71–80 of 102 posts
W3Schools is not perfect but it is the best HTML/CSS reference that I've seen. The W3Fools effort is sort of well-intentioned but overly disrespectful. The supposed alternatives linked from W3Fools are hideous. W3Fools energy would be _MUCH_ better spent on developing an alternative.
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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.
To the extent good code makes crappy tutorials, the language is what's broken. An unproductive comment, but I think it's a defensible one.
Languages cannot eliminate every subtlety in their use, and there will always be issues that call for more articles explaining how to sidestep them. Novices won't normally get to see this content, and it won't help them to shove it all down their throats at once back at the introductory level courses.
There's a reason most physics students hear about Newton first.
Step 1: Log into Google.com Step 2: Block w3schools at http://www.google.com/reviews/t > Sites will be blocked only for you, but Google may use everyone's blocking information to improve the ranking of search results overall.
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> "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.
How are people supposed to know that they need to go and find a separate security tutorial (and not a W3Schools one, they don't have one)? Following that tutorial introduces massive security holes into a site. Those security problems need to be discussed. At the very least they need a warning saying "Don't do this until you understand the security issues discussed in THIS OTHER GUIDE".
Whenever they realize they don't understand something. This could happen by reflecting on the material or after making a mistake.
> "Following that tutorial introduces massive security holes into a site."
I've touched on this on other parts of this page.
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(??)…
If you are a beginner maybe you shouldn't start by reading about the element... Just like when you start programming you shouldn't start with recursion. It does help to start at the beginning and work your way through to . I already had basic HTML/CSS knowledge when I found the site so not sure how it is to beginners, but I found your example to be a bit unfair.
I suspect that sources like W3Schools, the O'Reilly Missing Manual series and DirectXTutorial.com leave out good practices to avoid overwhelming the reader. This idea is sometimes called Wittgenstein's ladder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children - "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps…
I agree with everything but the last bit. If you throw away the ladder, doesn't that represent forgetting the information that actually helped you?
So, for example, I might learn to build a Rails app using the scaffolding system, but once I know Rails well, I wouldn't.
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How are people supposed to know that they need to go and find a separate security tutorial (and not a W3Schools one, they don't have one)? Following that tutorial introduces massive security holes into a site. Those security problems need to be discussed. At the very least they need a warning saying "Don't do this until you understand the security issues discussed in THIS OTHER GUIDE".
> "How are people supposed to know that they need to go and find a separate security tutorial (and not a W3Schools one, they don't have one)?" Whenever they realize they don't understand something. This could happen by reflecting on the material or after making a mistake. > "Following that tutorial introduces massive security holes into a site." I've touched on this on other parts of this page.
Which is quite likely to be when their customers' data gets leaked or altered. That's a really bad time to discover a hole in your understanding.
W3Schools is not perfect but it is the best HTML/CSS reference that I've seen. The W3Fools effort is sort of well-intentioned but overly disrespectful. The supposed alternatives linked from W3Fools are hideous. W3Fools energy would be _MUCH_ better spent on developing an alternative.
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#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…
#1: Paragraph 3 - "...sometimes even dead silence..." #2: OP misses the point of why there is so much hostility. If W3Schools was on page 3 for (chosen utterly at random)"getElementById" on Google, no one would care. Predictably, however, it's number 1. That's pretty dire - I would hope that the top results for common questions would be quality resources. Which W3Schools is not. There is a greater good here, which is…