Why it matters to know how to search for information
- There is too much information to fit into a single book, course, or head. New things constantly appear and old ones become outdated.
- Any task can be solved in different ways — the searching skill helps you navigate different opinions and approaches.
- Efficient searching saves time — especially when completing test assignments and work tasks.
- The searching skill works like a filter: the more you practice, the faster you weed out the unnecessary.
Critical thinking while searching
- Verify in practice. Found a solution — open your editor and try to apply it.
- Compare sources. Look for an answer not in one place, but in at least two or three.
- Top of the results ≠ quality. A site can be at the top simply because it is old or promoted through SEO.
How to identify outdated material
- Markup (HTML/CSS): material from before 2014 is very likely outdated. Flexbox came out in 2014, Grid — even later.
- JavaScript: on Wikipedia you can find a table of ECMAScript versions and match the article’s year to the language version.
- Publication dates: always check when the material was written. But remember — dates on websites can be faked. Dates in search engines (Google) can be trusted more.
- Site design: if it looks like it’s from the ’90s — the content may be from there too.
Classification of sites
Unreliable Mixed reliability Reliable
🔴 Unreliable sites (not recommended)
W3Schools — many errors, outdated information, including layouts built on floats. Often appears at the top of the results, but the content quality is questionable.
Outdated reference sites — any reference sites that contain attributes or approaches that don’t exist in modern HTML/CSS. For example, the
type attribute on a <ul> element, or layouts built on floats instead of Flexbox/Grid.SEO sites and machine translations — copycat sites made for clicks and ads, not for people. They often have a “modern” name, but the content is copied and machine-translated.
🟡 Sites of mixed reliability
Wikipedia — convenient for checking versions and release dates of technologies. Check the “Talk” tab — if there are heated disputes there, the information should not be trusted.
Stack Overflow — the best questions-and-answers site. Keep in mind that the accepted answer may be outdated — also look at the newer answers below.
Medium — articles of varying quality, but there is good material from well-known authors and companies.
Dev.to — a specialized community for developers. You can read, write, and discuss articles. It’s an analogue of a blog platform, but with a technical focus.
Hashnode — a blog platform for developers. Quality technical articles, and you can create your own blog with a custom domain.
Reddit (r/webdev, r/frontend, r/learnprogramming) — active communities with discussions, advice, and links. The quality varies, but there is a lot that’s useful.
Personal blogs — if an author helped you once, add the site to your bookmarks or RSS.
Social networks — on X (formerly Twitter) and Bluesky there are many frontend developers, on Telegram there are Ukrainian-language development channels, and on YouTube — countless educational channels (Kevin Powell, Fireship, Traversy Media, and others).
🟢 Reliable sites (recommended)
MDN Web Docs — the main reference for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. There is a Ukrainian translation (partial). An important advantage — outdated attributes are specially marked here.
Can I Use — checking support for HTML/CSS/JS features across different browsers. An indispensable tool before using new properties.
CSS-Tricks (owned by DigitalOcean since 2022) — practical guides, including the well-known Flexbox Guide and CSS Almanac.
Smashing Magazine — quality articles on markup, design, UX, and frontend from professional authors.
A List Apart — in-depth theoretical articles from well-known authors (new publications come out rarely, but the archive is valuable).
web.dev — articles and courses from Google: performance, accessibility, responsive design, security.
javascript.info — a complete encyclopedia of JavaScript. There is a Ukrainian translation.
freeCodeCamp — free interactive courses on HTML, CSS, JS, and other technologies. There are certificates.
The Odin Project — a free, full-fledged web development course from scratch, with practical projects.
Codrops — a collection of interactive demos, tutorials, and experiments with CSS and JavaScript. A great source of inspiration for creative animations, hover effects, page transitions, and non-standard UI solutions.
Awwwards — a platform that recognizes the best websites for design, creativity, and UX. Useful for finding references and inspiration: you can see what the highest-level modern sites look like and study their techniques through the browser inspector.
Specifications (HTML, CSS, ECMAScript) — the single source of truth. It is the HTML specification that answers the question of which element can be nested inside which.
🔧 Useful tools
Google Fonts — a free library of web fonts from Google. You can connect it to your site via
<link> or download it locally.SVG Repo — a free library of over 500,000 SVG icons and vector images with an open license.
IcoMoon — a tool for creating your own icon fonts and SVG sprites from free libraries.
Colorome — a Ukrainian-language color reference with names, codes (HEX, RGB, CMYK), and a converter between color models.
Excalidraw — a free online whiteboard for creating schemes and diagrams in a hand-drawn style, with collaboration support.
draw.io — a free online editor for creating flowcharts, UML diagrams, network diagrams, and other visual diagrams.
httpstatus.io — a tool for checking the HTTP statuses of URLs, response headers, and redirect chains.
loader.io — a cloud service for load testing of web applications.
Typebot — a no-code platform for creating and integrating chatbots into websites and messengers.
n8n — an open-source platform for automating workflows and integrating various services using a visual editor.
Udemy — a platform with paid and free video courses on various topics, including web development. The quality of the courses varies — choose based on reviews.
Genius Space — a Ukrainian online learning platform with courses in marketing, business, IT, and other areas.
skills.sh — a catalog of ready-made skills for AI coding agents that can be installed with a single command.
A large collection of tools: the frontend-tools repository on GitHub contains a collection of links to frontend development tools, grouped by category.
Techniques for effective searching
Refining the query
- Google the first thing that comes to mind — don’t waste time inventing the perfect query.
- If there are too many results and the one you need isn’t there — add a clarifying word.
- If there are too few results — remove extra words or drop the quotation marks.
- Quotation marks in a search engine mean searching for an exact match, but this can be too strict.
The query
BEM theme gave 100 million results. The query BEM color themes — only 100 thousand, and the very first result turned out to be the one needed.Searching within a specific site
Enter the query, then a space, then site: and the site’s address.
section site:html.spec.whatwg.org — will show results only from this site. Convenient when the site has no built-in search.Other options
- Image search — infographics and diagrams sometimes explain better than text.
- Video — conferences and talks on the topic.
- Podcasts — an audio format for learning in the background.
- Google Advanced Search — filters that can be used without knowing the search operators.
- RSS readers (for example, Feedly) — subscribing to updates from several sites in one place.
- Digests and newsletters — regular roundups of links on a topic. For example: Frontend Focus, JavaScript Weekly, CSS Weekly.
What to do if you found nothing
- Don’t give up right away — rephrase the query.
- Try a different search engine.
- Try searching in English — there is often more material and it is more up to date.
- If it still doesn’t work — ask a question on Stack Overflow, Dev.to, or Reddit. Provide all the information: code, errors, versions, operating system. No one can see your screen, so describe the problem in detail.
What to do if a site is gone
- Web Archive — stores copies of sites. The main tool for viewing deleted or changed pages.
- CachedView — a service for finding cached versions of pages from various sources. Google removed its own page cache in 2024, so third-party services have become the only alternative.
- The best option is to save important materials locally in advance.
Closing tips
- It’s better to read one article to the end than to open twenty and read none of them.
- Use learning development to improve your English: Chrome’s built-in translator, dictionary extensions, Google Translate.
- Knowing English, you can get by with MDN alone and never visit unreliable sites.
- And most importantly — don’t be shy about googling. It’s normal at any level of experience.
