Technical Writer

• Of all the sites I would love to have developed, the W3Schools site has to be top of my list.

It’s a site for developers, and it teaches you how to build web sites. As a training tool it succeeds on every level a user required. It was created by Hege, Stale and Jan Egil Refsnes. They have done a fantastic job.

Let’s talk first about what it doesn’t have.

• It doesn’t have fancy training videos
• It doesn’t have Flash (except in the Flash tutorial)
• It doesn’t have voiceovers

In fact, at first glance, it looks very much like a site that might have been written in the early days of web design (well designed, but still almost static html). Where are all the bells and whistles that people are used to now?

They don’t need them.

What the site does have, to paraphrase some of their readers, is:

• Easy explanations
• Excellent reference guide
• Try it yourself on-line examples
• Free

Quoting Chris, from About Comments from Visitors on the W3Schools web site.

And also Donoho:

Every link I click takes me to more information I didn’t even know I wanted.

• The layout - makes navigation a non-thought.
• The content - simply expansive.
• The examples - EXACTLY what I need and nothing more.

I dream of building sites that are as easy to use, informative, helpful and productive as this one.

So why is the site so good? What makes it work, and what makes 11 million visitors drop in over a one month period?

Obviously, the writing has a lot to do with it.  The Refsnes can obviously write well. Not only that, they take what most people see as complex technical information and break it down into easily digestible chunks. Even if you don’t think you are technical, try out their Introduction to HTML and see if you can work it out.

But it’s not just the writing. There’s more. There’s the way everything is laid out so you don’t have to look hard to find something. There’s the way the information is chunked so that you don’t have to spend five or ten minutes reading through a tutorial when all you want is, say, a quick refresher on how to use the xslt choose element. There’s the way you don’t get bogged down in extraneous detail, all you get are the basics.  And, of course, there are the examples.

I have to say the Try-It examples on W3Schools is some of the best use of web technology I have seen. And the weird thing is, it’s (relatively) basic technology, deceptivly simple and it’s great.

It also suits its audience. The audience is web developers, and it has the full range of experience covered. Beginners can do the tutorials, experienced users can drop in and look up a quick reference on something they haven’t used in a while.

It’s comprehensive. It provides and introduction to pretty much everything you need to know about web development.

It works.

As another user commented:

I point to your site as an example of how to teach on-line. 

And so do I.

Last Modified : May 9th, 2008
Filed under : Tech Writer, Web 2, Tools
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