33 ms·

Documenting the Web together

• 482794793792894 9y ago
  Mozilla Blog post: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/10/18/mozilla-brings-microsoft-google-w3c-samsung-together-create-cross-browser-documentation-mdn/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/10/18/mozilla-brings-micr...
  • nycdotnet 9y ago
    Interesting that there is no Apple representation.
    • Egidius 9y ago
      Representation? You've got an app for that ;-)
    • dmitriid 9y ago
      Apple never hosted web-related docs, so they probably don’t care.
      • jsmthrowaway 9y ago
        Sorry, that is not true. Apple documents all of its platforms quite thoroughly, and Safari is one of them. Theirs is simply not an analogue to MDN. https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariCSSRef/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40002050 https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ap... “Apple doesn’t attempt to document general-purpose Web technologies without an eye on its own platforms” might be a more accurate statement, but even that is shaky because they spent a lot of time explaining HTML5 media while killing Flash.
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
        • dmitriid 9y ago
          Ah. Missed that. Yup. It would be nice to see Apple's support behind MDN as well.
  • Ajedi32 9y ago
    Google blog post: https://blog.chromium.org/2017/10/building-unified-documentation-for-web.html https://blog.chromium.org/2017/10/building-unified-documenta...
• nblavoie 9y ago
  Good Bye w3schools.com ?
  • pkrefta 9y ago
    Hopefully - and thank God :)
  • rand_r 9y ago
    w3schools.com is a great resource. I prefer it when I need a quick refresher on an HTML element because it's especially good for having short, simple examples I can copy and paste. MDN tends to be verbose and technical. It's good when you need to know everything in detail, but often I need a quick refresher and a simple example and for that w3schools.com always seems to have better content. Compare these two pages for input types: https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_form_input_types.asp https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_form_input_types.asp https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/input https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/in... The MDN page is more complete, but reading it gives me a headache.
    • samBergeron 9y ago
      The whole point of documentation though is for it to be complete, technical and well explained. Not to have copy-pastable examples. W3schools is neither good documentation or good examples though.
      • briandear 9y ago
        When I need to change a car's oil, I don't need a complete, detailed overview of the entire lubrication system. There is a place for all kinds of documentation, but exhaustive explanation is often less preferable to a quick "how do I do this."
      • goatlover 9y ago
        I disagree, both are valuable. It all depends on what you need in the moment.
    • 9y ago
• subsidd 9y ago
  This is great news. I learnt JavaScript from MDN first and it was a great resource. Still use it almost everyday as a reference, would love to see it grow.
• matthberg 9y ago
  This is great news, but the title misses out on the fact that Microsoft (the blog poster, nonetheless) is part of the "others" joining. Revising for clarity would be good.
  • michaeljchou 9y ago
    Yeah. And the link is actually to a blog post from Microsoft stating they started redirecting MSDN pages to corresponding MDN ones.
• kbumsik 9y ago
  The is great indeed. I hope w3schools.com won't appear in Google search result. BTW, It feels like OP omitted to mention to MS in the title though.
  • _puk 9y ago
    Sorry, I don't understand the overriding sentiment here.. Are we now asking Google et al to be the gatekeepers of what is deemed correct and useful because they have a preferred alternative that fits with our view on the world? W3Schools may not have the best historic reputation, but it still has a place in relevant search results. I have personally used MDN extensively over the years, and love it for what it is.
    • ubernostrum 9y ago
      Google already overrides ranking to put its own preferred things first in your results. The time to complain about Google being a "gatekeeper of what is deemed correct and useful" was years ago; now it's far too late.
  • tcarn 9y ago
    Duckduckgo is the way to go. Priorities MDN and Stack Overflow, really good search engine.
  • Zpalmtree 9y ago
    I barely webdev, but when I do, I've found w3schools pretty helpful. What's wrong with it?
    • jessaustin 9y ago
      Most people that have used both w3s and Mozilla Dev Network prefer MDN, and formerly were disappointed that w3s's better SEO formerly meant wading through their links when googling.
    • hobarrera 9y ago
      Historically, w3schools had a lot of outdated (or outright wrong content): http://www.w3fools.com/ http://www.w3fools.com/
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• binaryanomaly 9y ago
  Awesome! Great to see that Mozilla gets the approval, respect and support from such big players. Looks like there is hope for a free and open Web! Well done Mozilla!
• mark242 9y ago
  This is a great start. Now let's integrate caniuse into every single MDN page.
  • ubernostrum 9y ago
    MDN already has compatibility tables for lots of things; if they're missing from a particular article, it's not because they're unsupported, it's because nobody has done the research and filled in the information (it's a wiki! You can add things!).
    • manigandham 9y ago
      No need to duplicate the effort though, caniuse usually links to MDN for feature reference anyway. If caniuse had embeds, they could easily replace the existing compat tables on MDN.
    • styfle 9y ago
      MDN didn't do a good job of advertising itself as a wiki. It wasn't until recently that you could login with a GitHub account. When you google "can i use flexbox", caniuse.com comes up but MDN does not. The other thing missing from MDN, is that caniuse.com shows browser support as a percentage. Now I know I'm safe to use flexbox since its supported by 97.74% of browsers in the wild. When a new feature comes out, I add it to both MDN and caniuse. It would be great if these two could be integrated as well.
      • codedokode 9y ago
        I don't like that caniuse by default shows only several recent browser versions, deceiving developers and making it look like some new technology is supported everywhere. It is clearly a "dark" UI pattern that motivates developers to make sites viewable only on latest Macbook. Instead, it should show the year since which some feature is supported. For example, for flexbox it could write: IE - never Edge - since 2015 Firefox - since Mar 2014 Safari - since Oct 2013 Opera - since Nov 2012 etc. This gives a better picture.
• madmax108 9y ago
  MDN is an AMAZING resource, and I'm glad that it's getting the attention it deserves (both from Mozilla and the rest of the internet). Really hope this effort lasts over time as the effort put into MDN by volunteers, besides Mozilla employees, is tremendous! Hope MDN becomes the go-to Wiki for the web (It practically is for me already) Kudos to the team! :)
• shashwat986 9y ago
  I'm so happy to see this! MDN has always been my go-to resource for any JS/CSS help
• Egidius 9y ago
  For me, as an experienced front-end-focussed developer, MDN has been my go-to website for quick spec references. MDN has all I need to know, and I know my way around. However, I've been in teams where the less-experienced developers went to W3C Schools to see how they should implement some feature. And to be honest, I cannot completely blame them. W3C Schools shows directly what you need to know and how the API you are discovering works. This is mainly because of the playground with possible implementations on top of every specification page. I hope MDN can make their site more appealing for less experience developers without cutting in on the feature-completeness. For those interested: Behold, the W3C Schools hider extension. https://github.com/Spetnik/W3Schools-Hider https://github.com/Spetnik/W3Schools-Hider
  • marksomnian 9y ago
    Your comment excellently demonstrates the problem with them: W3Schools is not related to the W3C in any way. Many beginners see the "W3" and think it's an official resource. This is bad.
    • Egidius 9y ago
      I never implied that W3C Schools is related to W3C. But I do agree with you: that's bad. But for me that's a public secret. I don't think that's the main reason why I dislike W3C schools, though. My problem with W3C Schools is that they are not the right away to learn web development in a proper way: https://www.impressivewebs.com/w3schools-ugly-bad-good/ https://www.impressivewebs.com/w3schools-ugly-bad-good/. MDN holds a far greater standard on a whole lot of aspects: following exact W3C specs, being up to date, design, just to name a few obvious ones.
      • rodorgas 9y ago
        Parent thought you believe W3Schools is related to W3C because you keep calling it "W3C Schools" (it's W3Schools).
        • Egidius 9y ago
• amq 9y ago
  Somehow I had more luck with stackoverflow and others when looking for a quick hint/example.
  • JTenerife 9y ago
    Yes, for hints like "how do I", but for JS ref like "methods on a Set" I use it all the time. Problem with SO is that often the anwsers are quite old (<=ES5).
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• andy_ppp 9y ago
  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...
  • jrowley 9y ago
    Some googlers made this w3fools, so employees certainly aren't fond of w3schools. http://www.w3fools.com/ http://www.w3fools.com/
  • the8472 9y ago
    https://www.google.com/search?q=querySelectorAll+-site:w3schools.com https://www.google.com/search?q=querySelectorAll+-site:w3sch... this syntax has been supported for many years
    • haberman 9y ago
      I also like the "Personal Blocklist" extension for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by-goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...
    • mrighele 9y ago
      I think the parent meant to exclude some domains from every search. I would love that too. If I have to add "-site:somedomain.com" (and maybe even many of them!) it takes less effort ignore them in the result
      • hollander 9y ago
        Bookmark that. I use the following: https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&newwindow=1&num=30 https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&newwindow=1&num=30 I remove the ei identifier from the bookmark. I guess this is a unique ID that makes it possible for google to keep following me if I happen to bookmark it. Eg: ei=Vo_n34buB9Cabdedfk6gO And I happen to like the W3school examples, especially CSS. They've helped me many times. I don't see the problem with them, but please ignore them if you don't like it.
• opendomain 9y ago
  A few years ago most of these companies got together to do the same thing and launch the WebPlatform for the same thing. If you watch the video, you can see some guy named Tim Berners-Lee with a title "Web Developer" say it was the place to learn. I wonder why they are relaunching instead of using Webplatform.Org ?
  • madeofpalk 9y ago
    I think MDN is already quite a trusted reference for developers, so abandoning that would be abandoning a lot of “brand value” that’s been earnt through lots of hard work.
  • the8472 9y ago
    Can't beat them, join them. Developers simply go to MDN and MDN often is on top of the search results anyway. It often gets linked from stackoverflow too.
  • ubernostrum 9y ago
    Federated content is hard.
• rainbowmverse 9y ago
  For the people who have and will comment on how bad w3schools is, Google provides a Chrome extension for blocking domains in search results. https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-chrome-extension-block-sites-from.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-chrome-extension... I don't know if there's a Firefox version.
  • josefresco 9y ago
    Can Google see your own personal list of blocked sites? Post seems to indicate just that: "One of the signals we're exploring is explicit feedback from users."
    • rainbowmverse 9y ago
      They started with it built into search. This was probably a compromise solution to some competing internal concerns.
  • soapdog 9y ago
    There is https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-w3schools/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-w3school...
• tareqak 9y ago
  Given that the blog is on windows.com and it mentions MSDN, I think the title should include Microsoft as well. I was actually confused/befuddled seeing the juxtaposition of Google and Mozilla in the title, and windows.com as the domain in brackets to the right of the title.
  • dang 9y ago
    We've reverted the title to the article's original which, since it is neither misleading nor baity, is what the guidelines call for (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). The submitted title was "Mozilla, Google, others team up to make MDN Docs the place to go for web API ref" which is actually an uptick in misleadingness, as you and others pointed out. Submitters: please don't do that.
• fyrstenberg 9y ago
  Don't forget you can use https://devdocs.io/ https://devdocs.io/ too which also searches MDN and store offline. The two are a great pair.
  • y4mi 9y ago
    cool, i didn't know that site. wonderful ux how's the content added though? its missing so many libraries i use...
    • iMerNibor 9y ago
      Seems to be scraping public documentation pages https://github.com/Thibaut/devdocs/#scraper https://github.com/Thibaut/devdocs/#scraper
    • muhic 9y ago
      They have a Trello board where you can suggest and vote on additions. https://trello.com/b/6BmTulfx/devdocs-documentation https://trello.com/b/6BmTulfx/devdocs-documentation
  • mikodin 9y ago
    Yeah wow thanks! This is great
  • type0 9y ago
    No Elm there?
    • mtmail 9y ago
      230+ sets of documentation already work. You can vote for your favorite language here: https://trello.com/b/6BmTulfx/devdocs-documentation https://trello.com/b/6BmTulfx/devdocs-documentation
  • mshenfield 9y ago
    Was on a plane ride this weekend and was thinking how I needed to re-install Dash so I could have an offline docs viewer. Personally like the web format much better, thanks!
• forapurpose 9y ago
  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 agree on a standard and publish it at MDN, will that become as official, at least de facto, as a standard published by W3C? I do see W3C is mentioned as a participant. Also, for the sake of argument (and IMHO, of realism) let's assume that Google, who can virtually set web standards themselves these days, isn't doing this for a purely altruistic motive of supporting the open web. Why would they give up the 'soft power' of writing their own documentation for their own standards?
  • rodorgas 9y ago
    Supporting open web is not altruism. Proprietary standards on web is pure evil even for companies: see what happened to IE or Flash.
  • Top19 9y ago
    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/dea-drug-industry-congress/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/...
    • wutbrodo 9y ago
      > (who could of believed they would do that??) I didn't even realize I was being cynical when I was unsurprised by this news. I don't really understand why everyone else is. (That isn't to say it isn't important news, but the shock that everyone seems to be in is confusing).
• Skywing 9y ago
  Already was the place to go.
• waivek 9y ago
  Is there an extension to hide all the w3schools related comments in this thread?
  • dang 9y ago
    We've marked the existing ones off-topic. That makes them rank lower on the page.
• 23443463453 9y ago
  That moz://a logo still throws me. It's just too much. Too much.
• shmerl 9y ago
  > 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.
  • roblabla 9y ago
    Because video-games is still the one place where Mac and Linux are lagging behind, and they have DirectX to thank a lot for that.
    • shmerl 9y ago
      So, MS isn't new, it's same old MS, and their good behavior happens only when they already lost their monopolistic grip. Q.E.D.?
      • CapacitorSet 9y ago
        Privatize the profits, socialise the losses. This is why commercial companies cannot be trusted to sustain a wiki, open source, or free software model.
    • skocznymroczny 9y ago
      In case of Linux, you forgot availability of drivers, cohesive user experience, stability and ergonomy rather than programmer designed interfaces.
      • roblabla 9y ago
        I guess I should have said "Mac or Linux", but I'll answer your points because they tick me off. First some context : I'm both a Windows, Mac and Linux user, and my favorite is probably Mac. But I've converted a fair share of my family to Linux (my grandma too) because it's more predictable than Windows, and cheaper than MacOS (I'm basically my family's IT hotline). Most of what I'll talk here is a mix of my own experience, and feedback from my family members. Let's talk about drivers. Turns out, drivers are available for most of the hardware you'll need (which is basically GPU, WiFi, Bluetooth and Webcam). Sure, this weird piece of equipment might not have linux drivers, but in truth I can't even remember the last time I've hit that problem. I don't think equipment compatibility is the reason people use Windows in 2017 anyway, given we're all using Android/Linux on our smartphones and tablets, so I'll move on. Let's talk about cohesive UX. Windows, since 8 and 10, has the least cohesive UX ever. Running Gnome or KDE on Linux today will get you a more cohesive UX than win10, and that's no compliment. Half the Windows apps still use the old winforms look, half use the new metro (or whatever it is called) look, and then there's all the webapps that have their own custom look and feel. Cortana is a clusterfuck of an UX, the File Manager has this weird "It's a filesystem but not really" mentality (the location bar doesn't show the full hierarchy, WHY ?), and there are so many papercuts here and there that I end up fighting my OS half the time. Let's talk about stability. Windows forces reboots every few days because it has "mandatory updates". Windows basically built this feature where they force the computer to reboot and the user has absolutely no say in the matter. This is not the stability guarantee I'm looking for. Another anecdata : one of the few family members to still have a windows has a Microsoft Surface Pro. She has to reboot it every few days because it won't detect the Wifi card anymore. Microsoft can't even make their own OS stable on their own hardware. Windows might have been good at all of this at one point, but that's not the case anymore. It's become terrible at all of it. So bad that Linux slowly creeped its way into my family, and that made my life much easier.
• edent 9y ago
  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.
  • mattacular 9y ago
    MDN resources are written for web developers (ie. consumers of the already implemented language spec). The W3 spec has to be written for its implementors and is necessarily much more complicated.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • bzbarsky 9y ago
    There is a tradeoff between simplicity/readability and "define how to handle all the edge cases". Web specs recently have sacrificed the former to handle the latter, not least because past experience with web specs that sacrificed the latter to do the former was so horrible...
    • carussell 9y ago
      When this article first appeared, I wrote a long comment here (now deleted) about how the content Mozilla inherited from Netscape DevEdge originally straddled the split by fully embracing that there were two different mindsets the audience might be coming in with, and simply creating two different sets of docs. There were the JavaScript Guide and the JavaScript Reference, for example, and they were pretty thoroughly cross-linked. It's been years since I stopped contributing to and reading MDN, but this editorial stance seems to have disappeared, unfortunately.
      • ghostly_s 9y ago
        Python's official docs do a good job with this approach too, I think. The Python Language Reference is relatively easy to read for a lay-man when that's necessary, and includes the formal logic of the spec in little call-out boxes -- but it's also accompanied by the Python Tutorial, which manages to cover nearly everything while making no attempt to get into every edge-case and obscure method, keeping it focused and readable. It's a great learning tool to get up to near-proficiency, and then the Reference is there for all those little "but I wonder what happens when..." questions.
• raymondgh 9y ago
  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.
• trzeci 9y ago
  Why Samsung?
  • 482794793792894 9y ago
    Probably a case of having engulfed the industry so much that just throwing money into the industry will actually pay out for them in the long run. And it's probably also just nice to be able to bite Google and Microsoft in the butt here. Those do benefit from a healthy web and both very much need the PR of supporting webstandards, but they could also both benefit a lot more from controlling a platform like MDN and then sneaking in pseudo standards here and there. So, Samsung helping out with MDN makes it even harder for one of those to build up their own version. Lastly, Samsung does ship their Samsung Internet Browser on all of their Galaxy devices, which has got to be a somewhat significant share of daily internet users. Currently, that's Chromium-based, but they could be looking to eventually follow Google and Microsoft in making up webstandards. They've also already invested into Mozilla's Servo, so maybe they're also just trying to build up a partnership with Mozilla to help to take on those giants.
    • styfle 9y ago
      From what I've heard, Samsung Internet Browser is trying to lead the way with WebVR (Virtual Reality). https://webvr.rocks/samsung_internet https://webvr.rocks/samsung_internet
• robocat 9y ago
  Hopefully that will push the ranking up for MDN articles.
• vxNsr 9y ago
  mdn.com is of course a 90s directory site for Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan. last updated by the looks of it in early 2016... maybe they'll relinquish the vanity domain?
  • thanatropism 9y ago
    What makes it a vanity domain? Just imagine how much printed material has circulated since the 90s with the mdn.com address. Why do you want to break the web?
    • vivekkrish 9y ago
      For JS developers, there is already a short-hand URL, mdn.io. It's quite neat in its functionality, allowing for searches via url params, like so: mdn.io/promise
      • vxNsr 9y ago
        thanks for that. didn't realize that mdn.io existed.
    • vxNsr 9y ago
      It's a vanity url because it's small and can be used by tons of different orgs. Not sure why we're suddenly so sad about losing some tiny corner of the web that is very unlikely to have a huge effect irl. I used to bookmark things judiciously 7-8 years ago, that bookmarks list is completely useless today because >90% of the links are dead, that's okay though, it's the way things go. Happens with real-world objects too, books go out of print, buildings get knocked down, not everything needs to be saved.
      • thanatropism 9y ago
        But people use it. You seem to think that being a web technologist gives you eminent domain over the web.
• TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  Déjà vu. Previously (checks email …almost exactly 5 years ago?! Christ, it was a long time ago), the web powers that be announced they were going to collaborate on a new web docs wiki.[0] I don't think it went anywhere because, well, MDN already existed. I'm glad they finally just surrendered to MDN, even if it was many years late. [0] https://www.w3.org/2012/10/webplatform.html.en https://www.w3.org/2012/10/webplatform.html.en
  • carussell 9y ago
    They chose a different license that made it more difficult than it should have been to integrate content from MDN. The two sites' backends were completely different, too, so the source texts needed to be tweaked before publishing. I also remember that for for many of the docs, they favored basing them off MS's contribution (IIRC). It also had a very un-wiki-like atmosphere, where the lifecycle of a change resembled a code review, i.e., the opposite of the "be bold" policy that led to the success of Wikipedia (and the early days of developer.mozilla.org).
  • benaadams 9y ago
    Was the WebPlatform project? > The WebPlatform project, supported by various stewards between 2012 and 2015, has been discontinued. This site is now available on github https://webplatform.github.io/docs/ https://webplatform.github.io/docs/
  • frik 9y ago
    "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." Many sites already don't work correctly in Edge, IE11 nor Firefox - it's too late, these are minor browsers, used by a smaller fraction of end users. End users on on smartphones use 95% a WebKit originated based browser aka Chrome/Safari. Chrome and Safari are bigger than the rest on desktop. Sites in 2017 are tested against Chrome and Safari by web developers. http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/world... http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/worldwide http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/worldw...
• vermooten 9y ago
  Are they still pushing Edge?
• tomaskafka 9y ago
  So, can maybe Google finally push the w3schools out of their SERP? :)
• mlinksva 9y ago
  > redirecting Cool!
• stareatgoats 9y ago
  Totally OT, but "Today, we’re excited to " is as an opening statement, through its ubiquity and seeming robotic mindlessness, is starting to distract from the actual topics. Maybe just me. Still. Just sayin.
  • eradicatethots 9y ago
    What else can you even write instead though
    • wakamoleguy 9y ago
      In this case, there could be literally nothing instead. > (Today, we’re excited to share some big news for developers around the world wide web: )We’re committing our resources towards making MDN Web Docs the best place to go for web API reference.
      • eradicatethots 9y ago
        There needs to be an intro or it sounds very weird.
        • brlewis 9y ago
          Agreed. Keep the word "Today".
• t347 9y ago
  What would be the best way to download MDN for offline use? A quick search shows: https://developer.mozilla.org/media/developer.mozilla.org.tar.gz https://developer.mozilla.org/media/developer.mozilla.org.ta... https://kapeli.com/mdn_offline https://kapeli.com/mdn_offline https://zealdocs.org/ https://zealdocs.org/ Any experience with the above?
  • ealhad 9y ago
    Definitely https://devdocs.io https://devdocs.io
  • gurkendoktor 9y ago
    If you are on macOS, then Dash (by Kapeli) with the CSS/HTML/JavaScript docsets is your best bet. Having offline docs available at the speed of my fingertips throughout your OS has been a fantastic productivity booster for me. I'm not a heavy MDN user, so I don't know if there's anything that's not covered by the above three docsets. If you are on Windows or Linux, then Zeal and Velocity are basically the same thing (they're only available on platforms where Dash isn't). Zeal's search used to be pretty bad, but at least you have the option to send Pull Requests on GitHub.
• btilly 9y ago
  My favorite line was this: 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. It wasn't favorite because I agree with it. It was favorite for the humor value of Microsoft accepting a principle that flies so strongly in the face of how the company established itself, managed its battles with competitors, and tried to sabotage existing web standards for most of my professional life. I'm glad they are finally claiming to be on board. I'll trust them as far as I can throw them. (Guess how far I can throw 120k people...)
  • r3bl 9y ago
    People change, and so do its companies (or at least, their management). Looking from a non-Windows-user perspective, in the last couple of years: VSCode is now a thing, .NET is open sourced, they've started financially supporting organization that I like (like OSI and the Linux foundation), Powershell is now available on my platform, and, if I ever decide to switch back to Microsoft's technologies (highly unlikely), I have Windows Subsystem for Linux and I'll be able to run Linux servers on Azure. As a non-Windows user, I'm totally happy with this new Microsoft.
• ChuckMcM 9y ago
  Guess they are going to band together to dethrone W3Schools :-) (only half kidding, that web site has has some serious staying power.) Related, when I was active in standards work (I learned just how badly that stuff was run) I discovered that new people in a standards group that was being formed would be lobbying to be the group Chairperson or Vice Chair. But the people who had been in standards bodies before were all vying to be the Editor. That was because the group could argue all they wanted but at the end of the day what was in the standard was what was in the document and only one person had absolute sway over that, the Editor. So when I see all these leading lights, who just got through a rancorous debate about DRM with the standards body, endorse a new way to capture the "actual" standard, I see a seasoned standards wonk offering to do all the slavish work of editing the documents so that everyone else can focus on the hard work of coming up with the best possible standard.
  • frik 9y ago
    W3School is very good to quickly look something up - short and always with a simple example. MDN is very good for details and in general as reference.
    • bfred_it 9y ago
      Short and always with a terrible example. I would never trust W3Schools with the simplest stuff. Take this form documentation, they don't even mention using <label> https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp Sadly, "html forms" brings up 3+ W3Schools pages of at the top.
      • darth_mastah 9y ago
        +1 W3schools is contributing to poor education amongst junior web developers.
• mmaunder 9y ago
  Embrace...
  • xapata 9y ago
    This time around, it looks like that's where the phrase ends. Until the next CEO perhaps.
• bprasanna 9y ago
  Microsoft you are doing all the right thing to win the hearts of developers! Great! Thanks for all wise decisions
• jasonkester 9y ago
  I really miss the old MSDN Library. The 5GB installable one you'd get as one of the 200 DVDs in that giant case they'd ship you with your MSDN subscription back in the day. It was awesome. You could hit F1 and it would instantly pop up good, detailed, documentation for whatever method or keyword was under your cursor. In any of their developer products, so it worked as well in SQL Server Management Studio as in VS.NET. Every language, every technology, updated monthly via Automatic Updates on your dev box. But they stopped shipping it in favor of "web help". That's the thing where you hit F1 and it spends several seconds opening a web browser (a custom one in a new tab in the IDE for some reason), then several more seconds opening a "meet the mouse" style page telling you how to use the code editor window (which it had helpfully detected was your context when asking for help). So in one stroke, they switched from the worlds most awesome help system at your fingertips to "just go open Chrome and type your search into Google, since that will at least get you something relevant". Today, they've improved that workflow by trying to ensure that something relevant exists on MDN, provided you're searching for web-related stuff. We're still about 10 years back from the state-of-the-art in 2003. Shame.
  • chadaustin 9y ago
    Yeah, the old installable MSDN Library was really great. I loved how they approached each topic with three types of documentation: tutorials, concept overviews, and types-and-functions references. I still have the CDs on my bookshelf because I can't bring myself to throw them away. :) Microsoft was really good at developer documentation. Apps like Dash and websites like devdocs.io come close to the same experience, at least.
  • ConfucianNardin 9y ago
    VS2017 opens the correct documentation most of the time, and in the default web browser. For C++, cppreference provides archives of all their docs: http://en.cppreference.com/w/Cppreference:Archives http://en.cppreference.com/w/Cppreference:Archives. Of course, that won't help you for Win32 or .NET. There's also https://zealdocs.org/ https://zealdocs.org/
    • lorenzhs 9y ago
• romanovcode 9y ago
  Together, except for Apple that does not care.
• vinaypai 9y ago
  I can only hope MDN does to w3schools what Stack Overflow did to experts-exchange.