Webmonkey stopped producing new content in the early 2000s and was sold by Wired to Lycos, I think, but much of the old content remained, such as the special characters reference, which I consult occasionally. Now the site has been re-purchased by Wired, which has decided to re-publish the tutorials on a wiki. That’s probably the best approach if you can’t spare the staff to manage the old content, but the historian in me is bothered that Thau’s JavaScript tutorial is gone, replaced by something generic. Why couldn’t Webmonkey have kept the old articles intact, perhaps with a notice suggesting that a piece might be outdated and a link to the new wiki? That’s sort of what PPK does at Quirksmode; he separates articles into “active” and “archived.” I’m sure we can live without knowing how to code for Netscape Navigator 4, but it’s good to remember where we’ve come from, to remember how and why things have changed since then.

However, Webmonkey promises to start creating new content relevant to today’s web, and that will be good news for those starting into web development.