Exercise 18 is overwhelming for a beginner

[R-V-S]

Feedback from a student:

"...I did fine on the HTML/CSS course and then the last lesson itself was completely out of nowhere--I didn't learn to do any of that stuff that they're asking me to do. I am trying to look up how to do things, but I'm not being very successful..."

First and foremost, it could be a little clearer that these are just suggestions. It might also help to be explicit about the intent of the lesson... maybe with something reassuring, like, "Don't stress if some of these things look unfamiliar! They're just suggestions, and the idea in this lesson is to encourage you to play around with code, read from various online resources (check out the links below), and just have fun learning."

Looking at the suggestions, I think the ones that are the most confusing are probably:

• "Force your profile image into a square shape" - I think they're assuming there's an explicit property that lets them do this. An understandable assumption for a beginner, and they don't know enough to even know that they're supposed to be thinking inside the box here.
• "Place this <div> right next to your profile image" - in the HTML, CSS, or on the screen? It's a little unclear.
• "Remove the borders of your table leaving only a single dividing line between each entry." - Although they used this property in the course, it wasn't actually explained, so unless they looked up every property they were asked to type in, this will surprise them.
• "Alternate the background color of each table row using an nth-child selector" - if they don't catch that nth-child selector is a link, they're going to assume that this was either covered and they somehow missed it, or that it wasn't covered but is being included here.

Another idea would be to move the trickier instructions into an optional "Bonus Points"/"Extra Credit" section.

The nth child jazz may just be a little too much too soon...