance problems.
Week 2
HTML That Means Something
Choosing elements for their meaning, structuring a document properly, and the accessibility you get free by doing so.
Week 3
CSS Fundamentals and the Cascade
Selectors, specificity and inheritance, taught early because almost every confusing CSS bug comes from here.
Weeks 4-5
Layout With Flexbox and Grid
Building real layouts across two weeks, choosing between the two deliberately, and handling content that is longer than you expected.
Week 6
Responsive From the Small Screen Up
Starting at the narrowest width, using relative units, and testing on an actual phone rather than a resized window.
Weeks 7-8
JavaScript and Making a Page Respond
Two weeks on variables, functions, arrays and objects, then events and updating the page while keeping keyboard users able to do everything a mouse user can.
Week 9
Forms and Validation
Building a form that is accessible, gives useful errors, and does not lose what somebody typed.
Week 10
Performance, Accessibility and Publishing
Auditing image weight, font loading, focus order and contrast, then getting your site onto the open web and checking it on a real device.

Outcomes

What you will be able to do.

By the last session of Front End Development Essentials you will have practised each of these on your own work, not on a case study.

Write semantic HTML that is accessible by structure rather than by patching
Build responsive layouts with flexbox and grid and know when to use each
Debug a CSS problem by reasoning about specificity and the cascade
Write JavaScript that responds to a user without a framework
Build a form with accessible, useful validation
Audit and improve the performance and accessibility of your own site
Publish a multi page site and explain every decision in it