The state of Javascript documentation on the Web

I just wanted to show an example of a Google search that I did on a common Javascript topic. I’ve written about JS documentation on the Web in the past, but I didn’t have too many specifics in that post. I’ve linked to the PromoteJS movement, trying to get Mozilla docs to rank higher in search engines.

This was a valiant effort but unfortunately there is still a long way to go. Web standards are evolving rapidly, and having the first few search results for some simple task be basically links to content farms is frustrating.

Here is a screenshot of the Google results for “Javascript refresh page”:

Notice that the first several domains are quackit.com, mediacollege.com, grizzlyweb, etc. These are not very solid sources!

Maybe I’m idealizing the way that the Web should be functioning, and that the real answer to this is good reference books. I think that even with a ready reference book it would take more time to find these sorts of things than it would if search worked better with this stuff. Lots of these things are little facts that I know but I’m paranoid about and want to double-check quickly in the documentation. Or something that I’ve done 100 times but for some reason I go brain-dead and I need to jog my memory quickly.