Learn Webflow in 16 Minutes (Crash Course)

Summary

This video tutorial offers a quick and insightful introduction to Webflow, a web design tool, in just 16 minutes. The presenter begins by explaining the fundamental 'box model' concept, demonstrating how everything on the web is structured as boxes within boxes. Using the Apple website as an example, the presenter showcases how HTML and CSS work together. The tutorial then shifts to Webflow, starting with basic styling of the main 'body' box, progressing through navigation bar creation, and constructing page sections using div blocks. Techniques like flexbox, container usage, grid system, and CSS styling for text and images are illustrated. The video also touches on more advanced features like responsive design and animations, concluding with an encouragement to explore their full Webflow course for deeper learning.

Takeaways

• 📦 Understanding the Box Model: The foundational concept of web design is the box model, where everything on the web is essentially boxes nested within other boxes.
• 🌐 Webflow Introduction: The video provides a quick start guide to using Webflow, a powerful web design tool.
• 🎨 Styling with CSS: The script explains how to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to style web elements like buttons, specifying their appearance and interaction.
• 🖼️ Inspecting Elements: The video demonstrates using the inspect tool in a browser to view and understand the structure and styling of a web page.
• 🔳 Creating and Styling Div Blocks: The basic building blocks of a webpage in Webflow are div blocks, which can be styled and named for easy reference.
• 🔧 Flexbox Layout: The video introduces the use of Flexbox for layout, which allows for easy alignment and distribution of items within a container.
• 🔘 Setting up Container Width: To ensure content is viewable and doesn't require horizontal scrolling, the script explains setting a maximum width for containers.
• 📝 Typography and Text Styling: The importance of typography is highlighted, with instructions on changing font, size, weight, and text case for headings.
• 🚗 Adding Visual Elements: The process of adding images and other visual elements to a webpage is demonstrated, including aligning and sizing them appropriately.
• 🔽 Creating Grid Layouts: The video shows how to create a three-column grid layout, a common design pattern for structuring content.
• 🎥 Page Load Animations: To enhance user experience, the script covers adding simple animations that trigger upon page load, making the webpage more engaging.

Q & A

What is the box model concept explained in the video?

The box model concept refers to the idea that everything on the web is structured as boxes within boxes, with elements like buttons, text, and images nested inside each other, forming the layout of a webpage.

Why is it important to understand the box model before using Webflow?

Understanding the box model is crucial because it helps in grasping how web pages are structured and styled, allowing for better design and layout control when building websites in Webflow.

What is the first step demonstrated in Webflow after explaining the box model?

The first step demonstrated in Webflow is defining the main box or 'body' of the website, which involves setting a background color and font style to establish a base for the page's design.

How does the presenter use the styling panel in Webflow?

The presenter uses the styling panel in Webflow to select and modify the appearance of webpage elements, such as changing background colors, fonts, and layout properties.

What is a 'div block' in Webflow, and how is it used in the video?

A 'div block' in Webflow is a container element used to structure and organize content on the webpage. In the video, div blocks are used to create different sections of the page, like the navigation and content areas.

How does the presenter create a navigation bar in Webflow?

The presenter creates a navigation bar by adding a div block, naming it 'nav', and then inserting elements like a menu, logo, and search icon within it. The layout is then adjusted using flexbox to distribute the elements evenly.

What is the purpose of using flexbox in the navigation bar's design?

Flexbox is used in the navigation bar's design to provide a flexible and efficient way to layout, align, and distribute space among items within a container, even when their size is unknown or dynamic.

How does the presenter manage the layout and spacing of elements in Webflow?

The presenter manages layout and spacing by adjusting margins and paddings to ensure elements are evenly spaced and aligned, and by using layout features like flexbox and grid to control the arrangement of components.

What method does the presenter use to highlight the 'S-Class' in the heading?

The presenter uses a larger font size and a block display style to highlight 'S-Class' in the heading, making it stand out as a prominent element on the page.

What is the significance of the page load animation demonstrated at the end of the video?

The page load animation is significant as it enhances the user experience by creating a visually appealing entrance for elements on the webpage, making the site more interactive and engaging for visitors.

Outlines

00:00

🚀 Introduction to Webflow and the Box Model

The video begins by introducing Webflow as a powerful tool for web design and development. Before diving into building a webpage in Webflow, the concept of the 'box model' is explained. The box model is fundamental to understanding web design, as it reveals that all elements on a webpage are essentially boxes within boxes. This concept is demonstrated using the Chrome Inspect tool on the Apple website, highlighting how HTML and CSS work together to structure and style web elements. The importance of understanding these boxes, their names (HTML tags), and their styles (CSS) is emphasized as crucial for web development.

05:00

🎨 Setting Up and Styling the Main Page

This segment guides the viewer through the initial steps of setting up a webpage in Webflow, starting with styling the main 'body' box to have a black background and white text in a specific font. The video then introduces 'div blocks' as the basic building elements in Webflow, explaining how to create a navigation bar by inserting images for a menu, logo, and search icon, and adjusting their layout using 'flexbox'. The concept of internal and external spacing within boxes is explained, demonstrating how to ensure elements are evenly spaced and correctly sized within the navigation bar.

10:02

📐 Constructing the Content Layout

The focus shifts to creating the content layout beneath the navigation bar, including handling text styling and image insertion. The presenter explains how to use headings to create a prominent title, adjust typography settings for visual appeal, and manipulate text styles for emphasis. A crucial part of this section is introducing the 'grid' feature to organize content into columns, demonstrating with a three-column layout. This part of the tutorial covers styling individual content boxes within the grid, adjusting their spacing, and applying borders to distinguish sections, except for the last box which is styled differently to omit the border.

15:05

✨ Adding Finishing Touches and Animations

In the final segment, the presenter adds finishing touches to the webpage, focusing on aesthetic enhancements and animations to improve user engagement. An introduction to 'interactions' in Webflow shows how to create page load animations that make elements appear sequentially, enhancing the visual flow of the page. The segment covers setting initial states for elements to be invisible and then animating them to full opacity, creating a dynamic loading effect. The video concludes by encouraging viewers to explore more about Webflow through a comprehensive course, highlighting the speed and ease with which a professional-looking webpage can be created using the platform.

Keywords

💡Webflow

Webflow is a web design and development platform that enables users to design, build, and launch responsive websites visually, without coding. The video introduces Webflow as a powerful tool for creating websites, emphasizing its utility in allowing designers to translate their vision into functional web pages directly. The platform's significance is highlighted through a demonstration of building a web page from scratch, showcasing the ease with which users can apply complex web design principles.

💡Box Model

The box model is a fundamental concept in web design and development, describing the layout of web pages. It refers to the idea that every element on a web page is a rectangular box, which can contain other boxes. The video uses the box model to explain how elements are structured and styled in Webflow, showing that understanding this concept is crucial for effective web design. The demonstration includes manipulating boxes (elements) like buttons and divs, emphasizing their role as the building blocks of web layouts.

💡HTML

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the standard markup language used to create and structure content on the web. The video briefly touches upon HTML when explaining how to inspect the Apple website to see its underlying code. HTML elements, represented as boxes, are the foundation of web pages, which Webflow users manipulate visually instead of coding directly. This illustrates the importance of understanding HTML structure, even when using a visual design tool like Webflow.

💡CSS

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is used in web development to describe how HTML elements should be displayed on screen. In the video, CSS is mentioned as the means of styling web elements, defining properties like font size, color, and layout. Webflow allows users to assign styles visually to elements, which is translated into CSS code. This highlights CSS's role in customizing the appearance of web elements and its importance in the web design process.

💡Flexbox

Flexbox is a CSS layout model that allows for a more efficient way to distribute space and align items in a container, even when their size is unknown. The video demonstrates using Flexbox in Webflow to position elements dynamically within the navigation bar, illustrating how it simplifies layout tasks such as spacing and alignment. Flexbox's utility in responsive design is showcased, emphasizing its value in modern web development practices.

💡Div Block

Div blocks, or division blocks, are fundamental HTML elements used to group other elements and apply CSS styles collectively. The video uses div blocks to structure the web page's layout, including the creation of navigation and content sections. By demonstrating how to add, name, and style div blocks in Webflow, the video highlights their importance as containers that enable complex web designs through the organization of page elements.

💡Typography

Typography in web design involves choosing and arranging type elements, such as font style, size, and color. The video covers the typography settings in Webflow, showing how to style text elements like headings and paragraphs. It demonstrates adjusting typography properties to match the design requirements, emphasizing typography's role in enhancing readability, accessibility, and the overall aesthetic of a web page.

💡Grid

The grid is a CSS layout system that enables designers to create complex responsive web designs. In the video, a grid is used to structure a section of the web page into three columns, demonstrating how grids facilitate the arrangement of elements in a precise, modular fashion. This example highlights the grid's utility in managing layout complexity and ensuring consistent, responsive designs across different screen sizes.

💡Interactions

Interactions in Webflow refer to animations and visual effects that are triggered by user actions or page events. The video concludes with adding a page load animation, showcasing how interactions can enhance the user experience by making web pages more dynamic and engaging. This section illustrates the process of creating and fine-tuning interactions in Webflow, underscoring their value in creating modern, interactive web experiences.

💡Responsive Design

Responsive design is an approach to web design that makes web pages render well on a variety of devices and window or screen sizes. Throughout the video, the importance of responsive design is implied through the use of Webflow's design tools, such as Flexbox and the grid system, which aid in creating layouts that adapt to different screen sizes. This concept is essential for modern web development, ensuring accessibility and usability across diverse devices.

Highlights

Webflow is a powerful tool for web design, allowing users to build web pages efficiently.

Understanding the box model is crucial before diving into Webflow, as it forms the basis of web design.

The concept of boxes within boxes is fundamental to web design, with HTML elements acting as boxes and CSS defining their style.

Webflow allows for quick customization of web pages, with the video demonstrating the creation of a page in just 16 minutes.

The body tag is considered the main box of a website in Webflow, and styling it sets the foundation for the entire page.

Webflow's interface enables easy manipulation of elements, such as changing the background color and font styles.

Div blocks, or 'div' elements, are the basic building blocks for structuring content on a web page.

Flexbox is a powerful layout tool in Webflow that allows for dynamic positioning and distribution of elements within a container.

The box model in Webflow includes settings for the space within and outside of boxes, allowing for precise control over layout and spacing.

Webflow provides an intuitive way to manage and insert assets like images and icons directly into the design interface.

Styling elements in Webflow is straightforward, with users able to quickly adjust properties like font size, color, and line height.

Webflow's grid element is a powerful tool for creating complex layouts with ease, as demonstrated by the creation of a three-column grid.

Interactivity and animations can be added to web pages in Webflow to enhance user experience and engagement.

Webflow offers a comprehensive course for those interested in learning more about its capabilities and best practices.

The video provides a fast-paced yet thorough introduction to Webflow, showcasing its potential for rapid web design and development.

Transcripts

so you've heard webflow is cool and

you're considering learning it well

on this video i'm going to give you the

basic and going to build

this page in only 16 minutes let's do

this

[Music]

all right let's get started but before

we jump into webflow i actually want to

explain a quick

concept that is super super important

before you dive into webflow so that you

understand what you're even doing

within webflow so the concept is called

the box model and here's basically what

i want to show you everything on the web

is actually boxes within boxes and

let me show you how it looks so here's

the apple website i'm going to click

i'm on chrome here i'm going to click

inspect which basically going to show

you the code for this website

so what you can see here on the top is

called html and that's the code for this

and you can see as i move through this

you actually see the boxes on this page

and it's basically just

boxes nested within boxes the button

here as you can see is a box and it's

called

a button that's the name of this box and

by giving it a style a name

basically that's what you see down here

that's the css basically that's the

style

the name defines how does it look like

so what's the font size what's the

background of this

exactly how this button looks because

it's called a

button so this is in like 30 seconds

70 percent of what you need to know

about building for the web it's

basically boxes within boxes within

boxes

these boxes have the name and the name

the style basically defines how they

look like and how they interact with one

another

now that you know this let's jump right

into webflow so

the first thing that i want to do here

before i even

start throwing things on the page is

actually define the main main box here

so as you can see we have here

body that is the main box of the website

selected and i'm going to give it

a style so that we can define it

basically what i want to do is give it a

background of black because the whole

page is going to be black

and i'm going to give it the basic kind

of fonts so that the whole font is going

to inherent

that font i'm going to use that so it's

going to be white and it's going to be

this

specific font so let's start with it on

the right here

we have the styling panel which

basically means for this specific style

how is it going to look like now i'm not

going to give it

i'm just going to click here and select

the body tag because

that's what we're styling right now and

i'm going to scroll down into a

background because basically i want to

choose

like a black background and you can see

that we've changed

the background here because we're

editing this box the body

and the next thing i want to do is in

the typography section i'm going to

choose

white because i want white text and i'm

going to choose

monster up font i think i don't know

let's start with that

all right so let's get started what do i

have here basically

i have here two kind of sections and i'm

not

building this properly as i would if

this would be a real website i just want

to show you the main

concepts here so basically there's two

things here there's the navigation

and there's the rest of the content so

let me just jump

throw in kind of like two the mace the

basic

uh boxes are called div blocks so i'm

just going to throw in two

div blocks one and then two the first

one is going to be

the navigation and i'm going to give it

a name here i'm going to call it

nav just so that now i can style

and refer to that style as we said now

it's a box with a name so that we can

give it a stop

now basically we have three things in it

we have

this hamburger menu the logo and the

search button

and i've went ahead and uploaded here

into the assets panel

a bunch of assets and so let's just

throw them inside right let me

let me throw in the menu here

and then i'm going to throw in the logo

and then i'm going to throw in the

search icon

just throwing in three images into this

box now as you can see

they're not sized properly and they're

just stacked one next to another from

left to right because that's the default

on the web we read from left to right so

that's how

things are stacked now one thing i want

to do is i want to make sure that they

are

you know uh distributed from left

center to the right and so the way that

i'm going to do this

is by changing the layout here of the

nav box

from the default which is called block

into something that's called a flexbox

it's something super super powerful i'm

not going to dive super

into this right now but by choosing this

now i can

change the justification of all the

content that's

in this box so left center right and we

also have here

space between which basically means it's

going to just space the elements

equally and that's actually good because

that's one on the left one

in the center and one in the right now

one thing that we know that we want

is and we can see it here we want kind

of equal spacing

right from the top from the bottom from

all the sides so

we're gonna go back here we have this is

called the box model right we talked

about the boxes so this is the space

within the box in the space

outside of the box so let me just pull

in and i'm gonna pull in

holding the option and shift key so that

i can pull in

from all sides at the same time i'm

going to choose 20 here so now you can

see we have

20 pixels on each side of this box kind

of spacing out

things evenly so that's good now the

only thing i want to do is to

change the sizing of this so i'm going

to add names for all of these elements

so that i can properly refer to them i'm

going to call this

menu i'm going to call this logo

and i'm going to call this search and

the only thing that i'm going to change

right now is actually the width of so

the size of this element this one let's

turn it into 30 pixels this one let's

see

50 pixels and this one maybe 25 pixels

again i'm just doing this very very fast

so we can see

that's looks pretty much okay now

next thing that we have here now for

this box

one thing that i want to do is i want to

make sure that it's not

too wide and you can see here that the

text is actually

you know not getting from edge to edge

and the reason is

that because we have wide screens these

days we have to keep the content

centered so that people don't have to

kind of move their head from side to

side

so we're using something that's called

container by container basically what we

mean is for this

box let me call this container container

container we basically set a maximum

width so if we're on a very wide screen

we don't want it to be too wide so let

me put that at 1100 pixels

just make sure that it's centered by

clicking this center button

so now we have this element centered now

we have basically two things here we

have this um

let's start with this title all new

s-class

so i'm going to drop in a title or a

heading

as it's called here so from the

typography menu from the add menu

typography

i'm going to add a heading and i'm going

to call this

the all new s-class

s class

and basically now we have a heading

because it's a heading it's already bold

and kind of

it already has some style but that's

definitely not the style that we want so

we're going to edit

this tag h1 tag for the heading and

we're going to

let's start changing the stuff here in

the typography let's change the font

to this what's the name of the font

comment

something uh we're gonna make it

normal not bold we're gonna make sure

that it's centered

we're gonna make it i don't know a

little bigger

and uh also let me look at this

yeah we want this to be all caps all in

upper capital letters so we have here

all caps

and that looks good now the only thing

is that the

s class is way bigger than the rest of

it it's still one title

and it's it makes sense to use one

element so that google knows

this is one title but we do want to give

this

as class a different style so by

selecting this you'll see we have the

brush

icon here which wraps it with another

style

so this one i'm going to call this big

h1 h1 stands for the big heading and i'm

going to make this

really really big and also i don't want

them to be on the same

on the same line i want this to take up

a whole new line

so i'm going to change the display here

into block block means this takes

the whole line from top to bottom

they're

a little bit too close to one another so

i'm also going to add a top

margin and now this looks pretty good

kind of how much how i want it all right

so

we have the navigation we have the

container within we have the h1

now we want to bring in the image of the

car so let me just

throw in the image of the car

actually from the assets panel we're

just going to throw this in

after the heading and uh yeah

boom it's right actually on top of it i

didn't have to do anything

oh yeah but because i took up this

because this big h1 is actually moving

up with the margin it's actually

already on top of it now this happens

because this is actually a png

so with a transparent background so when

it's on top

of the text it actually looks pretty

good so i don't even have to do anything

i thought i have to reposition so what

do we have to do right now we have to

create this

three column grid here i'll do that by

using an element here that's called the

grid that's a pretty powerful

pretty powerful element i'm going to put

it after

the image and i'm going to edit it i'm

going to make sure i'm going to add a

column

because it's three columns i don't need

a second row so i'm going to delete this

row

and basically we have now a three column

grid now basically you can see from the

design they actually all look the same

so we're going to create one box and

then we're going to basically duplicate

it three times

so let me throw in a div block into this

grid and of course i'm going to give it

a name so i can refer to it so i'm going

to call this

let's say feature box feature box

and in this feature box let me throw in

a title because you know we have some

title here

for example luxury all right let me copy

that

and put it here obviously it's not the

style that we want so i'm going to go

here and

edit this style i'm going to change the

font

into something thin or light

and maybe a little bit bigger

that looks all right and below it

i'm gonna put in a little bit of a text

block

actually within this feature box i'm

going to put it underneath it

this text should probably be bigger

so i'm going to give it a style and i'm

going to call this feature

text and i'm going to make it

maybe 18 pixels and i'm going to make

the line height a little bit bigger

all right now this looks alright

let me duplicate this feature box three

times so now we have three columns here

let's change the text pretty much so we

can it looks as if

we've changed the text here

and the only thing that we have left

is actually these lines

so and we need a little bit more spacing

here so let's

check the feature box and let's add a

little bit of

margin or padding from the inside of the

box let's say 15 pixels from each side

now the boxes are

better better spaced i think we'll

actually probably add a little bit more

now remember that we said this is a box

so because this is a box we can actually

if we scroll down

all the way here we can actually give

the box a border so in this case we only

want to give a border on the right side

so we're going to give it one pixel

we're going to make it white

and now we have because these are all

the same style

they're getting all the same you know

features

so all of them got the line on the right

but actually we do not want this last

one

see the last one we don't want it to

have a line so

let's add this last block only this last

feature box we're going to edit an

additional style to make it

different we're going to call this last

box so it's getting all the properties

from feature box

but some of the things are going to be

different so we're going to keep the

spacing the same

but we're going to remove this

border so now all the boxes have this

white line

except for the last one now basically we

can finish

here but let's just make it fancier let

me add some kind of an interaction or

animation just to make it a little bit

fancier

let's go here into the interaction panel

on the right and let's add a page load

animation so we have triggers

that the page triggers one of them if

i'm going to edit

is page load and this is basically

an animation or interaction that happens

after the page starts loading or

finishes loading

let me add a new animation here and

let's call this loading animation

now what i want to do is i want to make

all of these elements appear nicely one

after another so let's start by actually

saying let's hide them and then show

them when the pages load

when the page loads so i'm going to

start by choosing the image and i'm

going to choose here i can animate all

of these different properties

i'm going to choose opacity i'm going to

turn this down into 0 i'm going to

trigger here something that's called set

as initial state so

we're going to start off from zero

and then let me duplicate this element

duplicate this and then when the pages

when the page loads we're gonna bring it

back into a hundred

so this is what's going to happen now

let's do this also for the feature boxes

so i'm going to select this one and

start by hiding it set its initial state

and then let's duplicate this and this

one i want

this to happen after only after the car

loads

this is going to show so i'm going to

bring back the opacity let's trigger

that so now

car shows and then this feature box show

let's do this for these two

as well start by hiding them

zero opacity as an initial state and

then duplicating them

and then bringing back after the feature

box

animate into 100

let's do this for the last one as well

start with

opacity of zero

as an initial state duplicate and

bam bring back into 100

let's play this boom boom boom boom

and now when we're loading this page

it's going to animate

in all right so that was it

of course this was very very very fast

and of course there's

so much more depth into webflow but i

wanted to show you

what you can do really really fast if

you're interested about learning more

check out the link

in the description we have of course a

full-on course on webflow where we go

really deep hope to see you with us and

see you on the next

video bye