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Lots of people are commenting to say that W3Schools is now fine. I disagree. On the rare occasion that I end up interacting with them in some way, I find errors

Lots of people are commenting to say that W3Schools is now fine. I disagree. On the rare occasion that I end up interacting with them in some way, I find errors. My Stack Overflow post history contains three mentions of W3Schools, all of which involve W3Schools making an error: * https://stackoverflow.com/q/20610930/1709587 https://stackoverflow.com/q/20610930/1709587, about W3Schools stating falsely that it's necessary to explicitly add `type="submit"` to submit buttons in HTML to ensure cross-browser compatibility. * https://stackoverflow.com/a/52355253/1709587 https://stackoverflow.com/a/52355253/1709587, in which W3Schools makes false claims about the `colspan` attribute - both about what the specs say about it, and about how browsers implement it. * https://stackoverflow.com/a/46866568/1709587 https://stackoverflow.com/a/46866568/1709587, where W3Schools suggests a JavaScript function to shuffle an array which both technically invokes undefined behaviour under the ECMAScript standard and which does not fairly shuffle arrays in practice in real browsers. None of these things are fixed. The fact that they tidied up the specific errors that the W3Fools team listed, in response to the biggest ever hostile PR campaign that W3Schools ever faced, does not mean that they are now a decent, error-free source. Far from it.

tapland 8y ago
I don't do web programming, but that sounds extremely minor compared to practices taught in a lot of books.
- johnmarcus 8y ago
  dude,unless your a perfect person you are not allowed to help others. w3 schools should write a novel on each and every feature implemented in every single browser otherwise, they just worthless pieces of cow dung and no one should learn programming from them. /s i fucking hate pedantic dicks whom get nothing done (being op, not you)
  - XCabbage 8y ago
    Three observations: 1. These problems caused actual confusion for real developers doing ordinary web development work. One of the linked questions has hundreds of thousands of views. 2. You suggest I'm being a pedantic dick to people who are "helping others", but W3Schools doesn't help anyone - at least compared to the counterfactual of them not existing. It would hypothetically be right to say "okay, they have errors, but they're better than nothing" if the realistic alternative was "nothing". But the realistic alternative is that MDN would rise to the top of search results. The complaints about W3Schools' accuracy come in the context of them having skillfully SEOed their content above basically everything else, including huge amounts of not-for-profit content that is vastly superior to theirs. That does cause their very existence to do damage to the world, and make them worthy targets of criticism. 3. Remedying the point about the behaviour of colspan in real browsers being misdocumented doesn't require W3Schools to "write a novel" about anything. It just requires to them to remove content they've included which is false.
    - johnmarcus 8y ago
      lol. the reason they ranked at the top is because it was useful. i rarely found the information on there incorrect. certainly much rarer to be incorrect than stack overflow, and the coverage of a topic was much more thorough and not constrained to only questions that have been asked. if you didn't like the content, you could simply not go to it. your just a horse complaining about the hand that fed you.
- ben509 8y ago
  Books have a very wide range of standards, though, so there are a lot of books that are vanity projects or from bottom tier publishers. Fundamentally, W3Schools is a content mill for technical material, and they prioritize SEO over accuracy.
mercer 8y ago
My impression is that people are not primarily arguing that W3Schools is great, but rather that however shitty it might be, it fills a void that MDN doesn't. I'm pretty serious about web development, and yet I constantly find myself mildly frustrated with whatever MDN resource I find when I'm looking for a solution to my problem. If I had to guess why I get frustrated, it's probably because MDN seems to focus on being a comprehensive reference at the expense of offering examples and solutions to those who don't immediately care about the nitty gritty. I think fetch() is a perfect example of this. Back when I googled how to use it, I ended up on MDN and it wasn't too helpful. I had to scroll down and click on another link to get an example, and while that example was for JSON, it immediately made it clear where I should look if I'm dealing with some other kind of response. Not that W3Schools is better. It sends me here: https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_ajax_examples.asp https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_ajax_examples.asp But what I'm really missing here is a php.net style website that gives me some concrete examples that solve the most common use-cases, and either offers more in-depth material if I want to properly understand it, or references MDN. I totally understand how for many situations W3Schools is that resource.
johnmarcus 8y ago
LOL, i just read your dumb stack overflow posts. They are dumb because it really makes no difference. Leaving off the spec is just a bad practice and getting butt hurt because of a "Tip" (not a declarative rule mind you) may not be correct (although I bet if you actually check browser behavior, w3 is probably correct - i'm not about to check 20+ browsers to find out). In the second post https://stackoverflow.com/a/52355253/1709587 https://stackoverflow.com/a/52355253/1709587, W3Schools gave you the information litterally from teh HTML4 spec. It's hardly W3's fault that it wasn't followed as designd. This is the type of pedantic nit-picking bullshit i'm talking about. And on your third link, I checked the W3Schools page and it literally says "Note: Only Firefox supports colspan="0",..." Contrary to what is in your StackOverlflow post, I assume you only read the Attribute Values and not the whole page. Blaming W3Schools for your lack of reading comprehension is shameful. I should probably go back to the first two questions and see what else you just didn't read, but were quick to blame they didn't have the "right answer". People just need to learn to read, imho.
- XCabbage 8y ago
  > w3 is probably correct > It's hardly W3's fault Note that W3Schools is not the W3, and have no official affiliation. > They are dumb because it really makes no difference. ... getting butt hurt because of a "Tip" It does make a difference. If that tip had been true, it would mean I'd been writing HTML that only worked in a subset of browsers the whole time, and I would've needed to go over all HTML forms I'd ever written and correct them to ensure browser compatibility, and educate my colleagues who also left off the attribute. Are you suggesting that I should read something like that, that if true would mean that all the forms I've written are broken, and just ignore it? Or blindly trust it, and demand that my colleagues change their code style on the basis of an unsubstantiated "tip"? What was I meant to do other than dig deeper to try to find out the truth? > W3Schools gave you the information litterally from teh HTML4 spec Yes. Which has been obsolete for years, and yet their page isn't updated. > I checked the W3Schools page and it literally says "Note: Only Firefox supports colspan="0",..." Contrary to what is in your StackOverlflow post I literally quote the same passage in my post and note, explicitly, that it is untrue. Firefox's behaviour is just like all the other browsers. Also, a moment ago you were berating me for taking an aside seriously. Now you're also berating for not scrutinising every aside for caveats that contradict the main documentation? It's unclear that there's any approach to reading W3Schools that will satisfy you, other than magically divining the truth from their docs even when what they write is wrong. > People just need to learn to read Evidently.

tapland 8y ago

I don't do web programming, but that sounds extremely minor compared to practices taught in a lot of books.

johnmarcus 8y ago
dude,unless your a perfect person you are not allowed to help others. w3 schools should write a novel on each and every feature implemented in every single browser otherwise, they just worthless pieces of cow dung and no one should learn programming from them. /s i fucking hate pedantic dicks whom get nothing done (being op, not you)
- XCabbage 8y ago
  Three observations: 1. These problems caused actual confusion for real developers doing ordinary web development work. One of the linked questions has hundreds of thousands of views. 2. You suggest I'm being a pedantic dick to people who are "helping others", but W3Schools doesn't help anyone - at least compared to the counterfactual of them not existing. It would hypothetically be right to say "okay, they have errors, but they're better than nothing" if the realistic alternative was "nothing". But the realistic alternative is that MDN would rise to the top of search results. The complaints about W3Schools' accuracy come in the context of them having skillfully SEOed their content above basically everything else, including huge amounts of not-for-profit content that is vastly superior to theirs. That does cause their very existence to do damage to the world, and make them worthy targets of criticism. 3. Remedying the point about the behaviour of colspan in real browsers being misdocumented doesn't require W3Schools to "write a novel" about anything. It just requires to them to remove content they've included which is false.
  - johnmarcus 8y ago
    lol. the reason they ranked at the top is because it was useful. i rarely found the information on there incorrect. certainly much rarer to be incorrect than stack overflow, and the coverage of a topic was much more thorough and not constrained to only questions that have been asked. if you didn't like the content, you could simply not go to it. your just a horse complaining about the hand that fed you.
ben509 8y ago
Books have a very wide range of standards, though, so there are a lot of books that are vanity projects or from bottom tier publishers. Fundamentally, W3Schools is a content mill for technical material, and they prioritize SEO over accuracy.

mercer 8y ago

My impression is that people are not primarily arguing that W3Schools is great, but rather that however shitty it might be, it fills a void that MDN doesn't. I'm pretty serious about web development, and yet I constantly find myself mildly frustrated with whatever MDN resource I find when I'm looking for a solution to my problem. If I had to guess why I get frustrated, it's probably because MDN seems to focus on being a comprehensive reference at the expense of offering examples and solutions to those who don't immediately care about the nitty gritty. I think fetch() is a perfect example of this. Back when I googled how to use it, I ended up on MDN and it wasn't too helpful. I had to scroll down and click on another link to get an example, and while that example was for JSON, it immediately made it clear where I should look if I'm dealing with some other kind of response. Not that W3Schools is better. It sends me here: https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_ajax_examples.asp https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_ajax_examples.asp But what I'm really missing here is a php.net style website that gives me some concrete examples that solve the most common use-cases, and either offers more in-depth material if I want to properly understand it, or references MDN. I totally understand how for many situations W3Schools is that resource.

johnmarcus 8y ago

LOL, i just read your dumb stack overflow posts. They are dumb because it really makes no difference. Leaving off the spec is just a bad practice and getting butt hurt because of a "Tip" (not a declarative rule mind you) may not be correct (although I bet if you actually check browser behavior, w3 is probably correct - i'm not about to check 20+ browsers to find out). In the second post https://stackoverflow.com/a/52355253/1709587 https://stackoverflow.com/a/52355253/1709587, W3Schools gave you the information litterally from teh HTML4 spec. It's hardly W3's fault that it wasn't followed as designd. This is the type of pedantic nit-picking bullshit i'm talking about. And on your third link, I checked the W3Schools page and it literally says "Note: Only Firefox supports colspan="0",..." Contrary to what is in your StackOverlflow post, I assume you only read the Attribute Values and not the whole page. Blaming W3Schools for your lack of reading comprehension is shameful. I should probably go back to the first two questions and see what else you just didn't read, but were quick to blame they didn't have the "right answer". People just need to learn to read, imho.

XCabbage 8y ago
> w3 is probably correct > It's hardly W3's fault Note that W3Schools is not the W3, and have no official affiliation. > They are dumb because it really makes no difference. ... getting butt hurt because of a "Tip" It does make a difference. If that tip had been true, it would mean I'd been writing HTML that only worked in a subset of browsers the whole time, and I would've needed to go over all HTML forms I'd ever written and correct them to ensure browser compatibility, and educate my colleagues who also left off the attribute. Are you suggesting that I should read something like that, that if true would mean that all the forms I've written are broken, and just ignore it? Or blindly trust it, and demand that my colleagues change their code style on the basis of an unsubstantiated "tip"? What was I meant to do other than dig deeper to try to find out the truth? > W3Schools gave you the information litterally from teh HTML4 spec Yes. Which has been obsolete for years, and yet their page isn't updated. > I checked the W3Schools page and it literally says "Note: Only Firefox supports colspan="0",..." Contrary to what is in your StackOverlflow post I literally quote the same passage in my post and note, explicitly, that it is untrue. Firefox's behaviour is just like all the other browsers. Also, a moment ago you were berating me for taking an aside seriously. Now you're also berating for not scrutinising every aside for caveats that contradict the main documentation? It's unclear that there's any approach to reading W3Schools that will satisfy you, other than magically divining the truth from their docs even when what they write is wrong. > People just need to learn to read Evidently.