We received a question asking where to on the net to go to find free HTML instruction. Well, of all the places on the internet today, this is still one of the strongest going sites. It is also one of the most properly done sites, and for a good reason: They not only teach the proper standards so that you learn the Right Way, rather than the quick and messy way, but they use W3 standards, and have won numerous awards for their site (which incidentally gets an average of 1,000,000 hits per day).
Also, W3Schools.com does not just offer free education on HTML programming. They are the ultimate webmasters resource because the teach all of the major components of web design and development. The full list would be quite a long one, and you can see it on their site navigation bar, but I will say that finding a site that teaches HTML, XHTML, CSS, ASP, XSL, SOAP, SQL, PHP, and many many more technologies… all in one place… absolutely amazing and a resource that should be supported in every way (I would encourage you to click on some ads while you are there, just to help them out;).
This site is incredibly useful, highly organized, follows strict standards of development, and is Free! Here’s the grade and the reasons why.
WEBSITE GRADE FOR:
http://www.W3Schools.com
A = USEFUL CONTENT (4cr)
A = APPEALING DESIGN (3cr) (The layout is very clean, which is what you should have for a site which will require the user to do a lot of reading. There are ads on the site, but they are arranged in such a manner as to not disrupt your experience much.)
A = EASE OF NAVIGATION (3cr) (Very easy to navigate. The subject areas are listed on the main page, and each category has proper sub navigation. In addition, each tutorial / course allows you to follow a step-by-step format.)
A = VALID CODE SYNTAX (2cr) (Upon running a validation check on the HTML behind this website, View Validator How often do you see someone get an ‘A’ in this? Not very, I can tell you that. But their pages are properly designed and conform to XHTML 1.0 Transitional Rules. Their Cascading Style Sheets also verified as being properly designed. Excellent! But then… I would not expect less from the W3 Schools who teach the W3 standards.
B = DISABILITY AND BROWSER ACCESS (2cr) (Upon running a validation check on the HTML behind this website, View this Validator, it came up with very few problems, but some, that should be fixed. There were 9 unset image command tags on the main page, and 3 had no alt text. I would like to see this fixed because I am someone who advocates Disability Access for the Web. Of course, the other bonus is faster loading time with predefined image sizes.)
A = FINDABILITY (3cr) (Excellent Job! There were no errors in the meta tags, and that leads to us being able to find the site easier through search engines, in fact, this site has very high search engine ratings.)
A = FRUSTRATION LEVEL (3cr) (Excellent Job! There were no broken links. Also, the site would take approximately 8.9 seconds to load over a 28.8 kbps network connection. That’s simply wonderful.)
Total Possible Credits = 20 Total Possible GPA = 4.0
Total Quality Points Given = 78
Total Website GPA = 3.9 (A-)
~Review conducted by WebsiteStyle.com~
