Audience: Junior developers, bootcamp grads, and anyone who loves interactive learning. ⏱️ Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Goal: Build a 10-card flashcard game from scratch, moving from pseudocode to production-ready code—explaining the why behind each step.
💡 Why Flashcards?
Flashcards are a great way to reinforce learning. They keep users engaged and help us explore:
- DOM manipulation
- Event listeners
- Component reuse
- Separation of concerns
Let’s break this down into small wins.
You can go see FunCards in Action and see the steps here.
🧾 Step 1: The Pseudocode
1. Create a container for flashcards.
2. Each flashcard has a front (question) and a back (answer).
3. Clicking a flashcard flips it.
4. Load 10 flashcards into the DOM.
5. Style the flashcards to animate the flip.
🧱 Step 2: The HTML Skeleton
<div id="flashcard-container">
<!-- Cards will be injected here -->
</div>
🧠 Step 3: Sample Flashcard Data (in JavaScript)
const flashcards = [
{ question: "What does HTML stand for?", answer: "HyperText Markup Language" },
{ question: "What is the purpose of CSS?", answer: "To style HTML content" },
// ... add 8 more
];
🛠️ Step 4: JavaScript to Create and Inject Flashcards
const container = document.getElementById("flashcard-container");
flashcards.forEach((card, index) => {
const cardDiv = document.createElement("div");
cardDiv.classList.add("card");
cardDiv.innerHTML = `
<div class="card-inner">
<div class="card-front">${card.question}</div>
<div class="card-back">${card.answer}</div>
</div>
`;
cardDiv.addEventListener("click", () => {
cardDiv.classList.toggle("flipped");
});
container.appendChild(cardDiv);
});
🎨 Step 5: CSS for Styling and Flip Animation
#flashcard-container {
display: flex;
flex-wrap: wrap;
gap: 20px;
justify-content: center;
}
.card {
width: 200px;
height: 150px;
perspective: 1000px;
cursor: pointer;
}
.card-inner {
position: relative;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
transition: transform 0.6s;
transform-style: preserve-3d;
}
.card.flipped .card-inner {
transform: rotateY(180deg);
}
.card-front,
.card-back {
position: absolute;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
backface-visibility: hidden;
padding: 20px;
box-shadow: 0 4px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
border-radius: 10px;
background: #fefefe;
}
.card-back {
background: #ffefd5;
transform: rotateY(180deg);
}
🔍 Why We Built It This Way
Componentization Even though we’re using plain JS, each card is its own mini-component.
Event Binding Shows how to handle DOM events cleanly.
Animation with CSS Keeps it performant and easy to tweak.
Separation of Data & View The flashcard content is kept separate from the DOM logic.
✅ What’s Next?
- Make the game track score (quiz style).
- Pull flashcards from a backend API.
- Let users add their own.