Totally lost

I find the problem is the beginner courses didn't relate to any practical examples, and this course doesn't link back to the beginner courses, which is exactly what I expected it would do. This course is simply a developer saying his thoughts out loud. He doesn't explain why he is setting up the variable and functions, he simply assumes that viewers already know that these are required in this situation, although the beginner courses don't cover when they. When he goes into the MDN he doesn't explain why he is, or why he is going into certain sections eg. document, element etc. There are loads of different DOM interfaces many of which seem to be relevant simply based on their name, so please tell us why he is choosing one over the other. After enjoying the CSS and HTML courses, this course is frustrating to say the least. I'd guess that the tutor wasn't fully aware of the content of the beginner courses and hasn't made an attempt to provide continuity in his approach. Even after rewatching these 5 plus times there are many things left unexplained, and although I could probably recreate what has been done here, I wouldn't feel confident working on another project. From the number of people that are saying they are completely lost, I think this needs redoing.

I understand your difficulty with the intermediate tutorial. Even though I went through the fundamental courses and thought I had a grasp on the material, I was completely lost the first time around and couldn't understand what he doing and why he was doing it that way. As much as I love Treehouse, I realized that there was a disconnect with their beginning tutorials that kept me from understanding the fundamentals in a practical way and how or why I would use them in certain situations. Maybe it was more my learning style but I had to find other sources to understand. I found a great book by Jon Duckett simply titled "JavaScript and jQuery" that really helped me make those connections in practical ways that I found lacking in the Treehouse courses. Of course, this was prior to their latest release of JavaScript Basics, which remind's me of Jon Duckett's book. I've since been able to complete the intermediate course with a better understanding that's allowed me to build upon it. But if you find that the JavaScript Basics course isn't enough, I suggest checking the book out and see if it helps you. Best of luck!

I've been lost on every Javascript course here. I keep thinking I have a mind block to this language. Whenever Andrew says "OK cool" I'm thinking "No not cool, what did you just do and why".

I can't follow. This lesson is very far to be didactic. Unfortunately Andrew seems to rush or simply skip many explanations, maybe due to this format of a course in 3 parts and very few lessons. This course deserves a bigger line, more hours with more short lessons.

I've also faced the same issue. Andrew certainly jumps the gun on a few things and leaves you lost. This is the second course that I've taken with him as an instructor and I've had the same problem in being confused. He probably have an image of what's going on in his mind, but it's not coming through on screen to viewers.

The upside to this is the need to pause and look up what he is speaking about and finally understanding and mastering it.

I felt the same way going through the course. I think they made a large jump and assume a greater understanding than most of us had going into that course.

This sounds silly but what helped me a ton was going into the MASH Javascript courses. Yes, they are for 9-14 year olds...

However, the files are all in workspaces and have a ton of documentation. If you open one up it has a comment on EVERY line of code for EVERY function. They are very simple but were very very helpful in getting my head around how javascript works as there as a very clear explanation for each variable, event handler, function, etc... This made subsequent intermediate Javascript courses much easier to retain and understand.

Good luck!

This has been my experience with both this course and the jQuery course. I can follow better now after going through an in-depth JavaScript book on my own, but the reason this course is hard to follow for many is because Andrew Chalkley assumes the viewer knows way more about JavaScript than what's covered in JavaScript Basics and JavaScript Foundations. He skims through the material way too swiftly, and spends half of the time browsing through documentation, rather than introducing concrete concepts.

I would recommend going through either a book (I really benefitted from going through "Eloquent JavaScript" and "A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript"), specifically chapters goes in-depth on JavaScript functions, the DOM, selectors, and event handling.

Here are some things you probably need to know to follow without feeling confused:

• DOM: http://eloquentjavascript.net/13_dom.html
• Handling events: http://eloquentjavascript.net/14_event.html
• functions: http://eloquentjavascript.net/03_functions.html

Hope this helps!

I thought that only this was happening to me. I've just taken javascript basics and javascript foundation (both). I'm lost but I think if we watch the video many times we can get it.

To all of you who are struggling with this topic:

There is nothing wrong in your understanding. The structure should have had a DOM introduction and the different manipulation techniques separately. After understanding the DOM (it took me a solid 2-3 hours) from other resources I actually continued making the TODO without watching any more lessons. I completed it in about 3 hours but took a few breaks and was completely on my own with the MZ DOM. Just finished watching all the remaining lessons and understood them very easily and a lot of the code used was not what I used in my own task list (eg. I used hasAttribute() and setAttribute())

So don't worry. HOLD! and understand the DOM first. Play around with it in the console and once you understand the world of DOM a bit then you will easily do this lesson. All you will then need is the right syntax as your mind will be able to put pieces together.....Google helps!

i have had to signup to lynda.com to learn DOM. Just started the course there which is all about DOM. I don't understand how is the viewer expected to use the DOM without understanding how it fundamentally works. I breezed through the track till I got to Stage 3 of this part which is also odd as Stage 1 and 2 were nowhere as difficult as Stage 3.

Even though I kind of understood what is happening I am not at all comfortable with my learning on the subject.

I have to agree — I have no idea what's happening here. I've taken every prerequisite JavaScript leading up to this course, and he's just breezing through stuff and not explaining the "why" of anything. I was following along more or less, then when he started talking about binding I lost it. All of a sudden it feels like he turned it up to 60 mph, with no thought to the fact the people following along have never seen what he's doing. So far, unfortunately, the JavaScript courses really have been the worst of everything I've watched through Treehouse.

wonder what teamtreehouse has to say about all this. The people have clearly spoken... this lesson needs a major upgrade. Although the topics introduced here (i.e. DOM) are essential to JS, the way they're taught leaves me asking "WHY" as opposed to "HOW" to do this.

Here's some constructive feedback for Treehouse... Create a unified styleguide for teaching your lessons. I know each professor has his/her own style, but many of those varying styles tend to inevitably conflict with the way we each process information.

Dave Mcfarland may have one way of teaching, where as Andrew may have another. It's up to Treehouse staff to create one unified styleguide that takes the positive in both styles of teaching and facilitates our approach to learning.

As a suggestion- start with "WHY" (i.e. essential concepts), followed by "HOW" (best practices), then by "WHAT" (i.e. projects, exercises, examples that utitlize the essential concepts).

hope this helps!

Maybe the teacher is really an alien like he says on his profile, because I don't understand anything in his lessons, or maybe I am the one who is an alien... Just bought a book, let's see what happen... : (

I just wanted to Thank everyone for posting this. It's nice to not feel alone in confusion as well as gain some other resources to check out to add to my learning.

Thanks again and Cheers!

The lectures for this particular section are a bit harder to follow in my opinion as well.

It doesn't seem as though there's as much step by step guidance/explanation, but at the same time, it does help to simply rewatch the video or pause and analyze the code written yourself so you can try to recall and recognize things on your own!

What also helped me was running the JS code for this lecture in Chrome's JS console!

Ooooh, this two vido about Traversing is something, every day I watch this viddeos and in the middle I falling aslip :) Since 2 January I can't go further because every time my mind is blowing :). Please rebuild this videos. Pls. be merciful to other new students, change 3rd part. I'll use this lesson to make my baby sleep :)

The only caveat I would say to add to this discussion would be to not get bogged down trying to memorise everything Andrew does in the course. I don't think that's the best way to learn programming.

For all the faults that may exist in this course Andrew makes a very good point in it, and that's that memorisation comes naturally in the brain as you practice your skills over many projects. And as you go through the course different things are prioritised in your brain. Even last week my main mission in life was to learn Sass. I made great strides in that but this week I decided to go back to this course to see if I could build the app what I could remember and see if I could add it to my skills.

There are things I would do differently in terms of how I would structure the course and I do agree it gets heavy at times. But you'd need a photographic memory to memorise everything Andrew has done.

Just think when you finish the course... what have I actually learned and what can I take away from it? Do I know where to look for help when you need it? Am I thinking too much about solving this one task or how to use the techniques taught in the course to apply them to other projects? It's worth considering IMO :)

Since this series of tutorials are intermediate, it is important to come into them with a foundational understanding of JavaScript in the browser.

If you haven't already, I highly recommend you complete the following tutorials:

• Introduction to Programming
• JavaScript Foundations

I hope this helps you on your learning journey! :D

Hi Hugo,

I am having difficulties in the interactive web pages with javascript course. Its very difficult to understand what the lecturer is doing in the video as there is no clear explanation of every task he is doing.

Yep, I'm pretty lost myself. I've already taken JS Basics, and Intro to programming. I'll probably go back to Foundations. I'm going to pick up that book. Maybe they have PDF somewhere.

Part 2 and part 3

Yes Hugo...I will try re watching the videos again at a lower speed

I feel the same way... The only JS course I found valid here is the JS Basics...

WOW! I came here and I feel like I'm not alone. I have to say, I've been learning everyday with Treehouse for over 6 weeks now and have accumulated tons of knowledge through these courses. I find some of the instructors are way better than others, while others just rehash stuff that's frankly on Codecademy. Some even just rehash the API documents on MDN or PHP.net line-for-line.

I'm still unclear on why we're setting up functions as variables here in this course, when I've never seen it done that way. I'm also not sure on why we setup the variables at the top of the script. I just feel like I'm copying code without really learning the concepts. For example, why do we even setup functions in the first place? Excuse my rant, but this seems like the place.

Also, I find that how the tracks are pieced together means there's a lot of jumping around from on instructor, with old material, to a newer course with a different instructor. All of this makes the learning experience very challenging. I know the devils advocate would argue this is how real learning is constructed with various courses and various instructors.

Anyway, enough of my rant. I want to continue learning and hope for the best!

I thought I am the only one !!! Anyway to learn how to create this app in an easier way?

This track is hard to follow. It moves too fast and treehouse needs to break it up maybe a course on just the DOM