Today Codeacademy launched a very simple way to create personalized virtual Christmas cards … and share them with the world. And into the bargain, you learn a little bit about some of the technologies that power the web: HTML, CSS, and perhaps even Javascript.

“Code cards are a really cool hands-on way to apply the HTML and CSS that people are learning with codecademy,” Codeacademy CEO Zack Sims told VentureBeat. “They can add elements with our interface (or drag and drop), see the HTML/CSS, tweak it, and send it to friends and family, who can play with the cards and make their own.”

I tried it myself, and it was easy and fun:

You simply select the elements that you want, copy the HTML and CSS, and then tweak settings as you wish. My simple three-minute creation adorns the top of this post.

(Disclosure: I’m not a newbie at HTML, CSS, and coding — I have done this before. However, I do think it’s simple enough that most people would be able to create something they’d be proud of.)

Why did Codeacademy build this?

“This is part of Codecademy’s continued emphasis on learning by doing,” Sims told VentureBeat. “We think it’s much easier to learn when you have a project in mind as opposed to learning a language (like, say, Python) just for the sake of learning it. Most of our tracks on the site focus on real-life projects as part of the learning process. We also recently launched a projects track that includes other cool apps and sites for people to build.”

Well merry Christmas (eve) from VentureBeat. And happy coding!

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