Modern Web Development Foundations
Build a real, accessible, fast website from an empty folder — no framework hand-waving.
Mara Velasco
Principal engineer · 12 years shipping web platforms
- Performance
- Accessibility
- JavaScript
What you will be able to do
- Write semantic HTML that assistive technology can actually navigate
- Structure CSS so it survives a growing codebase
- Understand the DOM, events and the browser rendering path
- Measure and fix real performance problems instead of guessing
- Ship a static site with a sensible build and deploy pipeline
About this course
Most beginner courses hand you a framework before you understand the platform underneath it. This one does the opposite. You will write HTML that means something, CSS that scales past three files, and JavaScript that you can reason about. By the end you will have shipped a genuinely accessible, genuinely fast site, and — more importantly — you will know why each decision was made.
Curriculum
3 sections · 9 lessons
- 1How a page becomes pixelsParsing, the DOM, the CSSOM, layout, paint and composite — the whole pipeline in one sitting.Preview14 min
- 2Semantic HTML is not decorationWhy the element you choose changes how a third of your users experience the page.Preview18 min
- 3Developer tools as an X-rayElements, network, performance and accessibility panels — used properly.16 min
Before you start
- A computer and a code editor — that is genuinely it
- No prior programming experience assumed
Student reviews
4.6 from 5
Amara Diallo
19 Aug 2026Great foundation, wanted more on the advanced end
The fundamentals are covered better than anywhere else I have found. I would happily pay again for a follow-up that goes deeper into the last module.
22 found this helpful
Hana Kimura
19 Aug 2026Excellent, though it moves quickly
Superb content and no filler at all. I did have to rewatch two lessons at 0.75x. If you are brand new to the subject, budget extra time for the middle section.
12 found this helpful
Daniel Osei
19 Aug 2026Worth it for the case study alone
The final project is genuinely realistic — messy inputs, ambiguous requirements, the lot. I have already reused the structure at work twice.
7 found this helpful
Léo Fontaine
19 Aug 2026The instructor clearly does this for a living
Every example smells like it came from a real codebase rather than a tutorial. The asides about what goes wrong in production were the most valuable part for me.
3 found this helpful
Sofía Marchetti
19 Aug 2026Finally, the why and not just the how
I have taken four courses on this topic and this is the first one that explained the underlying model instead of walking me through syntax. The section on validation alone changed how I work.
2 found this helpful