I started out web development without any formal education in programming. So most of my initial searches lead me to W3Schools. Over time I've come to realise that the content is not very reliable.<p>When I tried to find out about the owner of the website I stumbled upon a Norwegian software development and consulting company "Refsnes Data" which does not even have it's own website. (ref. ftp://ftp.cip.cu/Documentacion/design/CSS/css/w3schoolsgen/about_refsnes.asp.htm)<p>Upon further research I've found out that a lot of hate websites (ref. http://w3fools.com ) have sprung up. Though this still has had no effect upon the giant that is W3Schools.<p>I'm sure their domain name gives them a pseudo-authority appearance.<p>I guess, in time, the website is surely going to lose it's credibility (if any).<p>Is there any bit of information I am missing? Has W3Schools released any official response to all the hatred?
Because they are the best "5 second reference" there is. I am not bombarded with technical gibberish or standard lingo or other stuff I was not looking for.<p>Compare <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> and <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_a_href.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_a_href.asp</a><p>I tried liking MDN after lots of hate about w3schools was at HN once. It just annoyed the &%$# out of me instead of proving useful. Sure, if you want to study something it seems useful, but if you just want to know how to use something, no, just no.
W3Schools is the site programming hipsters love to hate... after they've discretely used it to get going in their programming.<p>A lot of people also use it to get going in their design careers.<p>It was the original widely used instant evaluation site (you can type some code into an evaluator and see the result).<p>Hilariously, the main W3Schools hate site, W3fools.com, is one of the truly most horrendous looking sites I've ever seen. That site would have been considered horrendous in 1996, much less now. It shows that the detractors of W3Schools are just insecure hair splitting code nuance boffins totally out of touch with what a lot of people need to do in their day to day work.<p>I'm not affiliated with W3Schools in any way, other than having been a happy user for quite some time, along with MDN and all the other good resources.<p>The people who spend their time hating W3Schools are most likely the conceited bastards at work who inject two second pauses into their expressionless answers for questions from the new programmers.<p>The people who haven't decided hating W3Schools is worth a lot of time are probably those nice people at work who deduce what a new programmer is needing, and happily line you out with enthusiasm.
I'm not a supporter of W3Schools but I'm not a hater either. Although the content in W3Schools isn't the most complete or update you can find, it certainly is huge.<p>-The webapp it has where you can try stuff in realtime blew my min at my starting steps on the web.<p>-It's a quick reference for quick n dirty copy-paste for stuff you have verified to be good.<p>-Plus, it has seen some updates in the recent time.<p>All in all I think its a perfect resource for starting with, it has good indexing and accessibility, great toy playground that's easily accessible, but it's not for serious production use, your frontend developers should know better.
They carry a lot of Google advertising, and Google consistently ranks them (as you've noticed) at the top of search results for any query connected with html, css, etc. More reputable sources, that happen to not carry Google advertising, are ranked lower in the search results.<p>Google employees have participated in threads here, claiming that search result ranking is not influenced by revenue for Google, and that W3School's persistent high ranking is because, somehow, it's a better result for users. When people here have pointed out how poor the site is and how much better other sites are, the Google employees acknowledge that there seems to be something to that and that there might be a "bug" and will pass on the information inside the company. But, as you've seen, W3Schools is still on top.
W3Fools seems to have significantly toned down their disapproval of W3Schools. Now they say "W3Schools still has issues but they have at least worked on the primary concern developers had." and the laundry list of issues is gone from the site.
"I guess, in time, the website is surely going to loose it's credibility (if any)."<p>Going to? First thing I learned a LOOONG time ago was w3s is subpar, although occasionally good for atleast some basic examples of syntax.<p>(also, to be pedantic: Lose vs Loose: <a href="http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/blog/english-mistakes/loose-vs-lose/" rel="nofollow">http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/blog/english-mistakes/l...</a>)
> Has W3Schools released any official response to all the hatred?<p>This moderator on W3Schools forum attempt to answer some questions that W3Fools raised on a topic back in the day: <a href="http://w3schools.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=35836&p=197080" rel="nofollow">http://w3schools.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=35836&...</a>.<p>Dunno how the guy relates to the people that actually maintains the website.
They are not out there to earn reputation, but traffic to convert in pageviews that they can sell.<p>With that said, there is nothing more to discuss I guess.
What i ended up doing about w3schools is install, on computers that i regularly use, an addon to block certain google results:<p><a href="https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/google-search-results-blocker/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/google-search...</a>