Nobody denies that W3Schools is a terrible place to learn how to program. Their examples are outdated, insecure, and don't really explain why things work in a certain way. Their tutorials are optimized for copy & paste, and God knows how many security bugs in the wild are due to somebody copying W3Schools.<p>But W3Schools also carries some of the most easy-to-use indexes of pretty much everything related to web development. Can't remember the exact name of that CSS property and its possible values? Can't remember the order of arguments of a JS string/array function? Go to W3Schools and browse their lists, get the answer in 5 seconds.<p>Of course, there's Mozilla Developer Networks, too. But MDN's CSS Reference [1] is just an alphabetical list of CSS properties with no explanation. W3Schools' CSS Reference [2] is neatly categorized, and each entry has a short explanation next to it. Very useful when you're trying to remember, for example, "word-wrap: break-word", which is not the same as "word-break: break-all".<p>[1] <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/default.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/default.asp</a><p>W3Schools is good ol' Web 1.0 stuff. Just some lists and a bunch of links. No need to ask somebody and wait for an answer. No need to watch any annoying videos. No need to follow an animated tutorial designed by someone who thinks they know how a person should learn programming. W3Schools is like an old dictionary. A dictionary isn't particularly helpful when you're trying to learn a foreign language properly, but it's quite handy when you're face to face with a foreigner and you need to think up a word for "toilet paper" quickly.<p>I use W3Schools when I need to remember something quickly, and MDN when I need to learn more deeply about it. When I write CSS, I always keep W3Schools open in one tab and MDN in another tab. I wish somebody would link W3Schools' lists to MDN's details. That would make the best of both worlds.
My background: In my free time, I teach web development to complete beginners, for the SF GirlDevelopIt chapter (using <a href="http://www.teaching-materials.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.teaching-materials.org/</a>).
A few observations I've made:<p>1) For the sort of things that they are trying to learn (basic HTML tags), W3Schools is a great resource. It's clear and fairly up to date. No other resource has managed to overtake them for beginner friendliness. I was hoping <a href="http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/Main_Page" rel="nofollow">http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/Main_Page</a> might, but right now it seems like just a skin over MDN and searching doesn't work so well. I don't know if they've given up or what. (One idea: You could help them)<p>2) After I teach the second HTML lesson, I will explicitly show students "okay, here's how you search for HTML help on the internet." At that point, I'll show them W3Schools and MDN and explain the drawbacks/benefits of each. Don't know how much of that sticks with them, but it's worth a shot.<p>3) It took me a long time to put together HTML/CSS/JS curriculum. I first started several years ago, when teaching our first workshop, and have been adding to it since (and there are still more topics I want to add). I did also start video taping my lectures, as I figured it could be a resource for people who didn't make it to the workshops, and that also took me a long time - about an hour to record and edit a 10 minute video. So, I support anyone putting out more great knowledge material in the world, I just hope you have a fair amount of time allocated to work on this, so that you can it proper justice.<p>4) I recommend having a test audience for your material, like somebody that you tutor, so you can see how they respond to it and where their knowledge holes are. Also, a feedback button. :-)
I've had a lot of people tell me to start using MDN, but--don't hate me--the thing is I generally find W3S easier to use and more useful (at least for the basic stuff I usually need to Google for). I hate to admit it but I continue to use W3S even if it is at least partially because it's usually the top result, even when I make the effort to scroll down to the MDN entry I'm usually rewarded with something tangentially related and/or missing the actually thing I needed to know.<p>That said I think there is definitely a lot of room for improvement, I just haven't found MDN fills that gap yet so I wish the author of this luck but I hope they realize MDNs folly. Ad free isn't necessarily better. W3S is, despite it's flaws, fairly simple, easy to use and understand (mostly) and the relevant results almost always show up at the top of a Google search.
Feedback:<p>1) Excellent site look and feel.<p>2) Juvenile language and problem statement. Off putting pitch to developers that found W3Schools useful. At some point it'll have to switch to a more professional approach.<p>3) Reading between the lines, apparently the author's goal is to crowdsource basic tutorial development with a long term for profit motive involving premium content. While transparent to mention this up front, it leaves me uninterested in participation.
Your own site currently consists of smack talk, memes, and a mailing list button. How about you focus on creating great content instead of link-bait headlines, and let your work speak for itself?
This is part of why I think I've developed a reflex, after searching Google, to skip over the first few results <i>after</i> the sponsored links and start looking near the middle of the page. W3Schools, Wikipedia, and a few others. And it's a great example of the central failure of the pagerank idea: if the strongest signal is popularity measured through linkage, the highest <i>quality</i> results will rarely be at or even near the top. Right now Stackoverflow is good and deservedly ranks highly, but I fully expect it to be supplanted in Google's search rankings by an inferior copycat within a few years: one that just happens to generate more revenue for Google by carrying more advertising.
Why not throw your support at <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/</a>? They've done an amazing job of documenting HTML/CSS/JS.
I've conditioned myself to prefix any HTML, CSS or JavaScript question with "mdn" so I get Mozilla's docs. They're always excellent in my experience.
W3Schools is nothing more than a simple to use (google) and navigate (google) collection of pages with tons of reminders to jog your memory about what exactly it was that a specific css selector or html tag did again.<p>If you use it to learn PHP programming you're doing it wrong. If you use it to learn MySQL, you're doing it wrong. If you use it to learn how browsers work, you're doing it wrong. As a Cliff's notes for HTML and CSS, however, it is more than adequate.
I was expecting to see some examples about why there are so much hate in W3schools but I didn't find any on this rant.<p>I remember to have seen some bad examples showing bad habits but to be honest, I have seen more people ranting about W3S than bad examples on the website, maybe it would be more useful to show why W3S sucks that much.
Why does nobody ever mention HTML Dog? I learned all the basics the right way reading from it, the ideas behind them, and what to avoid. It's a seriously great website (and formerly a book, I think? I was a penniless teenager back when I read it), serving as both a tutorial and reference, and it's been around for a really long time.<p><a href="http://www.htmldog.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.htmldog.com/</a><p>For everything else, there's <a href="http://www.quirksmode.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.quirksmode.org/</a> and Stack Overflow ;)
W3Schools is popular, but also note that it engages in SEO chicanery to rank highly and bypass the "block this domain" option in Google.<p><a href="http://www.impressivewebs.com/web-development-search-results-manipulated/" rel="nofollow">http://www.impressivewebs.com/web-development-search-results...</a>
'Why' is easy to state for things like this. 'How' is a lot more work.<p>Also, given that w3schools is a non-profit, why not just help them. Yes, they have adverts, however they state that their aim is to always have everything on the site freely available, rather than a business plan of <i>"Actually, I hope to make a living by selling high quality video tutorials"</i>, which leads to perverse incentives to keep the quality of the free stuff low, to stop it from outcompeting the paid stuff.
I use Google's Personal Blocklist extension (<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by-goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...</a>) to block W3S from my search results, which usually results in the first result pointing to MDN.
Honestly, I don't want to be too critical, it feels mean, but why all the childish stuff? W3Schools is not hurting you. Just because you saw a video with a basketball player saying he's learning to code, is not a call to action to destroy some site that probably, if we're being honest, has helped more than hurt, though yes it has "so badly hurt us."<p>Boycott Google if you're so angry that they come up so much.<p>I'm not sure how videos are the answer ... that is a different problem, videos, despite their popularity, are pretty inefficient for a reference.<p>Let's face it, beginners will make mistakes no matter what. Create an alternative that is good, with quality info, and easier to use than W3Schools but let's be adults about and just do it first, then get on the soapbox. Google will award you if you succeed.<p>Jeff Atwood belittled EE to no end ... but he actually created Stackoverflow, so he won the game. Just hating on W3Schools will get nowhere.
Key quote: "Any one of us would be lying if we said we didn't learn plenty of web development from that site when we were getting started."<p>I've found w3schools to be a fanastic resource for my students. I've used it myself to learn the basics of the SVG format and as a quick way to look the syntax for arcane things I've forgotten.<p>If w3schools didn't exist, we would have to invent it.<p>The OP seems hell-bent on destroying a popular web resource. He would be better served to generate improvements rather than trying to raise an army to kill it (see the "I'm In") button at the bottom of the page (without an "I'm Out" button for those who dissent).<p>If you need to direct your hate somewhere (his words from the article, not mine), there are plenty of better targets (for example, MSDN could stand a few improvements).
Skimming the comments, there are two camps on W3Schools, those that find it an abomination, and those that find it useful as a quick reference.<p>It's replacement(s) should disaggregate the goals of programming quick reference and beginning instruction, realize those are different things with different design needs.<p>And maybe all other sites should learn the value of putting the information that covers 90% of use cases above the fold.<p>We've gotten a little too impressed with scrolling and the infinite canvas of a webpage, underrating the usability impact of scrolling around to find information, and the beauty of having everything fit on one screen. (I know, dealing with resized browser windows and different sized monitors and high-DPI is hard, but there would be gains...)
> These are really great resources, and I highly recommend them, however, they don't rank high in the search results. Like it or not, the googles is the gateway to the craft of web development, and anything more than an incremental improvement in learning needs to rank well to have an impact.<p>Wouldn't a much easier path be to help those resources cited improve their search results? If w3schools falls down to the second page on a Google search, no one would be having this conversation. There's nothing wrong with wanting to build yet another online learning resource, but if the goal is really to just get people to stop using w3schools, it doesn't require building yet another online learning resource.
"I know this is starting to sound like another labor of love, where I now ask you to hit the donation button at the top of the page and contribute to a GitHub repository. Actually, I hope to make a living by selling high quality video tutorials and other material outside of all the awesomeness you can get for free here at The HTML and CSS tutorial. I plan on making a living at this someday; with your help."<p>Let's just put that up and center and keep it honest. It does feel pretty bait-and-switch since you even apologized for the open-source feel and are really begging to make your project #1 on web development google searches and make you rich in the process.
I have personally found that Tizag[1] provides a much better HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL tutorial than W3Schools while still having a really easy to navigate website. Instead of reinventing the wheel all the time, maybe we should all focus our efforts into making the Web Platform[2] better or encourage people to use higher quality websites like Tizag.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.tizag.com/htmlT/" rel="nofollow">http://www.tizag.com/htmlT/</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.webplatform.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.webplatform.org/</a>
Wow, such hubris. And negativity. Geez. With, apparently, nothing to show yet. But big plans to be #1.<p>Though I appreciate the list of currently available resources and have saved the link for that reason.
more excellent points here : <a href="http://www.w3fools.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3fools.com/</a><p>I have stopped going to W3C schools for various mentioned in the above website.
> "Any one of us would be lying if we said we didn't learn plenty of web development from that site when we were getting started."<p>W3Schools was launched in 1999. I was "getting started" with web development well before that.<p>I often use it, via Google, as a reference source now, because its good enough as that. I'm not real attached to it, but don't see the reason for the hate. It may be that the introductory material isn't the best for most users, but, you know, even when <i>books</i> were the main source of tutorial material, you couldn't always rely on whatever book was merchandised in the most prominent position with a title that seemed to be on point for what you are looking for, you comparison shopped, looked through several, and figured out which one spoke to you. I'm not going to develop "hate" because the digital equivalent of the most-prominently-merchandised title isn't necessarily the best for all people. Its a lot easier to check out multiple sources from a search results page than it was to check the limited selection at multiple bookstores to find the right resource, and, ultimately, what is the best learning resource <i>for you</i> is a subjective thing.
I used to use <a href="http://help.dottoro.com/" rel="nofollow">http://help.dottoro.com/</a> when I was learning to program. I would recommend it if someone was looking for a good go-to doc. But for quick reminders (which is rare) I use generally MDN or read the official spec.<p>They (help.dottoro.com) also have links (when available) to the Microsoft Developer Network, Mozilla Developer Network, Safari Developer Library, and the official W3C spec, which can be helpful. The only thing I would really change about their site is the URL structure. Completely nondescript and not user-friendly.<p>Once you move from using W3S to MDN or really anything else there is no going back.<p>CSS's display:<p>W3S: <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_display_visibility.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_display_visibility.asp</a><p>MDN: <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/display" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/display</a><p>Dottoro: <a href="http://help.dottoro.com/lchnsqsb.php" rel="nofollow">http://help.dottoro.com/lchnsqsb.php</a>
Why should I buy in? just because you blamed w3schools as other guys did? you win by providing something better, at least show something instead of just talking, do you have any of those? how about one chapter for CSS3 to give me a basic idea that why you will be better?
It's never a good way to start by blaming someone else publicly while you have _nothing_ to offer on the table.
If a network uses a filtering system and blocks certain keywords, we can modify the W3Schools URL as follows, and submit the URL to search engines:<p>cialis.w3schools.com
vardenafil.w3schools.com
levitra.w3schools.com
milfcuckold.w3schools.com<p>We can't get rid of W3Schools, but we can demote and disavow the URL on Google SERPs.<p>We should submit the link to mechanical turk services on fiverr·com and get the links demoted on Google that way.<p>It is advertised that bulk submitting a URL into spam-silos helps with SEO, when infact Google hates this and implements their Panda algorithm if this occurs.<p>It could backfire and increase SEO temporarily - but because we are practicing 'paid links', Google will punish the site owner for this. I think a crack team of Internet vigilantes should link-blast the W3Schools URL into spam-silos, and the W3Schools problem can finally go away.
It's not W3S's fault, it's Google's fault for misjudging the value of sites they put on top.
Essentially you're on a quest to win the attention of Google, and this often is not correlated with the value you trying to built.
I'm excited to see a competitor to W3Schools if only to have a more useful, up-to-date index.<p>That said, a large part of the problem newcomers have learning to program is not the available materials, but rather the <i>reason</i>. I've seen many people start these tutorials but fail to complete them. They wanted to learn to code because it's something they want to know how to do, not because they had something to build. Programming is a means to an ends, a solution to a problem.<p>I'm not sure what the solution is, but a product that started with the reason why someone is learning to code or, even better, could give them a reason, would be very successful.
This is a good initiative, but it's a big task, so I think it's worth nitpicking now if you're going to have any chance of displacing w3schools:<p>Fix the font. It's too faint and if I were a newbie landing on this and comparing it to W3Schools, I'd immediately switch to W3Schools. Your site's wide body width also hurts readability.<p>I'm not trying to nitpick for nitpick's sake...coming from experience, it's harder to change these things (not technically, but mustering the will to do so) later on in the process. And readability is key in winning the masses over, and is not just a minor detail in relation to the overall goal.
<i>These are really great resources, and I highly recommend them, however, they don't rank high in the search results. Like it or not, the googles is the gateway to the craft of web development...</i><p>Same in alot of other spaces. Coupon codes for online shopping for example. We operate a site which carries the exact same coupons as the largest coupon site out there does, but the latter hogs all the rankings and is impossible to displace whilst ours goes begging. No obvious reason apart from the fact that they were around earlier when coupon sites were a novelty and picked up plenty of backlinks from media outlets for that reason.
I use the Personal Blocklist app in Google Chrome to block w3schools.com results. Additionally, I saw <a href="http://mdn.io" rel="nofollow">http://mdn.io</a> website surfacing in the internet recently. I use mdn.io to get redirected to MDN without doing a Google Search. Examples:<p><a href="http://mdn.io/parseint" rel="nofollow">http://mdn.io/parseint</a><p><a href="http://mdn.io/window" rel="nofollow">http://mdn.io/window</a><p><a href="http://mdn.io/math" rel="nofollow">http://mdn.io/math</a>
I recommend the Personal Blocklist Chrome plugin (by Google). I have it setup to remove any w3schools results from my Google searches. Suddenly a simple search for "css background-image" returns lovely looking results, with MDN on the top.<p><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by-goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...</a>
It's a fine initiative, but its angry-teen, hatred attitude isn't very appealing. I think it lost a lot of potential contributors right in the first paragraph.
I'm not amateur web developer (I can kinda hack something when my main guy busy with something).<p>If W3School is so bad, can somebody suggest something better?<p>Something which follows Edward Tufte rules on how to make information concise, organized and discoverable.<p>The problem with many alternatives is that they are definitely visually attractive but unfortunately not very efficiently organized and presented. Maybe MDN has a chance but I haven't see any improvements on that front.
I used to use Webmonkey but it stopped being updated.<p>I used to keep a website of ASP, PHP, and HTML example and learning sites as a bookmark and kept them updated until my site got hacked and files deleted. I might do that again some day. Having a web site devoted to learning different web standards in programming is always a good idea. Just make sure you keep providing examples and lessons and don't end up like Webmonkey and just quit.
"Any one of us would be lying if we said we didn't learn plenty of web development from that site when we were getting started." Well, I remember where I was sitting in the summer of 1993 when I first read about the www -- while browsing gopher. I made my first web page in 1994. I can honestly I didn't learn anything from that site when I was getting started.
I learned writing compliant HTML and CSS by reading the specifications "from cover to cover" (or rather the online equivalent of that) in 2001 or so. A few years later I learned PHP and MySQL from reading the documentation on their official websites.<p>(Well, reading and trying it out on my own purposeless projects.)<p>Never saw W3Schools until 2010 when a co-worker (web developer) showed it to me.
I was tired of W3Schools good SEO so I use this Chrome extension to remove W3Schools from my Google search results:<p><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by-goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...</a><p>Now MDN's JS and CSS reference shows up on top!
I use a chrome extension to remove their entries from my search results, along with quora, experts-exchange, etc<p><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by-goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...</a>
I agree but the mozilla dev site is so slow to load i often open a new window and find the same info from another site, I hope they tune its load time as it's a great resource. The dash app on osx is now my first choice currently.... i know the free version is annoying. I'd love some kind of cli.
1. W3Fools did this post a year ago, at least.<p>2. Your time and effort is better served contributing to <a href="http://webplatform" rel="nofollow">http://webplatform</a> org, which has the collective financial might of Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, Opera and the W3C.
CodePupil would be interested in helping out with this initiative and doing so in an open source/free manner.<p>We feel strongly too that w3Schools is outdated.<p>here's our interactive width & height exercise for newbies
<a href="http://codepupil.com/ex1.html" rel="nofollow">http://codepupil.com/ex1.html</a>
Maaan, we're here wasting our times.<p>If anybody is angry/upset/whatever about it just do your search excluding W3Schools from the results:
"your_keyword -site:w3schools.com"
I just want to say there ARE some thing that W3School did right, and better than MDN:
1: Navigation
2: Give what its targeted users(newbies) need and no others<p>1: Just look at a random page in MDN's HTML reference. <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a</a> The top navigation (DOCS/APPS/FIREFOX/DEMOS/INVOLVED) are of no use to me if I just want to look for another HTML elment. The only way to go back to the reference page is back button(not many poeple would notice the breadcrumbs), the "Table of contents" is just a fancy decoration there(thanks, I can see the boldfaced enormous headings and I know how to scroll to what I want in a less-than-two page webpage). If you look at W3School, the left navigation lets you access to the page of the element you want to learn very easily. The top navigation bar is also helpful because I might just forget some CSS tricks while learning JQuery.<p>2. Still a tag on MDN. <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a</a> . For a newbie does he need to know <i>"Charset : obsolete. This attribute defines the character encoding of the linked resource. The value is a space- and/or comma-delimited list of character sets as defined in RFC 2045. The default value is ISO-8859-1."</i>? Should this <i>"Usage note: This attribute is obsolete in HTML5 and should not be used by authors. To achieve its effect, use the HTTP Content-Type header on the linked resource."</i> be put on the most prominent place? I believe the most being-looked-for attribute is href. Why MDN can't you put a working example on the top and leave your verbosity to the bottom? Look at W3School, whenever you visit a page, it just gives what 95% of people need: Very short description; an intereactive editor(this feature is awesome but MDN doesn't have it); working-out-of-box example; reference at the very bottom(that's where references should be put).<p>I do not hate MDN. I like Firefox and Mozilla and what people there are doing. But I feel things have come to a stage where some people, to show their passionate love for so-called "open source spirit", discriminate against bussiness effort to build better things although they don't have a better open source alternative.<p>Back to the article. I support what the author is doing, but unless you show at least some decent work, I won't donate.<p>To MDN maintainers: Please read some "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White and some "Don't make me think" by Steve Krug, and improve MDN. You guys could have done better.<p>W3SChools is targeted to newbies, and they succeed as a great resource for learning HTML/CSS at least(That's what I used it for. I'm not learning PHP and SQL on it). Don't deny it, unless you have a better resource for NEWBIES.