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Documenting the Web together

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Documenting the Web together

#71

Post by shawnz »

vinhboy wrote: post #36
andy_ppp wrote: post #18

Great, while they are at it can Google please downgrade the extremely spammy w3schools or at least allow me to remove certain websites from my searches. There are so many better resources out there...

I've never understood the hate for w3schools. I've always found them to be extremely useful. I like that usage examples is the focus of their site. I find that more useful than wordy documentations that more advanced references provide.

They aggressively create separate pages for every element and attribute, each full of ads, but hardly any containing substantive descriptions of the things they document. At worst they just restate the name of the attribute in different words. And the examples, while sometimes nice, often just show the effect of turning a property on or off and don't really demonstrate the different things you can do with it. If they focused more on substance and less on SEO, they could be a much better resource.

Re: Documenting the Web together

#72

Post by gicadin »

vinhboy wrote: post #36
andy_ppp wrote: post #18

Great, while they are at it can Google please downgrade the extremely spammy w3schools or at least allow me to remove certain websites from my searches. There are so many better resources out there...

I've never understood the hate for w3schools. I've always found them to be extremely useful. I like that usage examples is the focus of their site. I find that more useful than wordy documentations that more advanced references provide.

Wc3 is good as a reference to html or css syntax but I feel it's spread it's tentacles to far and wide. It's the first result when I search for a php method, and I don't feel it's nearly as good as the php manual

Re: Documenting the Web together

#73

Post by Top19 »

forapurpose wrote: post #34

This news sounds great to me, but I feel like I don't understand what's happening behind the curtain and don't grasp the second-order consequences. What would motivate them? I wonder what the political motives are (industry politics, not the other kind that we won't mention here). Could this eventually displace standards bodies such as WHATWG and W3C? If the Product Advisory Board of Mozilla, Google, and Samsung agre…

In general I like that Google and others are doing this. The web is so complicated, so overwhelming, that a central source of documentation is needed. This "blog posts as documentation" culture is not healthy.

However I think we should all be skeptical of any actions corporations take today until proven otherwise. When 60,000 Americans are dying of opiods per year (that's all the deaths in Vietnam per year) and drug companies will reject calls to regulate them and pay off members of Congress, some constant skepticism is called for (who could of believed they would do that??) https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/...

Re: Documenting the Web together

#74

Post by frik »

vinhboy wrote: post #36
andy_ppp wrote: post #18

Great, while they are at it can Google please downgrade the extremely spammy w3schools or at least allow me to remove certain websites from my searches. There are so many better resources out there...

I've never understood the hate for w3schools. I've always found them to be extremely useful. I like that usage examples is the focus of their site. I find that more useful than wordy documentations that more advanced references provide.

I use w3schools and MDN, both. w3schools improved a lot over the years, and it's easy to find something fast. MDN is more in depth. CanIuse.com is another very useful resource. Google should keep all three resources in the top results.

Re: Documenting the Web together

#75

Post by nachtigall »

andy_ppp wrote: post #18

Great, while they are at it can Google please downgrade the extremely spammy w3schools or at least allow me to remove certain websites from my searches. There are so many better resources out there...

I find duckduckgo much better for these kind of searches. It also shows a brief instant result which is usually an excerpt from MDN.

Actually, I find duckduckgo better for all kinds of technical searches these days.

Re: Documenting the Web together

#76

Post by shmerl »

> One of our guiding principles in developing Microsoft Edge is that end users should never have to worry about which sites work in which browsers. This philosophy—”the Web should just work for everyone“—led to our choice to target the “interoperable intersection” of web APIs in our browser engineering.

That's a good move by MS. In this context it's great to see them supporting open codecs, and for istance OGG container for audio which was recently announced as work in progress in Edge. Quite a turnaround from the old times of "best viewed with IE", ActiveX, Silverlight and etc.

Why can't MS apply same principle across all their teams? Compare the above to their push for 3D graphics API lock-in.

Re: Documenting the Web together

#77

Post by edent »

We were speaking about this at the W3C's Advisory Board meeting in London earlier this week.

It distresses me that the specs on w3.org are so hard to read for the average developer. It's great to see how MDN focuses on simplicity, readability, and usable examples.

Re: Documenting the Web together

#78

Post by Vinnl »

forapurpose wrote: post #34

This news sounds great to me, but I feel like I don't understand what's happening behind the curtain and don't grasp the second-order consequences. What would motivate them? I wonder what the political motives are (industry politics, not the other kind that we won't mention here). Could this eventually displace standards bodies such as WHATWG and W3C? If the Product Advisory Board of Mozilla, Google, and Samsung agre…

I think there are several motives:

1. The people working on these browsers are just that: people. They haven't necessarily been e.g. at Microsoft when IE vs. Netscape was a thing, and probably don't hold grudges. They were hired to work with the web, not against it.

2. There was a lot of duplicate efforts, and MDN was clearly "winning". That's a waste of time.

3. A more "neutral" MDN (although I think they've been doing a pretty good job already) is good for all browser makers. Even if Mozilla and its volunteers are trying to be a non-biased resource, they'll always be writing from their own viewpoint.

4. For Mozilla, MDN being less Mozilla-/Firefox-focused might not sound like a great option, but Mozilla's mission is to build a better, free and open internet, not to be dominant. (Incidentally, that's also the reason MDN "won": this made it able to attract many contributors and supporters.)

Re: Documenting the Web together

#79

Post by raymondgh »

I wonder how much influence over MDN content these new contributors will have. On the one hand, it looks like a victory for Mozilla and developers everywhere; on the other hand, it looks like this will amplify Google's voice on the direction of web standards and help grow Chrome's market share at the cost of Firefox's.

Re: Documenting the Web together

#80

Post by monocasa »

madeofpalk wrote: post #27
andy_ppp wrote: post #18

Great, while they are at it can Google please downgrade the extremely spammy w3schools or at least allow me to remove certain websites from my searches. There are so many better resources out there...

I’ll never/rarely click a w3schools link, but I do find MDN to be quite difficult to read with it’s pages being quite technical and terse. W3schools is quite pragmatic with providing a reference for CSS properties. I hope these extra resources will let MDN improve on this.

Yeah. I treat w3schools vs MDN like Simple English Wiki vs regular Wikipedia. There's some subjects on Wikipedia (like math particularly) where to understand the wiki page, you need such a good background that you don't need the wiki page anyway. It's good to have a simpler, not complete place to get your feet wet first.
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