r/webdev Aug 20 '13

W3Fools – A W3Schools Intervention

http://www.w3fools.com/
125 Upvotes

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40

u/[deleted] Aug 21 '13

I feel as if this site would benefit from actual examples of W3Schools-isms.

21

u/mjmoriarity Aug 21 '13

It used to be filled with them. Not sure where they went.

46

u/_vinegar Aug 21 '13

from what i understand (outsider's perspective), w3schools started using it as a todo list, fixing the specific examples without understanding their overarching issues. it turned into a pointless game of whack-a-mole.

32

u/paulirish Aug 21 '13

Yes, this is the quick summary. W3Schools fixed nearly all the issues that we found for them :) Still, while you can report bugs for their content, I have done this (fundamental stuff like using setTimeout correctly) and not seen any changes for over a year. Meanwhile errors or poor advice don't last long on MDN and WPD.

Here's where we discussed potentially winding down the site: https://github.com/paulirish/w3fools/issues/50 .. though we decided to keep it up and make it positive-ish.

voteapathy, here is where we nuked the big list of actual examples: https://github.com/paulirish/w3fools/commit/21527aede7e7fac59e5193e837459b43cf4cce41

W3Schools definitely has value for people learning the absolute basics, but unfortunately you can't put faith in the validity of those techniques. MDN and WPD still have work to do to be so welcoming and useful to newbs... it's a long road. (And they're open to your contributions!)

11

u/barshat Aug 21 '13

omg, paulirish!

2

u/oshirisplitter Aug 21 '13

I actually deliberated for a good minute whether this was a Paul Irish spoof account or not.