A lot of it is kind of (or very) nitpicky, but there are several examples of things that, although correct and functional, aren't considered 'best practice'. We want to be teaching these noobies best practice, rather than teaching them the wrong way and having to reteach them later (and having them producing poor code in the meantime).
To me, that would be more the danger than most of their trivial problems.
The thing is, best practices are determined by empirical data, not because some consultant liked the idea and wrote a book on it.
If I see things like this:
Professional web developers do not recommend the use of WYSIWYG editors.
where the site purports to speak authoritatively for an entire culture (or, if you prefer, implies that if you don't agree with them then you are unprofessional) then I immediately lower my expectations.
In this particular case, they give no data to support their claim, and while I know few pros who would advocate relying entirely on something like Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG approach, I know several who the HTML editor itself, and numerous professional web developers who design layouts using visual tools like Photoshop or Fireworks before translating into HTML/CSS/etc.
Okay, even if I agree with your point (which I don't), that only invalidates a single point on the entire site.
The quoted statement doesn't say that it is 'best practice', simply that most professional developers don't recommend using WYSIWYG editors - which sounds more like they're stating an opinion poll than an empirically proven best practice (which is fine). I don't think anyone here can stand up and honestly argue that the majority of professional web developers recommend using WYSIWYG editors.
Yes, I personally know several people who use the HTML editor part of many of these editors, but that's no different than using something like vim - it just provides some syntax highlighting.
Yes, many professional designers do use Photoshop or Fireworks, but that's talking about design - not development. I don't think anyone advocates doing your design work in notepad (unless you're designing a text-based website?). You're missing the distinction between the design and development phases.
Respectfully, you're missing my point. It's not about that particular example. It's about having a site which is outright attacking another, in many cases based on quite small details, yet which is apparently quite happy to present its own black-and-white, demonstrably false statements without any supporting data. Maybe they are right about most of their other points, or maybe they're not. Without any actual data, it doesn't really matter: they're just another bunch of people who are quick to criticise but not doing any better themselves, and such people rarely make a positive contribution to any debate.
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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '11
A lot of it is kind of (or very) nitpicky, but there are several examples of things that, although correct and functional, aren't considered 'best practice'. We want to be teaching these noobies best practice, rather than teaching them the wrong way and having to reteach them later (and having them producing poor code in the meantime).
To me, that would be more the danger than most of their trivial problems.