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Lay off W3Schools

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Re: Lay off W3Schools

#31

Post by andrewfelix »

tkahn6 wrote: post #18
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. I too had the exact opposite experience. I found the HTML, CSS, and Javascript tutorials extremely intuitive and well-presented when I was in 7th grade. I ate them up.

Agreed. I don't depend on it any more, but w3schools helped me make the transition from WYSIWG web site building to hand coding.

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#32

Post by qubot »

sachingulaya wrote: post #28
qubot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Except w3schools isn't approachable and it isn't for beginners." My experience says the opposite. Sorry.

There's nothing to be 'sorry' about. I made websites sporadically from '97-'03 and then started again in Dec '11. My criticism of w3schools is from my personal experience with the site over the last year. I was surprised when I found out that w3schools actually intends to teach people html/css. Until recently, I thought it was universally acknowledged that they're a content farm.

A content farm with quizzes, a live editor and sequential lessons?

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#33

Post by [deleted] »

qubot wrote: post #29
ceejayoz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C'mon. Their "PHP MySQL Insert Into" tutorial ( http://w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_insert.asp ) uses direct $_POST data with no escaping. No mention of security is made in the entire "PHP Database" section. These tutorials need a massive red flashing warning saying "we've left critical stuff out, you will get your site defaced if you code like this". Newbies don't need to be expected to know good code. That's no excu…

Good code makes crappy tutorials. If I was a moron, I don't care if the examples inadvertently summons swarms of locusts if I understand them quickly. Now, I would be all for W3Schools making their disclaimer more noticeable. It is there, though.

[deleted]

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#34

Post by qubot »

ceejayoz wrote: post #30
qubot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good code makes crappy tutorials. If I was a moron, I don't care if the examples inadvertently summons swarms of locusts if I understand them quickly. Now, I would be all for W3Schools making their disclaimer more noticeable. It is there, though.

> Good code makes crappy tutorials. Not necessarily, and bad code can make dangerous tutorials.

> "Not necessarily, and bad code can make dangerous tutorials."

W3Schools is not responsible for what devs do, and safe code means introducing more concepts that can leave the scope of a tutorial.

I agree the code sucks, but we're talking about minimizing time to understand something, not security. Save that for the security tutorials.

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#36

Post by mdm_ »

Not sure if you're serious or just trolling (you seem to be posting snippy responses to everyone's comments here), but there's a big difference between something like O'Reilly's Missing Manual or Head First series and w3schools. As demonstrated on the w3fools site, some of the information on w3schools is inaccurate or just plain wrong. The O'Reilly books have a much higher degree of accuracy yet remain approachable, beginner-level texts.

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#37

Post by andrewfelix »

qubot wrote: post #29
ceejayoz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C'mon. Their "PHP MySQL Insert Into" tutorial ( http://w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_insert.asp ) uses direct $_POST data with no escaping. No mention of security is made in the entire "PHP Database" section. These tutorials need a massive red flashing warning saying "we've left critical stuff out, you will get your site defaced if you code like this". Newbies don't need to be expected to know good code. That's no excu…

Good code makes crappy tutorials. If I was a moron, I don't care if the examples inadvertently summons swarms of locusts if I understand them quickly. Now, I would be all for W3Schools making their disclaimer more noticeable. It is there, though.

So true. Imagine your primary school art teacher telling you you were ignoring centuries of established neo-classical techniques by holding the brush wrong.

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#38

Post by qubot »

mdm_ wrote: post #36

Not sure if you're serious or just trolling (you seem to be posting snippy responses to everyone's comments here), but there's a big difference between something like O'Reilly's Missing Manual or Head First series and w3schools. As demonstrated on the w3fools site, some of the information on w3schools is inaccurate or just plain wrong. The O'Reilly books have a much higher degree of accuracy yet remain approachable,…

> "you seem to be posting snippy responses to everyone's comments here"

Sorry about that. It is not my intention to be rude or troll, but I've got a lot of discussions to manage. I went ahead and edited out some needlessly harsh bits here and there, but I'm not touching ones where I am just reciprocating the same attitude as the parent post.

I'll watch myself more carefully, so thanks for the reminder.

> "The O'Reilly books have a much higher degree of accuracy yet remain approachable, beginner-level texts."

Yes, but they still promote outdated and insecure approaches. As a beginner, I actually got yelled at for using an image map for obvious reasons. The edition of the book I used did not discourage them, but I still swear it was a nicely written text.

As for inaccuracies... W3Schools has been addressing them if the cited sources were reliable.

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#39

Post by shazow »

w3schools is not the best resource, but 90% of the time, when it shows up as the top result on Google, it tells me exactly what I want to know.

Some common examples:

- What values does CSS attribute white-space take? #1 result on Google for "css white-space" is http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_text_white-space.asp which has exactly what I need to know.

- What members does the Array object in JavaScript have? For the query "javascript array", the first result is an overview of what an Array is, but the second result is the object reference which is exactly what I need.

When learning, looking things up is one of the most common actions. Whenever w3schools comes up, it doesn't necessarily make me smile but it's reliable^Wconsistent so I know what to expect. It maintains a lot of utility, unlike good ol' experts-exchange.

Re: Lay off W3Schools

#40

Post by ricardobeat »

shazow wrote: post #39

w3schools is not the best resource, but 90% of the time, when it shows up as the top result on Google, it tells me exactly what I want to know. Some common examples: - What values does CSS attribute white-space take? #1 result on Google for "css white-space" is http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_text_white-space.asp which has exactly what I need to know. - What members does the Array object in JavaScript have? For th…

So? The 2nd result (MDN) does the same, looks better, and almost never contains inaccuracies or bad practices.

> it's reliable

That's the whole point of w3fools: w3s is not reliable.

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