An Ode To W3Schools

I disagree and I don't think he really responded to any of the criticisms, just sort-of acknowledged them.<p>&#62; They Appear Affiliated With The W3C<p>&#62; For those in the know the W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium, it is an international organization that governs the web. W3Schools rides off the notoriety of that name despite being unaffiliated. Is that really a complaint? How many _Java_Script developers are out there that think this is an issue?<p>I think this is my biggest issue with W3SChools and he just kind of brushes it off.<p>Masquerades of this kind have always been a pet peeve, such as how all Blue Moon materials try very hard to present it as a microbrew, when its a Coors product. People think they're supporting some small company, and Coors is intentionally duping them.<p>JavaScript, by the way, was a name change based on a mutual co-marking deal. W3School's name is not.<p>&#62; [about Wikifying] Again, I’d love to see it happen – but that doesn’t mean it should happen.<p>Funny, I just edited the MDN today. It is a far better resource, wiki-fied, with no ads, and Mozilla is always looking for helpers. If you'd love to see it happen, help it happen.<p><a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/</a><p>"It's the Web. You drive."<p>(In traditional HN fashion I'd like to write an Ode to the MDN post, alas I haven't got the time tonight!)

Their PHP+MySQL tutorial has an SQL injection vulnerability in every example that takes user input. It never mentions SQL injection as a possible problem and it never covers any of the techniques needed to defend against it.<p>In my book, that's unforgivable and they won't get any slack from me until they fix it.

No. By visiting their site, you say that this is all okay. On top of these things, W3Schools has also engaged in some sketchy SEO tactics. (<a href="http://www.itworld.com/software/261486/w3schools-hubbub-over-seo-tricks-inaccuracies" rel="nofollow">http://www.itworld.com/software/261486/w3schools-hubbub-over...</a>)<p>I refuse to use the site. This behavior should not be encouraged. If you would like an alternative, I highly recommend the Mozilla Developer Network. (<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/</a>)

As a long time webdev, I too took a fews years back in around 05,06 to figure out how misleading w3school's content is, but since then, I've compiled a list of resource to help myself relearn the webdev process. But be warned, there's no shortcut if you want to be good, if you just aim to be quick and dirty. Go read w3schools.com and be yet another w3fool.<p>_Webdev Begins_<p><i>Sitepoint</i><p>Slightly outdated, but perfectly succinct and accurate reference to HTML, CSS with EXCELLENT notes on common pitfalls. All new webdevs should start here.<p><pre><code> * http://reference.sitepoint.com/ </code></pre> <i>Things that you must learn about CSS</i><p><pre><code> * box model * floats * positioning * margin collapsing </code></pre> <i>Eloquent Javascript</i><p>An easier to read book on JS.<p><pre><code> * http://eloquentjavascript.net/contents.html </code></pre> <i>MDN</i><p>Their resource on Javascript is a must read basic reference for all new JS developers.<p><pre><code> * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript </code></pre> _Webdev Returns_<p>How that you have a basic, but solid understanding of HTML, CSS and JS, you should start learning the more advanced stuff:<p><i>More practice on CSS positioning</i><p>Google css positioning, read anything besides the w3schools results, such as this:<p><pre><code> * http://www.alistapart.com/articles/css-positioning-101/ </code></pre> <i>Vertical Alignment</i><p><pre><code> * http://css-tricks.com/what-is-vertical-align/ </code></pre> <i>Stickyfooter</i><p><pre><code> * http://lazylegs.info/articles/sticky-footer.html </code></pre> <i>Shrink-wrapping floats</i><p><pre><code> * http://haslayout.net/css-tuts/CSS-Shrink-Wrap </code></pre> <i>How to deal with IE</i><p><pre><code> * http://haslayout.net </code></pre> _Webdev Rises_<p><i>HTML/CSS/JS design patterns</i><p><pre><code> * http://www.alistapart.com * http://css-tricks.com * http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/ * http://ui-patterns.com </code></pre> <i>Browser inconsistencies reference</i><p><pre><code> * http://www.quirksmode.org * http://caniuse.com </code></pre> <i>HTML5</i><p><pre><code> * http://diveintohtml5.info * http://html5doctor.com </code></pre> <i>CSS3</i><p><pre><code> * http://css-tricks.com</code></pre>

In a nutshell the problem with W3Schools isn't any of the things the author points out. It's in the people learning from it. All good developers get to a point in their learning where they realize W3Schools is all the things the author points out and stops using it or very rarely uses it as a quick reference. That's fine. But then there's a whole other breed of developer who never move beyond what can be learned at W3Schools. They go on to write and share terrible code and teach others the least effective way to do things and that's where the harm in W3Schools lies. These are the same developers you find on Stackoverflow who post questions like "can you give me the code to run a Facebook clone".

100% agree. I learned so much off W3Schools. Yeah, it's sometimes inaccurate. But the information is a million times better than reading some WC3 specs or Mozilla's developer guides.<p>Often I see people link to MSDN or Mozilla's developer network when asked for how to learn web development, and all I think to myself as I see that is that if it were me, I would just quit. The content is explained in a way that's just not user friendly for someone who wants to learn for the first time.

W3Schools is a great resource for beginers and it should stay as it is: Simple. The minute you wiki-fy it, it'll become abstract and ground for ideological wars. Once you get your feet wet with their content then you move on to more advanced websites. As for the name issue, not a major issue.

Whatever man. Acknowledging the fact that a website which is so common teaches people to program the wrong way has responsibility. I'm sure they make a shitload of money from ads, and the authors of the website don't even bother to read emails. The problem is that they have a high SEO ranking, because most programmers are dumb and they don't know what's good for them. That's where the word responsibility comes in.

Learning to append MDN to all my searches helped me out a lot. MDN is just a much better resource. And before I caught on I did assume a certain credibility and relationship between W3schools and W3C.

The one thing I've got to hand to W3Schools is that they've (he's) SEO'd the crap out of the site (probably also due to its massive popularity). If I search something very specific, such as a certain CSS3 element or JS function, the definition and a pertinent case example from W3Schools is always at the top of Google.

I use both MDN and W3Schools but many times I prefer W3Schools since they provide a much cleaner and simpler explanation together with the invaluable "try it yourself".

The argument against w3schools is simple: Use Primary Sources Wherever Possible.<p>If you want to learn about the history of the Holy Roman Empire then Wikipedia is great. The relevant primary sources are numerous, and many of them are probably written in languages you can't even read. But if you want to learn about web development, the primary sources of documentation are few, easily found, and <i>authoritative</i>.<p>If you want canned solutions to your problem, look to StackOverflow. W3Schools can die in a fire.<p>The thing that is more annoying than w3schools is that if you tell Google to <i>always</i> exclude w3schools results from your searches, it won't. So I have to manually append "-w3schools" to every.webdev.search.I.do.

I love to hate W3Schools as much as anyone these days, but here's a dirty little secret: when I was making the transition from nights-and-weekends coding enthusiast to professional programmer, I needed something (anything) to put on my resume that might suggest to HR that I can do the work. Two W3Schools online certs later I landed the gig that started my development career.

The problem with W3Schools is not that it's horribly bad in any way.<p>It's that it's so consistently mediocre, and at the same time, so prevalent.<p>We need not accept this. The task that they're trying to achieve can be done so much better.

I think any beginner would love to have a [cross platform] offline browse-able reference/tutorial/guide whatever, be it MDN or W3Schools. Going to google for every damn thing is just a waste of time. And, for people with little stacks, it usually deviates them making them forget what they were trying to do in the first place. I am talking about something like php.net's offline 'chm' file. But, for html, javascript and css. Does anything exist already?

Long time ago when I was a newbie, I used w3schools to ramp up on web basics. The format was easy to use. I still to back occasionally for a quick double check on syntax.<p>For naysayers that believe that better options exist in the space for newbies, perhaps they could provide links to these resources.

<p><pre><code> W3SCHOOLS</code></pre> AN INTERVENTION<p><a href="http://w3fools.com/" rel="nofollow">http://w3fools.com/</a>

I'd add another reason to why w3schools sucks:<p><a href="http://www.impressivewebs.com/web-development-search-results-manipulated/" rel="nofollow">http://www.impressivewebs.com/web-development-search-results...</a>

If they won't wikify all they need to do is add comments to their page via disqus or some other third party system.<p>Then people can post corrections and examples.<p>They can disallow links if they are worried about spam.

While I never used w3schools to learn anything, their DOM and CSS references are of immeasurable value and I constantly find myself hitting that part of their site.

W3Schools was indispensable for me till I found the light in the form of MDN ;)

simple : MDN is crap, not SEO friendly and not synthetic.<p>For instance , i want a fast sum up of regexps with Javascript : the W3School shows a short table with the main keywords , that's all i need. It's like a cheat sheet.<p>MDN is verbose ,badly written , accurate maybe, but i dont want 50 exemples on Proxies or Generators , i dont care about them.<p>Now i agree , the name is confusing , there are errors , but until folks at Mozilla learn to write a usefull resource , i'm not going to read their wiki.<p>2 other good refs : the blackberry javascript ref is great, and the MS javascript ref is good too. Mozilla JS ref is just dreadfull.<p>There is good reason why W3School is popular, because it written for humans.

I find the argument about wiki-fying bizarre. Do people really want W3Schools wikified?<p>In my experience, wiki programming/documentation resources, with a handful of exceptions, are horrible, abandoned places.<p>Most are are made into wikis because they didn't have enough content in the first place, and there was some misguided notion that the users will just "jump in" and create it.