The Mastro Guide – web development simplified.

Are you new to web development? Or perhaps you learned a particular framework, but never the foundations of building on the web? Fear not, the first couple of chapters will show you the basics of modern HTML and CSS: build a website and put it live – all in your browser (or using the command line, if you prefer that).

In later chapters, you’ll statically generate a blog, and implement a to-do list app: once with plain client-side JavaScript, then reactively. In the last third, you’ll run a server with a REST API, learn about caching, and discover some of the design space around different web application architectures.

This guide does not show you everything you’ll ever need to know when creating websites. Instead, it shows you the door to the world of web design, giving you an overview over the landscape, and tells you where to learn more. While the minimal Mastro framework is used for practical examples, the patterns discussed are universal.

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Table of Contents

1. HTML, CSS and JavaScript
   1. Intro: Why learn HTML and CSS?
   2. Setup: GitHub and VS Code for Web
   3. Start with HTML
   4. Publish your website to GitHub Pages
   5. Style with CSS
   6. Introducing JavaScript
2. Static site generation (SSG)
   1. Client-side vs server-side JavaScript, SPA vs MPA
   2. Server-side components and routing
   3. A static blog from markdown files
   4. Third-party packages
   5. Interactivity with JavaScript in the browser
3. Running a server (SSR)
   1. URLs and HTTP
   2. Mastro as a server on the command line
   3. Deploy server or static site with CI/CD
   4. Forms and REST APIs
   5. Bundling and pregenerating assets
   6. Web application architecture and the write-read boundary