The MDN Web Docs page dedicated to HTML (HyperText Markup Language) provides a very brief history of the evolution of HTML, a brief explanation of what HTML is conceptually, and the syntax, or how JavaScript is written.
Primarily based on SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), the concept of hypertext was defined by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, eventually being specified as HTML in 1993.
HTML underwent several updates over the years and after version 4.0 was released, HTML was nearly abandoned in favor of XHTML.
The groups WHATWG and W3C continued work on HTML, releasing the final standardized version of HTML5 in 2014.
Though informative, the background information on the history of HTML serves little purpose.
The true value of the webpage lies within the Concept and Syntax section.
This section briefly explains elements, tags, and attributes, along with how they work together.
This brief overview of the concept and syntax of HTML is potentially enough information to enable someone who has never written HTML to learn the basics and produce an introductory level HTML document.
The MDN Web Docs page dedicated to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) provides a bit less information than that of HTML.
This web page is dedicated to explaining what CSS is and how to use it. Simply put, CSS control as how web pages display in a browser.
Web browsers are designed to interpret the CSS style declarations via setting properties and values.
Though primarily utilized along with HTML, CSS can also be used to style the markup languages SVG and XML. A selector is used to designate which elements will be impacted by the properties and values.
To further clarify how CSS operates, a simple example is provided in which the text color is set to yellow, and the background color is set to black wherever the selector "p" is designated on the HTML document.
The MDN Web Docs page dedicated to DOM (Document Object Model) provides a comparable level of information to the CSS MDN Web Doc, simply explaining what DOM is and how it works.
DOM is an API (Application Programming Interface) built to interact with HTML and XML documents.
More specifically, the DOM is loaded by the browser as a document model with nodes representing their various parts of the document, such as elements, strings, and comments.
This allows the code working through the browser to access and interact with the different nodes of the website. The DOM emerged when web browsers started utilizing JavaScript.
The MDN Web Docs page dedicated to JavaScript provides a great deal of information starting with a thorough description.
JavaScript is most well known as a scripting language utilized in web development; however, it can also be utilized outside of web browsers.
The three non web browser programs listed that utilize JavaScript are Node.js, Apache CouchDB, and Adobe Acrobat.
The web page continues to list a wide array of tutorial links, designated as beginner, intermediate, or advanced, to further ones understanding of JavaScript.
Of all the pages researched for this assignment, the page dedicated to JavaScript may be the most useful.
Just about anyone can start learning JavaScript and progress all the way to advanced level scripting.
Along with the tutorials, reference material is provided on: standard objects, expressions and operators, statements and declarations, and functions.
The bottom section of the webpage is dedicated to tools and resources that explain concepts including Firefox Developer Tools, JSBin (debugging tool), Stack Overflow, and more!
Summary of Documentation
In conclusion, MDN Web Docs is a trusted one stop shop of learning about web coding and anything that may be associated with web coding.
As I progress in my career, I will likely need to refresh my memory on topics learned, as well as learn new aspects about programming and web development.
MDN Web Docs will make it much easier for me to stay relevant with my knowledge and understanding of web development.
The internet is vast and not all sources are made equal, so having reliable resources to help along the way is a must.
I believe that these resources are being provided to students to ensure a more knowledgeable and more productive web/software development community.