Anytime I land on w3schools, I go back to google and click on the MDN link. This was a learned behavior that I don't even question now.
Has w3schools gotten any better over the years? Would anyone consider using this or any package from them?
Has w3schools gotten any better over the years? Would anyone consider using this or any package from them?
=> https://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_match.asp
=> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
Comparing these two pages, only the second one is competent at describing what the function actually does. Neither is perfect. The MDN doesn't do a great job of communicating all the information, but at least all of the information is there.
The purpose of having Symbol values is to ensure the property keys are unique and can't collide with string keys that predate new standards.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
I think I've been using MDN for 20 years (I don't remember honestly when it first came to be), but it's first time I hear about it. Banner/link blindness is a hell of a thing! Thanks for letting me know.
"Found a problem with this page?"
With a section on how to edit it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24132494
This was in 2020, I don't know if they eventually hired _someone_ to work on MDN
MDN is of course fantastic, but generally requires more reading/scrolling and is therefore slower for simple things like what's the markup for a button or select drop down thing look like again.
As for the w3.css style sheet, it's quite good for sprucing up small internal web apps.
I can read the first para and figure out what I'll be learning. The code examples are interactive and visual, and help enormously.
MDN reads like a technical reference. Wordpress documentation is similarly structured, but it has a comments section with a lot of sample code for different use cases, which helps me figure out whether the function I'm looking at will help accomplish what I am trying to do.
W3Schools isn't "W3". It's W3Schools. To put it another way, W3Schools is "W3" in the same way that JavaScript is "Java" or Wikipedia is "Wiki".
Step 1: W3schools.com is the first link on Google, so I'll go there.
Step 2: OK, I copy/pasted some of the code into my Sublime Text scratchpad file, but I'm getting an error when I load it in the browser.
Step 3: Do a search on the error message, StackOverflow is the first result. Go there and find the issue (syntax error on W3schools page)
Compare this to a world where StackOverflow is always #1. Try posting a question about learning HTML and CSS and see how fast the mods delete your question. W3Schools serves an important purpose.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Getting_start...
Check out this page: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/margin-bloc...
> The `margin-block` CSS shorthand property defines the logical block start and end margins of an element, which maps to physical margins depending on the element's writing mode, directionality, and text orientation.
Whew, that's a lot.
Setting aside how inside baseball the terms "logical block" and "physical margin" are, this description fails to tell the reader why they would want to use this property. Why use this, instead of `margin`? It's nowhere on the page. Typically, that reasoning lays buried in the distant and forbidden "Guides" section (which MDN's search doesn't index).
To find our reasoning, you must go to Guides, under CSS expand "CSS building blocks," then finally click "Handling different text directions": https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS/Building_...
“But look, you found the explanation for `margin-block`, didn’t you?”
“Yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'”
> how to find the guides
I'll let you know when I learn how to find the guides. I didn't even know that one existed until I scoured the site.
What you won't find are general details on the more specific references. Unfortunately, search engines prefer the specific ones, so you will have to backtrack by yourself.
I only need MDN when I want to read stuff 'deep', but 98% of the time I don't need that depth.
MDN is also hard to navigate, it works like a thick dictionary to me, it will be needed, but only rarely.
Tried learning again in 2014, after a career change: Excellent experience, so good that I go there first.
I simply did not grok responsive design until I read their article about floats and media queries. I was trying to get admitted into a bootcamp at the time, and my assignment was to recreate a landing page from a PNG image, without using Bootstrap or any other grid framework.
Most official sources of technical documentation online are written by and for developers, and assume a lot of prior knowledge. I never understood a lick of the official jQuery documentation either, until I went through W3schools section on it, and then later Jon Duckett's beautifully visual dead-tree book on JS and jQuery.
There is a "try it yourself" that I sometimes use, merely because it's quick to whip something up, and much more faster than codepen.
MDN is a bit technical at times and doesn’t always have detailed examples a beginner might hope for.
Yeah. I prefer it to MDN sometimes because they usually have a "try it yourself" that actually works very well.
Doesn't matter how much better the MDN doc might be, I often just want to try it myself.
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
It's satisfying to see that my dislike is not some unfounded personal quirk!
W3schools has gotten a lot better I’ve the past 5 years or so. I use it for quick lookups and only go to mdn when I’m trying to learn something new.
MDN is a better choice for (almost) anything MDN has content for.
Somebody going to W3schools probably isn't looking for the latest and greatest. The person who is looking for that would already have a good grasp of the fundamentals, and would have graduated to looking elsewhere, like StackOverflow or Caniuse.com.
!mdn search term
brings you directly to MDN's search result page for search term.
Their website has, no idea about the company itself tho.
It’s probably the best and easiest to use css/js/html reference site anywhere.
I can’t gauge how it’s changed but I find it’s to-the-point and example driven format is perfect for the way I learn.
w3schools got way better, but back then w3fools had its reason.