Memora, the project's square imageHAU Dorm Finder, the project's square imageHour.ly, the project's square imageLife-Quest, the project's square image

2026-11-04

Four websites built with nothing but HTML, CSS and JavaScript

students student-work web hau introweb

No frameworks, on purpose

This is the class where most students build their first web page. Introduction to Web Development runs on plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, with no frameworks, no component libraries and nothing that does the thinking for them. Most of them could not tell you what React is, and that is fine: they will meet it later, in a course built for it. Here, every line on the page is one they typed and can explain.

The finals were team projects, and team projects are where good ideas go to get averaged into mush. These four did not. Each one reads like a single clear idea, which means somebody on each team did the hard, invisible work of saying no, not that feature.

The Memora landing page in particular could pass for a real product's, built from the same three files every beginner starts with. That is the most flattering thing I can say about a first web project, and it makes my own first website look like a ransom note.

Each card opens a page with screenshots, what the team says it does, and where to find them.

The sites

Why the no-framework rule stays

Every site on this page works in any browser, loads instantly, and can be read top to bottom by the people who wrote it. That is the whole argument for learning the fundamentals first, made by students instead of by me.

Thank you to these teams for letting me show your work. You made the rule look easy, which it is not.

The judgment is human. The typing, by design, is not.