I've seen a lot of aggression against w3schools but this is worse. An angry rant website. So much nitpicking. So much tantrums. They seem not to be interested in making w3schools better but want to destroy them.
From w3fools:
The markup of the W3Schools site itself is awful and does not conform to best practices: table in table in table in table, with lots of inline styles.
Completely irrelevant. Don't shoot the messenger.
I use what my search engine gives me. w3schools is usually on top. I learned a lot from w3schools and sometimes even directly go to it for reference.
Well there's a reason why everything that mentions w3schools gets down voted into oblivion over at Stackoverflow.
The site is horrible. Period.
> Completely irrelevant. Don't shoot the messenger.
Aha. Well, if they can't even get their own site right, why should I listen to them in the first place?
Sorry, but that's like hiring a Web Design whose own Web Site consists of nothing more than yellow 20px Comic Sans text on a blue background that uses a million blink tags.
They don't claim to be web designers. The web site is easy to use and a great resource for beginners. Their XPath tutorial was much better than other tutorials when I needed to get a quick start a couple of years ago.
The table discussion is irrelevant to the users. Most of them never look at the source code and is interested in the actual tutorials. If table based layout invalidates a site, you should stop using Google, HN and Stack Overflow...
> The web site is easy to use and a great resource for beginners.
Yep a great resource, for wasting a ton of precious time in which they could have learned how to do things right instead of using techniques from ca. 2000.
> ...interested in the actual tutorials.
Which are still the worst part of the site.
Example (just clicked on one of their JS tutorials):
> JavaScript statements can be grouped together in blocks.
> Blocks start with a left curly bracket {, and ends with a right curly bracket }.
> The purpose of a block is to make the sequence of statements execute together.
Pure BS. JavaScript has no block scope. {} aren't needed for "executing stuff together".
Another thing they tell people is that "var foo = 2;" and "foo = 2;", are equal, more BS.
> If table based layout invalidates a site...
There is a difference in using a table layout because it's a good choice (Google doesn't validate in any way, the just want to cut down traffic, which makes sense for them) and just using it because, well... because one has no better idea.
> JavaScript can be used to validate data - A JavaScript can be used to validate form data before it is submitted to a server. This saves the server from extra processing
I haven't seen the context of the original quote, but what you've quoted here is a valid statement and doesn't really have anything to do with what you're saying.
I'm in no way advocating client-side-only validation, but form validation on the client side to clean up mistakes can save a server round trip and a page reload, and so could save server side processing.
EDIT: just to clarify, I don't mean to turn this into a discussion with further nitpicking. I just thought your quote and comment were representative of some of the W3Fools content; picking a quote and interpreting it to mean what you want it to mean, and then criticizing it on that basis.
It only is a valid statement if you add the notes about always doing the validation server side too, and only using the JS one for improve UX.
But w3schools is read by beginners, they don't have any clue about web security whatsoever, if you don't tell them everything they will just go with the few things that you've told them.
That's the entire relevant context of the quote. It occurs in a list of what JavaScript is good for, and that's one of the items, with no further clarification. It definitely implies (though it doesn't explicitly require) client-only validation, since it talks about saving the server from having to do "extra processing" without qualification.
w3fools.com isn't relatively better (compared with web development best practice at it's release, with the web development prevailing wisdom when w3schools.com launched).
There are a litany of errors and mistakes in their own markup, so their quote of "W3Schools should both hold itself to, and be held to, the highest standards." is ironic - w3fools.com don't hold themselves up to these highest standards.
Also ironic is the statement that W3Schools.com don't link to the "specs" (they mean W3C Recommendations, which aren't specifications or specs) - yet looking through that long page there's no obvious link to the very same Recommendations. Surely that's not a difficult or time-consuming thing to do?
Their markup needs a good polish and refactor. It's littered with examples:
* lack of accessibility appreciation,
* non-understanding of descendent selectors in CSS,
* the difference between emphasis and strong,
* ignorance of CSS pseudo selectors,
* lack of properly thought-out heading structure,
* lack of appreciation as to what role="main" means,
* marking up a series of paragraphs as an ordered list,
* hiding asides and further information in HTML comments,
* misunderstanding of what is and isn't UTF-8,
* editorial changes to cited comments not marked up,
* blockquotes lacking proper citation (in either of the two possible semantic approaches),
* code fragments not marked up with code tags,
* use of accesskeys,
* lack of consistency over how an ellipsis is added to a page - they are using 4 different methods in one page,
* using markup for a presentational effect instead of using appropriate logical markup,
* lack of appreciation of "fragment" in document fragment identifiers.
* And 2005 just called, they want their clearfix class back.
As an example of best practice, their one page site falls below an acceptable level.
Their message is useful - as is parts of W3Schools - but they are repeating the same mistake.
Plus the overbearing righteous indignation that comes across in the largely copied and pasted mailing list isn't the right tone or approach. It's quite easy to pick apart nits in a site, it's quite another to demonstrate the ability to correctly explain the better ways of developing.
This is no better than the anti-Internet Explorer rants. A negative slight at things because it's cool.
The best way to usurp w3schools from the top of Google results is to write better content and share your wisdom. That however will involve bringing together a community focused on providing constructive and positively instructional material - that's something I'm unconvinced that the people behind w3fools.com can accomplish. There's already too much negativity and indignation in the site itself for any of it's creators to improve their credibility.
I've seen a lot of aggression against w3schools but this is worse. An angry rant website. So much nitpicking. So much tantrums. They seem not to be interested in making w3schools better but want to destroy them.
From w3fools:
The markup of the W3Schools site itself is awful and does not conform to best practices: table in table in table in table, with lots of inline styles.
Completely irrelevant. Don't shoot the messenger.
I use what my search engine gives me. w3schools is usually on top. I learned a lot from w3schools and sometimes even directly go to it for reference.
edit: Apparently there was a previous discussion here, on a draft version. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2082089