5 ms·

Lay off W3Schools

85 points by qubot 14y ago

ekm2 14y ago
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and tons of STORIES about secure code,best practices,patchy examples,and some sections clearly marked "This notes are out of date".Man,i have barely learned to switch on a computer.What are you talking about??
polemic 14y ago
> "...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.
- qubot 14y ago
  #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.
  - polemic 14y ago
    #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 not served by continuing to promote W3Schools the top developer resource.
    - qubot 14y ago
      #1: You and I both know more examples are out there. #2: getElementById returns developer.mozilla.org as the first result for me. Anyway, what about the point of why there is so much support? Convenience beats accuracy. I don't use W3Schools much now because I know of the inaccuracies, but I loved it as a beginner since not many sources I found were as intuitive as it.
    - kamjam 14y ago
      #2: How is that w3schools fault that they are listed top of Google's search results? What do you expect them to do, somehow reduce their ranking? Surely it is the job of other sites to increase their ranking?
sachingulaya 14y ago
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 http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp "The <div> tag defines a division or a section in an HTML document. The <div> 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 <div> 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.
- qubot 14y ago
  > "Except w3schools isn't approachable and it isn't for beginners." My experience says the opposite. Sorry.
  - sachingulaya 14y ago
    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.
    - qubot 14y ago
      A content farm with quizzes, a live editor and sequential lessons?
- wallawe 14y ago
DanBC 14y ago
> 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".
- qubot 14y ago
  > "That's awful advice for beginners" It's not bad advice to suggest that developers be stupid if they are the type to learn from their mistakes. If they are not the type to learn from their mistakes, why are we worried about them?
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Being given correct information but making mistakes, and then learning from those mistakes in your efforts to recreate the good advice, is a useful learning technique. Being given incorrect information, and making mistakes, and not knowing you've made mistakes, is not a useful learning technique. And while these people are making mistakes and learning from them their customers are suffering buggy code and everything that goes with that - data loss and insecurity at the extreme end and unexpected behaviour at the mild end.
    - qubot 14y ago
      > "Being given incorrect information, and making mistakes, and not knowing you've made mistakes, is not a useful learning technique." W3Schools has pointed out that users take a risk with its content, and it made no claim over the quality of its code. The only element they have authority over is its clarity, and that is what's important. The information may be lacking, but I stick by my guns when I say that crap code can still make some concept that a tutorial revolves around clearer. If other elements are not relevant to the tutorial, I do not believe it is fair to blame the author for excluding them.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
executive 14y ago
nice url structure you got there
- qubot 14y ago
  http://www.sagegerard.com/blog/lay-off-w3schools/ http://www.sagegerard.com/blog/lay-off-w3schools/ works. Edit mode in Concrete5 does not use pretty links.
  - executive 14y ago
    considering you use this mess I'm not suprised you support w3schools: https://github.com/concrete5/concrete5/blob/master/web/concrete/dispatcher.php https://github.com/concrete5/concrete5/blob/master/web/concr...
    - qubot 14y ago
      Cool. I'm glad you care. You can clean it up. We done here?
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
esolyt 14y ago
To be fair, W3Schools is simpler, cleaner and more organized than the alternatives suggested by W3Fool. It is still the fastest way to start learning about a web technology. But perhaps it would be best if they wikify it.
- qubot 14y ago
  Maybe, but I would be concerned about a future where W3School's increase in accuracy hurts it's clarity.
ctrlfrk 14y ago
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
- qubot 14y ago
  That can be used against anything.
- andrewfelix 14y ago
  Except w3school is a road to heaven paved with bad instructions. None the less it is a road, and it's approachable.
  - ctrlfrk 14y ago
    Oh no, if you follow the instructions on that site you're going straight to code hell. Yes it is very approachable and enticing, but it's wrong.
    - qubot 14y ago
      I came out of it just fine. Satan had some good contacts.
      - ctrlfrk 14y ago
        That's the problem though, people who have been misled by w3schools often don't even realise it.
        qubot 14y ago
        I did. I am fully aware of the inaccurate content I ran with from w3schools, which is why I corrected myself. That does not change the fact w3schools was there when I needed a source that was easy to understand.
        andrewfelix 14y ago
        That's a tad presumptuous.
lbcadden3 14y ago
domain: w3fools.com created: 08-Jan-2011 http://whois.domaintools.com/w3fools.com http://whois.domaintools.com/w3fools.com
- qubot 14y ago
  The age of what is being talked about does not determine the relevance of the conversation and what it entails.
ceejayoz 14y ago
> It is unrealistic to expect beginners to learn what good code is before what code is in the first place. Aspiring programmers do not yet understand the nuances of their trade, and often overlook security concerns and the importance of formal documentation. That's no excuse for ignoring even the basics. Some of the w3schools tutorials are like starting a teenager's first driving lesson with "run down as many pedestrians as you want, we'll teach you how to not drive on sidewalks later".
- qubot 14y ago
  No, they're not. Quit exaggerating and let beginners be beginners.
  - ceejayoz 14y ago
    C'mon. Their "PHP MySQL Insert Into" tutorial (http://w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_insert.asp 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 excuse for presenting actively dangerous examples to them with no warning.
    - qubot 14y ago
      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.
      - ceejayoz 14y ago
        > Good code makes crappy tutorials. Not necessarily, and bad code can make dangerous tutorials.
        14y ago
mdm_ 14y ago
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.
- qubot 14y ago
  > "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.
shazow 14y ago
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 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.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  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.
  - qubot 14y ago
    > "That's the point of w3fools: w3s is not reliable..." This unreliable (albeit crystal-clear) source did not stop me from scoring a good portfolio and happy clients (http://linkd.in/ON5eHL http://linkd.in/ON5eHL).
    - ricardobeat 14y ago
      Working on a crappy Fujitsu laptop for years didn't stop me either, but I don't go out of my way to defend it. Your point seems to be that w3schools has a special place in your heart. Okay.
      - qubot 14y ago
        Forgive me for appreciating what helped me grow. > "Your point seems to be that w3schools has a special place in your heart. Okay." Yep.
corkill 14y ago
I have learnt/used as reference way more from w3schools than I ever will from the people who created w3fools. So kudos to them for criticizing the crap out of the site? (I do also see what they are doing as valuable, but I'd agree it's needlessly hostile). I of course didn't learn exclusively from w3chools (I doubt anyone does), it's just a resource. Not perfect, but it's useful.
gdg92989 14y ago
What is it 2008?
- qubot 14y ago
  The age of what is being talked about does not determine the relevance of the conversation and what it entails.
jpalomaki 14y ago
From the w3fools I learned the valuable trick that if you add "mdn" to your Google search you are likely to get a link pointing to Mozilla Developer Network.
briandear 14y ago
W3 is killing it in the SEO department though. It'd be nice to buy those guys and use that google-juice for the forces of good.
petercooper 14y ago
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 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 - to climb beyond them. He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it."
- qubot 14y ago
  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?
  - sirclueless 14y ago
    No, you're still on top of the mountain, you just no longer need the rungs.
    - qubot 14y ago
      Maybe not, but I can still appreciate them and remember what they offered.
  - petercooper 14y ago
    I think it might be interpreted as "throwing away" the ladder-based technique, not forgetting about it. So, for example, I might learn to build a Rails app using the scaffolding system, but once I know Rails well, I wouldn't.
  - maigret 14y ago
    It helps. Let's take the example of numbers. You begin learning as a child with 1, 2, 3... Everything is an integer and begins with one. Rapidly, you learn the notion of 0. And then at school, at some point, come the negative numbers. You have to "throw the ladder" that numbers are integer and begin with 1. You still know how to count, indeed in a more complex way. Let's say you begin with markup, and just put the style as a tag to begin with. At some point, you know what a style does, but you have to throw the ladder that it has to be inside the markup, and externalize it to .css file. Learning is a progressive experience.
sandollars 14y ago
Step 1: Log into Google.com Step 2: Block w3schools at http://www.google.com/reviews/t 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.
- kintamanimatt 14y ago
  That blocking no longer works for me.
DigitalSea 14y ago
Yeah, how dare we as developers criticise a website disseminating wrong information like W3Schools. It's not their fault they get tonnes of Google traffic and have made no effort whatsoever to bring their site inline with other equally great resources. The first Google result for the query, "div tag" is a W3Schools page. The page then cringefully displays a sample piece of code with an inline style colour attribute that probably would have been acceptable in 2002. Don't get me wrong, as a developer I think W3Schools can serve a purpose, but I've often found myself on a W3Schools reference page and not leaving a single useful piece of information. It feels like W3Schools hasn't changed since it launched. I'm guessing the software company that runs it has better things to do and doesn't really care whether or not they're miseducating people. And by the way, I think the author is about 7 years too late on the W3Schools hate train, the article reads like hating W3Schools is a new thing.
- qubot 14y ago
  > "I think the author is about 7 years too late..." If Hacker News participants ran the world no one would care about history. We can discuss things that happened in the past. It sure as hell sparked discussion here. > "Don't get me wrong, as a developer I think W3Schools can serve a purpose..." And it does. It's easy to understand, which is not something you find often in sites trying to teach something. As I said elsewhere, good code makes crappy tutorials since it introduces more concepts that can confuse and overwhelm a inexperienced reader.
jasonhanley 14y ago
I agree. I've been developing web stuff since '98 or so, and w3schools is quick, easy, and I've never run into an accuracy problem that affected a real, production site. Most are academic. Sure, there's better sites out there, but sometimes you just have to trust the Google. If the site shows up #1 for 90% of web stuff you're looking for, then others obviously found it useful too.
pbreit 14y ago
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.
- qubot 14y ago
  Yes! Thank you.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  We have MDN, dochub, sitepoint, etc, they all have up-to-date, correct content. We don't need another one. What's hideous about them?
  - maigret 14y ago
    MDN: Too Mozilla centric. I certainly hate devs who make Firefox-only pages more than ones who look up on w3schools. And I've met a few of them ;) dochub: Where are the tutorials? Sitepoint: The structure is messy. It looks like a blog, but a historical structure is awful for learning. I want topic categories. Also lots of things I don't care about - books, courses - I just want references and tutorials! MDN is better from this side. I'm not convinced. You're not going to kill w3schools if you don't understand why so many folks go to that site. Personally I didn't know dochub, and might probably get back soon on this site. It's clean, and the information is useful, but only when you already understand well what you're doing. It's not for learning the Web concepts. Also, it misses direct mention of browser support for every feature.
    - theevocater 14y ago
      Have you used the MDN? It's hosted by Mozilla but it's an open wiki. Almost any bug or oddity in a browser will likely be listed. There are pages for essentially every extension for most browsers as well. Webkit's extensions live at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/CSS_Reference/Webkit_Extensions https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/CSS_Reference/W... for example. The MDN also has fantastic tutorials (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/Getting_Started https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/Getting_Started is the CSS one) and lots of examples of good or complicated HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3. I see the MDN catch a lot of unwarranted flack and i don't understand why. Shoot I use chrome as my main webrowser and I still spend most of my time on dochub.io (which is sources entirely from the MDN) and the MDN itself.
ch0wn 14y ago
I think the important point is, that there ARE better alternatives out there. There's just no point in defending a mediocre and potentially harmful[0] learning platform. There's no need for hostility, just move on. [0]http://en.w3schools.com/php/php_ajax_database.asp http://en.w3schools.com/php/php_ajax_database.asp
wilhil 14y ago
"Some folks have started voicing"... How old is the article!?

85 points by qubot 14y ago

ekm2 14y ago

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??

polemic 14y ago

> "...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.

qubot 14y ago
#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.
- polemic 14y ago
  #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 not served by continuing to promote W3Schools the top developer resource.
  - qubot 14y ago
    #1: You and I both know more examples are out there. #2: getElementById returns developer.mozilla.org as the first result for me. Anyway, what about the point of why there is so much support? Convenience beats accuracy. I don't use W3Schools much now because I know of the inaccuracies, but I loved it as a beginner since not many sources I found were as intuitive as it.
  - kamjam 14y ago
    #2: How is that w3schools fault that they are listed top of Google's search results? What do you expect them to do, somehow reduce their ranking? Surely it is the job of other sites to increase their ranking?

sachingulaya 14y ago

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 http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp "The <div> tag defines a division or a section in an HTML document. The <div> 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 <div> 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.

qubot 14y ago
> "Except w3schools isn't approachable and it isn't for beginners." My experience says the opposite. Sorry.
- sachingulaya 14y ago
  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.
  - qubot 14y ago
    A content farm with quizzes, a live editor and sequential lessons?
wallawe 14y ago

DanBC 14y ago

> 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".

qubot 14y ago
> "That's awful advice for beginners" It's not bad advice to suggest that developers be stupid if they are the type to learn from their mistakes. If they are not the type to learn from their mistakes, why are we worried about them?
- DanBC 14y ago
  Being given correct information but making mistakes, and then learning from those mistakes in your efforts to recreate the good advice, is a useful learning technique. Being given incorrect information, and making mistakes, and not knowing you've made mistakes, is not a useful learning technique. And while these people are making mistakes and learning from them their customers are suffering buggy code and everything that goes with that - data loss and insecurity at the extreme end and unexpected behaviour at the mild end.
  - qubot 14y ago
    > "Being given incorrect information, and making mistakes, and not knowing you've made mistakes, is not a useful learning technique." W3Schools has pointed out that users take a risk with its content, and it made no claim over the quality of its code. The only element they have authority over is its clarity, and that is what's important. The information may be lacking, but I stick by my guns when I say that crap code can still make some concept that a tutorial revolves around clearer. If other elements are not relevant to the tutorial, I do not believe it is fair to blame the author for excluding them.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

executive 14y ago

nice url structure you got there

qubot 14y ago
http://www.sagegerard.com/blog/lay-off-w3schools/ http://www.sagegerard.com/blog/lay-off-w3schools/ works. Edit mode in Concrete5 does not use pretty links.
- executive 14y ago
  considering you use this mess I'm not suprised you support w3schools: https://github.com/concrete5/concrete5/blob/master/web/concrete/dispatcher.php https://github.com/concrete5/concrete5/blob/master/web/concr...
  - qubot 14y ago
    Cool. I'm glad you care. You can clean it up. We done here?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]

esolyt 14y ago

To be fair, W3Schools is simpler, cleaner and more organized than the alternatives suggested by W3Fool. It is still the fastest way to start learning about a web technology. But perhaps it would be best if they wikify it.

qubot 14y ago
Maybe, but I would be concerned about a future where W3School's increase in accuracy hurts it's clarity.

ctrlfrk 14y ago

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

qubot 14y ago
That can be used against anything.
andrewfelix 14y ago
Except w3school is a road to heaven paved with bad instructions. None the less it is a road, and it's approachable.
- ctrlfrk 14y ago
  Oh no, if you follow the instructions on that site you're going straight to code hell. Yes it is very approachable and enticing, but it's wrong.
  - qubot 14y ago
    I came out of it just fine. Satan had some good contacts.
    - ctrlfrk 14y ago
      That's the problem though, people who have been misled by w3schools often don't even realise it.
      - qubot 14y ago
        I did. I am fully aware of the inaccurate content I ran with from w3schools, which is why I corrected myself. That does not change the fact w3schools was there when I needed a source that was easy to understand.
      - andrewfelix 14y ago
        That's a tad presumptuous.

lbcadden3 14y ago

domain: w3fools.com created: 08-Jan-2011 http://whois.domaintools.com/w3fools.com http://whois.domaintools.com/w3fools.com

qubot 14y ago
The age of what is being talked about does not determine the relevance of the conversation and what it entails.

ceejayoz 14y ago

> It is unrealistic to expect beginners to learn what good code is before what code is in the first place. Aspiring programmers do not yet understand the nuances of their trade, and often overlook security concerns and the importance of formal documentation. That's no excuse for ignoring even the basics. Some of the w3schools tutorials are like starting a teenager's first driving lesson with "run down as many pedestrians as you want, we'll teach you how to not drive on sidewalks later".

qubot 14y ago
No, they're not. Quit exaggerating and let beginners be beginners.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  C'mon. Their "PHP MySQL Insert Into" tutorial (http://w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_insert.asp 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 excuse for presenting actively dangerous examples to them with no warning.
  - qubot 14y ago
    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.
    - ceejayoz 14y ago
      > Good code makes crappy tutorials. Not necessarily, and bad code can make dangerous tutorials.
      - 14y ago

mdm_ 14y ago

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.

qubot 14y ago
> "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.

shazow 14y ago

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 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.

ricardobeat 14y ago
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.
- qubot 14y ago
  > "That's the point of w3fools: w3s is not reliable..." This unreliable (albeit crystal-clear) source did not stop me from scoring a good portfolio and happy clients (http://linkd.in/ON5eHL http://linkd.in/ON5eHL).
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    Working on a crappy Fujitsu laptop for years didn't stop me either, but I don't go out of my way to defend it. Your point seems to be that w3schools has a special place in your heart. Okay.
    - qubot 14y ago
      Forgive me for appreciating what helped me grow. > "Your point seems to be that w3schools has a special place in your heart. Okay." Yep.

corkill 14y ago

I have learnt/used as reference way more from w3schools than I ever will from the people who created w3fools. So kudos to them for criticizing the crap out of the site? (I do also see what they are doing as valuable, but I'd agree it's needlessly hostile). I of course didn't learn exclusively from w3chools (I doubt anyone does), it's just a resource. Not perfect, but it's useful.

gdg92989 14y ago

What is it 2008?

qubot 14y ago
The age of what is being talked about does not determine the relevance of the conversation and what it entails.

jpalomaki 14y ago

From the w3fools I learned the valuable trick that if you add "mdn" to your Google search you are likely to get a link pointing to Mozilla Developer Network.

briandear 14y ago

W3 is killing it in the SEO department though. It'd be nice to buy those guys and use that google-juice for the forces of good.

petercooper 14y ago

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 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 - to climb beyond them. He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it."

qubot 14y ago
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?
- sirclueless 14y ago
  No, you're still on top of the mountain, you just no longer need the rungs.
  - qubot 14y ago
    Maybe not, but I can still appreciate them and remember what they offered.
- petercooper 14y ago
  I think it might be interpreted as "throwing away" the ladder-based technique, not forgetting about it. So, for example, I might learn to build a Rails app using the scaffolding system, but once I know Rails well, I wouldn't.
- maigret 14y ago
  It helps. Let's take the example of numbers. You begin learning as a child with 1, 2, 3... Everything is an integer and begins with one. Rapidly, you learn the notion of 0. And then at school, at some point, come the negative numbers. You have to "throw the ladder" that numbers are integer and begin with 1. You still know how to count, indeed in a more complex way. Let's say you begin with markup, and just put the style as a tag to begin with. At some point, you know what a style does, but you have to throw the ladder that it has to be inside the markup, and externalize it to .css file. Learning is a progressive experience.

sandollars 14y ago

Step 1: Log into Google.com Step 2: Block w3schools at http://www.google.com/reviews/t 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.

kintamanimatt 14y ago
That blocking no longer works for me.

DigitalSea 14y ago

Yeah, how dare we as developers criticise a website disseminating wrong information like W3Schools. It's not their fault they get tonnes of Google traffic and have made no effort whatsoever to bring their site inline with other equally great resources. The first Google result for the query, "div tag" is a W3Schools page. The page then cringefully displays a sample piece of code with an inline style colour attribute that probably would have been acceptable in 2002. Don't get me wrong, as a developer I think W3Schools can serve a purpose, but I've often found myself on a W3Schools reference page and not leaving a single useful piece of information. It feels like W3Schools hasn't changed since it launched. I'm guessing the software company that runs it has better things to do and doesn't really care whether or not they're miseducating people. And by the way, I think the author is about 7 years too late on the W3Schools hate train, the article reads like hating W3Schools is a new thing.

qubot 14y ago
> "I think the author is about 7 years too late..." If Hacker News participants ran the world no one would care about history. We can discuss things that happened in the past. It sure as hell sparked discussion here. > "Don't get me wrong, as a developer I think W3Schools can serve a purpose..." And it does. It's easy to understand, which is not something you find often in sites trying to teach something. As I said elsewhere, good code makes crappy tutorials since it introduces more concepts that can confuse and overwhelm a inexperienced reader.

jasonhanley 14y ago

I agree. I've been developing web stuff since '98 or so, and w3schools is quick, easy, and I've never run into an accuracy problem that affected a real, production site. Most are academic. Sure, there's better sites out there, but sometimes you just have to trust the Google. If the site shows up #1 for 90% of web stuff you're looking for, then others obviously found it useful too.

pbreit 14y ago

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.

qubot 14y ago
Yes! Thank you.
ricardobeat 14y ago
We have MDN, dochub, sitepoint, etc, they all have up-to-date, correct content. We don't need another one. What's hideous about them?
- maigret 14y ago
  MDN: Too Mozilla centric. I certainly hate devs who make Firefox-only pages more than ones who look up on w3schools. And I've met a few of them ;) dochub: Where are the tutorials? Sitepoint: The structure is messy. It looks like a blog, but a historical structure is awful for learning. I want topic categories. Also lots of things I don't care about - books, courses - I just want references and tutorials! MDN is better from this side. I'm not convinced. You're not going to kill w3schools if you don't understand why so many folks go to that site. Personally I didn't know dochub, and might probably get back soon on this site. It's clean, and the information is useful, but only when you already understand well what you're doing. It's not for learning the Web concepts. Also, it misses direct mention of browser support for every feature.
  - theevocater 14y ago
    Have you used the MDN? It's hosted by Mozilla but it's an open wiki. Almost any bug or oddity in a browser will likely be listed. There are pages for essentially every extension for most browsers as well. Webkit's extensions live at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/CSS_Reference/Webkit_Extensions https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/CSS_Reference/W... for example. The MDN also has fantastic tutorials (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/Getting_Started https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/Getting_Started is the CSS one) and lots of examples of good or complicated HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3. I see the MDN catch a lot of unwarranted flack and i don't understand why. Shoot I use chrome as my main webrowser and I still spend most of my time on dochub.io (which is sources entirely from the MDN) and the MDN itself.

ch0wn 14y ago

I think the important point is, that there ARE better alternatives out there. There's just no point in defending a mediocre and potentially harmful[0] learning platform. There's no need for hostility, just move on. [0]http://en.w3schools.com/php/php_ajax_database.asp http://en.w3schools.com/php/php_ajax_database.asp

wilhil 14y ago

"Some folks have started voicing"... How old is the article!?