Devtools Pro: The Basics of Chrome Developer Tools by Rocco Balsamo on Udemy is a great, short and sweet course to introduce anyone to the Chrome DevTools. It will have the students navigating and exploring all sorts of websites using DevTools in just a short 45 minutes! What’s more, Balsamo is an excellent teacher and has jam-packed this course with extra materials on top of video lectures, such as exercises and quizzes.
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My Rating
Table of Contents
- Course Overview
- Who This Course Is For
- The Breakdown
- Conclusion
- What could I do with the knowledge in this course?
Course Overview
- Skill Level: Beginner
- Price: FREE
- Duration: 45 Minutes
- Material: 3 Sections, 13 Video Lectures, 2 short quizzes, 5 simple exercises and bonus material!
- Students enrolled at the time of taking: ~57,000
- Course requirements/prerequisites: None, but some knowledge of how webpages work (HTML/CSS, Javascript) would be beneficial to have
- Topics Covered:
- Use the elements panel to modify and update live webpages with tools like the colorpicker and text shadow editor.
- Type simple Javascript commands in the console.
- Write and test larger blocks of code with the snippets panel.
- Understand how to stop and step through code with breakpoints and basic debugging.
- Learn how to simulate mobile devices for responsive development.
- Use the audits panel to get useful information about improving page load time.
Who This Course Is For
This course is for anyone looking to get started on using DevTools to inspect websites and find out what is going on behind webpages. It does a great job of giving good content that is not too difficult or basic. It does require students to have some basic background knowledge on how webpages work, making references to HTML/CSS, json files and Network Calls. Whilst the course will still be beneficial without having knowledge of these, it would be good to have.
Specifically, Balsamo targets this course at:
- Front End Developers
- Back End Developers Looking to Try Front End
- UI/UX Designers
- Software Engineers
- Project / Product Managers
- Anyone looking for a quick way to understand websites and web applications
The Breakdown
Teacher and Class material – 5/5
Rocco Balsamo is an upbeat and friendly teacher with a wide array of achievements, having helped in the programming of Rock Band 3 and was a Web Developer for 8 years and finally, a teacher and speaker at Developer Conferences.
He teaches in a bright and refreshing manner, incorporating humour and jokes into his teaching to make the course less dry. He speaks clearly and is easy to understand.
I like how he adds in additional material to supplement the video lectures for this course. Given that this is a short 45 minute course, Balsamo has added a lot of additional material such as a pdf to display the course curriculum, some exercises to do after some topics (with bonus questions) and quizzes.
The quizzes test the student’s knowledge at a good depth and make for very good review quizzes that will catch students that were not paying attention. This is great compared to some courses that have extremely easy quizzes.
These make for a well rounded course that’s packed with materials, not just video lectures as many are. On top of that, he is also very active on the Q&A forum, which is a bonus for a Udemy teacher.
Content – 4/5
The course has 3 sections, namely:
- The basics – Elements panel, DevTools tour, using Console for JavaScript and Debugging
- Digging Deeper – Cookies, Local Storage, Network Calls, Performance and Styling Editors
- Bonus – Links to other resources
The content is great for a beginner learner to learn the Chrome Devtools. Having limited knowledge myself, I was able to follow along the content easily. The tour of the DevTools and using the console made the navigation quite clear.
There are several references to content that should be well-known by Web Developers, who are assumed to be the target audience of this course, such as HTML/CSS and Network calls. However, it is mainly about where to find the information for these aspects of a webpage and navigating through DevTools. Balsamo still covers this very clearly and there should be no problem learning DevTools even with all this additional Web Development jargon for beginner or new Web Developers.
Note that this course mainly covers navigating through DevTools rather than methods for debugging properly, or explaining what each Network call means. It is still an introductory course and the content will allow you to get started exploring on DevTools.
One issue was that the content makes some references to outdated websites in the exercises (https://fogcitylearning.com). Whilst this can be overcome easily by using another website for the example practice, it would be nice to have the course updated, given that it is an old course as well.
Engagement – 5/5
Balsamo teaches the course in an extremely engaging manner. As mentioned, he speaks and teaches very clearly and is very easy to understand, with an uplifting tone. He incorporates humour and is definitely one of the more engaging teachers on online courses out there.
On top of that, he has edited his course videos nicely to zoom in and out of screen recordings to help emphasise his teaching points and he also shows his face at the start and end of every lesson, which, compared to not showing the teacher’s face at all, is a nice touch to include.
The amount of quizzes and exercises also make the course very hands-on and enforces the students’ learning, especially for more hands-on learners. They are not too hard or too easy and provide a great way for keeping students paying attention.
As mentioned for several other courses, the short format videos of 2-3 minutes are also great to have as they keep the student’s attentions much better as compared to fewer but longer videos and also give a better sense of progress and completion.
Not many complaints for engagement here!
Pace – 5/5
Balsamo teaches this course at a very nice pace, not too fast or too slow. The quizzes and review exercises are nicely interspersed throughout the course and provide a great way of ensuring that each student is on task throughout the course. It is easy to follow and is definitely beginner friendly for anyone looking to start on DevTools.
Value – 5/5
For a free course with a total duration of 45 minutes, this course is a great choice for anyone who is interesting in getting to learn DevTools. It provides a great amount of additional material, with the course syllabus pdf to give students a clear flow of the class and a good amount of quizzes and review materials as opposed to just lessons. On top of that, Balsamo provides discount codes for his further courses if any students are interested to take their knowledge of DevTools further.
Conclusion
If you are a Web Developer, new or experienced, and want to get to know how to navigate through DevTools better, this is the course for you! It is extremely easy to follow along, provides a good amount of content and will have you exploring DevTools in no more than 45 minutes! On top of that, you get to learn it from a great and engaging teacher who clearly teaches with a passion. All in all, for just a simple 45 minute investment, I would recommend this course to anyone interested for sure!
What could I do with the knowledge in this course?
- How to inspect websites
- The different tabs such as applications and network
- How to change the styling of different websites
Use this knowledge to inspect your favourite website and see how the website is actually functioning. And feel free to change the CSS of your favourite website to make it your own! (of course these changes will not be implemented)
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