People keep telling me to use MDN but I find their sites bloated when I just want to quickly look something up (which is most often the case).<p>Random examples:<p><a href="http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/sel_before.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/sel_before.asp</a>
vs
<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/::before" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/::before</a><p><a href="http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_background-repeat.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_background-repeat.asp</a>
vs
<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/background-repeat" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/background-...</a>
»Even after a redesign a few years ago, their pages still use “.asp”, which is basically an extinct platform that almost nobody uses anymore.«<p>Someone might tell them that URLs don't need to point to files and don't necessarily give a clue about the technology underneath. Their server says<p><pre><code> Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
</code></pre>
so they might just use ASP.NET and just have rewriting or routes set up to mimic their old URLs.
We're talking about this through a non-responsive website laid out with tables, designed with inline styles, with ugly embedded code samples, and "bad" <br> tags. Maybe these aren't the most important things to think about when talking about the usefulness of a website.
I'm getting pretty tired of these mindless defamations of W3schools. I get it - sometimes their resources are incorrect and they almost always use bad practices. But seriously, while you're busy being an elitist asshole slamming their website, the people at W3schools are busy teaching people the basics of web development.
Maybe there are partly so popular because they are not trying to be perfect? When documenting things it is not just what you include, it is also what you leave out. Sometimes you want to full syntax for some specific SQL statement, sometimes you just want a few quick examples of the alter table and then figure out the rest yourself.<p>For example two approaches for documenting the HTML table tag:<p><a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/table" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ta...</a><p><a href="http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp</a>
The good: they put examples right at the top.<p>When I search for a css selector or an html5 tag, 99% of the time I'm looking for a quick, easy-to-read example that demonstrates the syntax.<p>I have no way of measuring my average-time-on-page for w3schools, but I'd estimate it at under 2 seconds. And for that, it works really, really well.
Just really sick of all the online drama, about any site. Just another typical post on HN criticizing another. You know what, You go build a site that is better and perfect. I am sick of people getting articles posted that just criticize. Go build something better, I dare you.
There's nothing wrong with using table for layout. Before calling me old school, let it be known that table <i>can</i> do responsive before even css2 was drafted. Also the rendering compatibility of table still looks pixel perfect now as how it was written in 1999.
Content is king? I'm reminded of Dan Cederholm's favourite website [1].<p>[1] <a href="http://simplebits.com/notebook/2013/02/16/food-for-thought/" rel="nofollow">http://simplebits.com/notebook/2013/02/16/food-for-thought/</a>
> Even after a redesign a few years ago, their pages still use “.asp”, which is basically an extinct platform that almost nobody uses anymore.<p>And? For all we care, it could be built in FORTRAN and still be a valuable resource. What in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster an argument is that???
The 'Duplicate Content' point in the article just plain wrong. It's not duplicate content - it's a load balancing and mirroring technique that's <i>very</i> common. For example, <a href="http://us2.php.net/echo" rel="nofollow">http://us2.php.net/echo</a> and <a href="http://uk1.php.net/echo" rel="nofollow">http://uk1.php.net/echo</a><p>Also, as ygra has already pointed out, the .asp extension doesn't necessarily mean they're using ASP. They've possibly just kept the extension and they're routing to something more modern with URL rewriting.<p>If you're going to critique other people's work, make sure you know precisely what you're talking about first.
The general argument that you are making here seems to be something along the lines of: this site teaches web development, so it should practice what it preaches. You are saying nothing about the content of the site, its offering to users.<p>However, their own focus seems to be on offering a useful learning resource, not replying to the critics. I find their content fairly good for absolute beginners. Even if they grossly oversimplify their subject, they offer the best way to get up to speed on the basics of many new technologies. That's why they are high in the search rankings - no mystery there.<p>I think their users are aware that they are only learning the basics, and will have to move on to more sophisticated resources to continue with their learning. So what? An absolute newbie can learn to write html, css or javascript, and see the results of his work displaying in a browser, in less than half an hour. That first step is often the most difficult for the total beginner<p>So give these guys credit - they are offering a pretty good learning resource for the basics. I'm not ashamed to admit I used it a lot at the beginning of my career as a self-taught web developer. And then I moved on.
I've noticed that particularly in web development there's a lot of dogmatism and feel that a lot of the "best practices" (I personally hate that phrase...) being thrown around are just a way to make web developers feel like they're qualified and superior just because they can say "I follow the <i>rules</i>, you don't!" It's about making websites, not some sort of pseudo-religion. Do what <i>you</i> think is the best way to present your content, don't be a mindless follower.<p>After all, who goes around viewing the source of webpages they visit (unless something is terribly broken and you want to find out why)? If I can see the content I couldn't care less.<p>This is from the perspective of someone who has done a lot of "web development" with nothing more than a text editor and a browser (or several)... I've used w3schools as well as the official HTML specs; I don't care what the latest fads are and don't even want to expend the effort to, I just do what works to show the content I want to show to my visitors and that's it.
To the people defending W3Schools, please understand that some of us do our best to ensure that as much of the information that we consume originates from the most accurate, detailed, and authoritative sources that exist, regardless of usability, cost, etc. It bothers people like us that W3Schools is a top result at Google for so many search terms, in the same way that it bothers us that sites like CNN and Forbes are top results when searching for "health".<p>We realize that people such as yourselves have no problem consuming information from low-quality sources such as W3Schools, CNN, and Forbes, and most of us don't care where you get your information from. We would just prefer that our search results not be polluted by the low-quality sources that people such as yourselves link to and, thus, push to the top of the search results.
Ever since I found MDN I add it to all my searches to get better results.<p>But before I found MDN, I used w3schools all the time. My coworkers still use w3schools.<p>I don't see a problem with it. Sure, their site is not using best practices, but their information is good enough in a pinch.
w3schools : ugly design using outdated technologies relying on fugly markup. So what? Still handy and easy to use when I want a quick reference to a tag I've forgotten about.
For the most part, I don't mind w3schools ranking high in my search results when I just need to look something up really quick. I still believe they're basically a content farm, but on the other hand <i>someone</i> has to be the reference dictionary for HTML stuff. When I started out many, many years ago, I used a reference called SelfHTML which died out some time ago - and W3Schools mostly reminds me of that. However, my lookup workflow has changed, and I'm sure most other people are going in exclusively through Google as well.<p>I think most of these issues the article points out are somewhat short-sighted and superficial.<p><i>> They Use Classic ASP</i><p>I'm not sure they actually do, but even if that's true it's probably a choice they made in ancient times and they're sticking to it. And honestly, why not? It's not like we're dealing with a highly complex site that needs to be agile and extremely dynamic. They're probably just doing some light templating stuff and that's it.<p><i>> Script Tag Madness</i><p>That's a good point and it seems like an easy fix. <i>However</i>, most of these script tags seem to point to external vendors - most prominently Google - and that's probably why they're not messing with them.<p><i>> They Use Inline Styles</i><p>I agree it looks bad and it's also pretty easy to fix. On the other hand, those few extra bytes don't actually harm anyone. It's not pretty, but the argument that it makes the site hard to maintain is probably incorrect. I would think that no matter how many pages there are the number of actual templates used is quite small.<p><i>> They Use Ancient Float-Clearing Methods</i><p>Again, this is probably a hack from the dawn of time, and it seems to work. Would they do it the same way today? Probably not. But is it worth the hassle of taking it out for no reason other than pleasing nitpickers? Nah.<p><i>> They Use Tables for Layout / They Use <br> Tags Badly</i><p>Historically, for a while there that was an absolutely valid choice. Though I wouldn't write table-based layout code without cringing today, I have to take a stand here and assert that tables are not <i>that</i> bad of a tool. The standard argument that div/CSS-based table-like features are always better is somewhat hollow given the reality of actually dealing with the code. In practice, even CSS gurus do layout with HTML element structure all the time, they're just not open about it.<p><i>> They Have Duplicate Content</i><p>I'm not sure why Google doesn't filter these out. Not fixing that is somewhat of an atrocious move on W3Schools' part, but you can't really blame them for wanting the ad revenue.<p><i>> Their Embedded Code Examples are Ugly</i><p>That's true, they could do with an update. Syntax highlighting would be great.<p><i>> They Use Reflections / They Think “CSS3” is Part of “HTML5” / They Use the “keywords” Meta Tag</i><p>I don't care.<p><i>> Their Website is Not Responsive or Mobile-Friendly</i><p>Personally, I think that's a huge plus. I'm almost always annoyed when I get the mobile version of a site.
It's still free. It works. It has a lot more than html
and css. It has java, php, sql, even google api's and they
seem to add more stuff every year. When it comes to teaching computer programming; I have not see one dude who
I would pay. Maybe I haven't found the right dude? I take
that back--I might pay David Maaaaan?(Harvard cs 75). I
didn't realize just how good of an instructor he was until
I saw the people who were going to teach the following
courses. Following dude at Harvard,"I want to teach you
the beauty of beautifully written code!" Let us see the
beauty--please. A tip to anyone struggling along with these
courses and languages--vlc has a "faster slider". It takes
the verbosity out of some instructors.