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Lay off W3Schools

sagegerard.com

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Re: Lay off W3Schools

#2

Post by ekm2 »

The first time i wanted to learn HTML and CSS,i happened to come across the W3fools page.So i followed their advice and their recommended resources.What do i get?Tons and tons of STORIES about secure code,best practices,patchy examples,and some sections clearly marked "This notes are out of date".Man,i have barely learned to switch on a computer.What are you talking about??

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#3

Post by polemic »

> "...Some folks have started voicing hostile opinions..."

A little late to the game, there.

This post ignores two important points:

1. There are a lot of much better sites out there (linked to from W3Fools, even). Selectively highlighting a single post is misleading.

2. W3Fools is not so much for the benefit of W3Schools, but for people who link to W3Schools as reference in blog posts, SO answers, etc. There are lots of great reference sites (MDN!) that provide much better material, but circumstances have given W3Schools a lot of GoogleFu. That needs to change.

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#4

Post by qubot »

polemic wrote: post #3

> "...Some folks have started voicing hostile opinions..." A little late to the game, there. This post ignores two important points: 1. There are a lot of much better sites out there (linked to from W3Fools, even). Selectively highlighting a single post is misleading. 2. W3Fools is not so much for the benefit of W3Schools, but for people who link to W3Schools as reference in blog posts, SO answers, etc. There are lot…

#1: Where is one post highlighted? The article (lazily) acknowledges other competition, and you even quoted said acknowledgement.

#2: Yes, this point is ignored because it was not really the focus. The benefit you speak of can be realized without statements like "W3SCHOOLS IS TROUBLE" in big scary letters on W3Fool's homepage. The attitudes of the people involved and the clarity of their content are the focus of the article.

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#5

Post by sachingulaya »

Except w3schools isn't approachable and it isn't for beginners. It's jargon loaded and filled with a bunch of information that means nothing to beginners.

Let's look the page for explaining 'div': http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp

"The tag defines a division or a section in an HTML document.

The tag is used to group block-elements to format them with styles."

Oh, I get it. Its for grouping block-elements(??) to format them with styles(??).

The above is followed by this fantastic tip: "Tip: The element is very often used together with CSS, to layout a web page."

Looking at their "examples" its an in-browser html editor with un-annotated code that makes a table suitable for the web circa 1995.

Then it trails off in to sparse definitions of the attributes for the div tag with an excessive amount of discussion about web standards compatibility.

Normally I wouldn't gripe about an awful tutorial site but w3schools consistently ranks high in google queries for questions about html tags. Personally I've never left w3schools with an answer to the question that led me there. That signals to me that it is indeed a failure.

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#6

Post by qubot »

sachingulaya wrote: post #5

Except w3schools isn't approachable and it isn't for beginners. It's jargon loaded and filled with a bunch of information that means nothing to beginners. Let's look the page for explaining 'div': http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp "The tag defines a division or a section in an HTML document. The tag is used to group block-elements to format them with styles." Oh, I get it. Its for grouping block-elements(??)…

> "Except w3schools isn't approachable and it isn't for beginners."

My experience says the opposite. Sorry.

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#7

Post by wallawe »

sachingulaya wrote: post #5

Except w3schools isn't approachable and it isn't for beginners. It's jargon loaded and filled with a bunch of information that means nothing to beginners. Let's look the page for explaining 'div': http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp "The tag defines a division or a section in an HTML document. The tag is used to group block-elements to format them with styles." Oh, I get it. Its for grouping block-elements(??)…

Agreed. As someone who just began coding less than a year ago, I can honestly say that it has rarely if ever helped me. I've found other free sites like Chris Coyer's "css-tricks" to be far more beneficial. That said, it is a free service and I can appreciate that, but it's time for some improvements.

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#8

Post by DanBC »

> W3Schools has already announced that it's content should be used at the user's risk, which means they waive all responsibility for inexperienced users. It is not their job to babysit developers, since it is the developer's job to research other sources and improve his understanding through rigorous practice and peer feedback.

That's awful advice for beginners, who have no idea why some things are good and others are dumb.

Some people will validate their pages. Some of those people will know what the errors mean, but decide that it's okay to have those errors. Other people will get a bunch of errors, and not really understand what's going on, and will just publish anyway because "it works in the browsers I tested on".

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