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Cover image for Flip for Knowledge: Building a Flashcard Game with HTML, CSS & JavaScript
Michael Gokey
Michael Gokey

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Flip for Knowledge: Building a Flashcard Game with HTML, CSS & JavaScript

#javascript #gamedev #criticalthinking #pseudocode

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.
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🧱 Step 2: The HTML Skeleton 

<div id="flashcard-container"> <!-- Cards will be injected here --> </div>
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🧠 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 ];
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🛠️ 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); });
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🎨 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); }
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🔍 Why We Built It This Way

  1. Componentization Even though we’re using plain JS, each card is its own mini-component.
  2. Event Binding Shows how to handle DOM events cleanly.
  3. Animation with CSS Keeps it performant and easy to tweak.
  4. 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.

🎮 Live Demo: See the Flashcard Game on CodePen

📦 Code Repo: View on GitHub

Top comments (2)

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michael_liang_0208 profile image
Michael Liang •

Nice post for beginners!
As a web developer, I think basics are also helpful for experienced developers for best practices.

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michael-gokey profile image
Michael Gokey •

Thank you. I think this is why I keep going over the basics. Once you have done as many different kinds of things over the years, it helps to teach others, a little, as a way to refresh.

I used to teach my newbies fresh from a coding bootcamp, they taught you javascript, how to code, etc. I will teach you to become a professional high quality software developer. Over time, more and more camera would be one during our meetings.