Mozilla Hacks

MDN vs. MSDN: Mozilla FTW

By Eric Shepherd

Posted on September 30, 2011 in Docs and MDN

MindTouch, the developer of the software that powers the Mozilla Developer Network‘s documentation center, spent this week sponsoring a competitive battle, pitting MDN up against the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) site in the areas of user experience, social features, engagement, and findability. They offered their thoughts on the comparison between the two developer network sites in each of those categories, as well as overall, and then let their readers cast their votes on which they found superior in each area.

Today, MindTouch announced the result of their voting, and the Mozilla Developer Network site won in all categories (albeit by a slender margin in the “social” arena), as well as overall.

That serves as an affirmation that our open documentation model works, and works well. We have big plans for the future that will help make our content even better. Watch this space for news!

About Eric Shepherd

Back in the early days of my career, I was a coder for computer games; if you search little-known Mac titles published by companies including Interplay/MacPlay, MGM Interactive, and Logicware, you'll see my name. Eventually, that work got old and I became a technical writer. Now I'm the developer documentation team lead at Mozilla.

More articles by Eric Shepherd…

3 comments

  1. Luis Felipe

    Great! Already knew MDN was far better than MSDN for documentation , but seeing I’m not the onlyone who thinks that way is gratifying. Congratulations to the MDN team! Keep up the good work. What I dislike the most from MSDN is the lack of explanations of why and how everything works. I don’t see that trend in MDN

    October 2nd, 2011 at 14:30

  2. Bronislav Klucka

    Heh… so the creators of certain system publish competition concerning their system on their site… and they won!!! Well quite a surprise, really congrats :D :D :D

    Don’t get me wrong MDN is great (and frankly so is MSDN), but such a LAME competition… shame

    October 3rd, 2011 at 00:54

  3. Caspy7

    @Bronislav Klucka
    This is exactly what came to my mind when I read this. I imagine if MS had run this poll for it’s readers the results would have been quite different. It’s surprising that MSDN excelled in any area.

    October 3rd, 2011 at 10:58

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