WYSIWYG == evil

[DukeofNukes]

For those of you who may not know, I'm in the Navy, and I just took over as my command's webmaster. I got handed a full-blown website that's been just sort of accreting over the years; it's larger (and in some ways, more complex) than many enterprise sites: NCSU NROTC (http://www.ncsu.edu/navy_rotc/). It always seemed to be really slow to me, but I thought that was a result of the server on which it resided.

I was wrong.

I just went poking through the files in question, and they were all done with WYSIWYG editors (some of them in M$ Word, of all the &^$%ing stupid things). The bloat and malformed HTML was amazing. After hand-editing one page -- repairing malformed tags, removing useless tags (like nested font tags whose only attribute was color, and every tag had a different color!), and in general demunging the damnable thing -- I cut the filesize from 8.4 KB to 2.6 KB.

WYSIWYG is evil. The last several people to maintain this thing were lazy and didn't clean it up, but it shouldn't have been that badly jacked-up to begin with. With a good editor program, I can code cleaner, faster, and equally pretty sites just as fast as someone using DreamWeaver or what have you. For the sake of people who have to come along behind you and maintain your pages after you're gone, don't write with these things, or if you feel compelled to, bloody well clean up your code afterwards.

</rant>

[Nafae]

WYSIWYG actually works quite well if you aren't using an editor like word... Dreamweaver is great-alot of big sites use it for their work. It isn't the editor, it's the person running it. You always have to be SURE to check over the site code and clean up where necessary, but to get the design right dreamweaver works quite nicely.

So I can see where you are coming from, but it's probably the result of your previous webmaster's skill rather than the quality of the editor (unless it's word, or something goofy like that.) The only one I can recommend is Dreamweaver, I'm sure adobe's product is good too but I havn't tried it.

[imported_Gryphon]

I started with Tipods form field webpage maker thingy. Then I started viewing code of other sites to see how they embedded sound and such and started using AOLPress WYSIWYG and started editing the source. I then picked up Frontpage and it is good if you dont use the FP propriatary stuff, which I never did, and upload your files via a different ftp method. After a while of creating in WYSIWYG and viewing the source I learned the code. Now I do everything in Ultraedit or with CuteFTP's text editor when on the fly.

WYSIWYG is great for people who want to learn, you can instantly view the code for what it is you want to accomplish. I have a hard time understanding written tutorials on how to make a table, for example, I understand the code better when I can see the code when it is exactly for what I want. I still use Frontpage when I get stumped on complex tables, I can rough it out with Frontpage and then take the generated code and edit it to suit. A table created in Frontpage is the same code as by hand. It is just the proprietary stuff that ruins a WYSIWYG.

[artslave]

I prefer to build HTML by hand too, although I agree with Nafae, DreamWeaver is a great WYSIWYG editor. I've been using HomeSite for 5 years or more. I'm looking forward to installing DreamWeaver MX, which finally incorporates HomeSite into the UI.

I find MS editors (like Word and FrontPage) to create horribly bloated pages just like the ones you describe. Personally I think FrontPage and its friggin' FP extensions are evil... evil I tell you they're evil!

The NROTC site is pretty good. I particularly like the random images on the front page. Good thing you cut the size of the pages because I just ate up some of your bandwidth refreshing the page a couple dozen times to see the next image :p

[imported_Gryphon]

I doubt the editor did that on its own, although it should have checking for this. But the webmaster probably highlighted a word and said Font 2 and then later did it again, and again. Had he done it just once, or the editor had checking it wouldnt have done that, so it's an either/or thing.

*edit Ack, Duke deleted his second post which this is in reply to some code he posted.

*edit2 which is now below.

[DukeofNukes]

Here's a sample of the code from one of the pages I cut over 60%:


</a></font><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Arial" size="2">
<font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Arial" size="2">
<font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Arial" size="2">
<font color="#FFFFFF">• </font></font>
<font color="#FFFFFF" face="Arial" size="2"><a href="event_cal/main.html" target="content">
</a></font></font></font></font><font color="#FFFFFF" face="Arial" size="2">
<a href="mailto:NAVY_Recruiting@ncsu.edu?subject=Additional%20Information%20Request&cc=
NROTC_Webmaster@ncsu.edu">Contact
Us</a></font><font face="Arial" size="2">
<font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Arial" size="2"><font color="#FFFFFF"></font></font>
</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font><font color="#FFFFFF">
</font></font>
[/b]
That leaves out the half-dozen or so "&" characters in that same block of code.

The meta-tags in this one indicated it had been made with Word, but some of the others that were almost as badly munged were marked as DreamWeaver.

edit --- Sorry, the C&P looked all nasty, so I went back to fix it.

[imported_Gryphon]

Originally posted by artslave
Personally I think FrontPage and its friggin' FP extensions are evil... evil I tell you they're evil!

I have used FP for a couple years now and I still don't know what FP extensions are. Like I said before, the source is fine if you don't use the proprietary stuff.

[DukeofNukes]

OK, I'm willing to take y'all's word on the fact that WYSIWYG editors are not universally evil. I am therefore changing this into a rant on making your code f(*&^ing readable and easy for someone else coming in after you to understand and maintain.

[Ismahel]

We (GnuVince, another guy and me) had to a webpage for a project in CEGEP and we had not a lot of time to do it. Making the complete site with **insert your favourite text editor here** would have taken way too long. I decided that we may use a WYSIWYG app (actually Dreamweaver). And the HTML code that made was not that ugly. I agree that a lot of these apps create a lot of trash.

Normally, I use vim to make my web pages, but that one was too big for the short amount of time we had.

[GnuVince]

Agreed. Making it with a normal text-editor was TOTALLY out of question (though we edited some bits with vim. e.g: putting values into lists). We saved a LOT of time and got a great grade (95%) for our work. I used to say that WYSIWYG HTML editors, but when they can get you such a good grade, then use it!



The result is at: http://darkhost.mine.nu:81/~seb/normick/login.html

[Seph]

please delete

[imported_Gryphon]

There were lots of explanations and support for them in this post, did that answer the question :?

[Nafae]

Yes hardcoded html is easy when you are making a family photo album. Not when you are attempting to create a slew of advanced pages which would take a day per page to program. I get the impression alot of people think it's somehow better to use hardcode, as if it makes you a more advanced user. Sadly, that is usually a misconception. Most sites that are often modified, have alot of HTML (too much to sort through to find what you want to change), and have advanced programmers employ programs like Dreamweaver to speed up development of their site. Most people who swear by hardcoded html are the ones running small, personal sites. (Note I said most, you may be the exception..) And yes, this is a programming board. And yes, WYSIWYG does create a coded page, and yes it does require one to have knowledge of HTML -Especially for the high end users that can shell out the money for such a program.


Don't make such assumptions that all that use WYSIWYG programs don't in fact know how to program.

[Seph]

please delete

[imported_Gryphon]

We are talking about how a WYSIWYG can produce a page just fine without the crap that people think they generate.

HTML comes out the same weather you use php, asp, cfm....or a WYSIWYG editor, its weather or not you allow it to output extra or propietary crap is the users fault.

However, you obvisously will never change your view like many people. I don't use a WYSIWYG editor regularly, but I do know that they can output lean code without the crap that people seem to like to hop on the bandwagon and say they put out.

[DukeofNukes]

And, after having started this near-flame session, I'll go ahead and weigh in again by saying that, based on what I read here and a recommendation of another friend, I picked up Dreamweaver, played with it a little, and used it (quite effectively) to help clean a lot of the junk-tags out of about thirty pages as quickly as it took me to do two or three strictly by hand. Although I still do most of my coding (even for the sizable unit website) by hand, I was impressed by the utility of Dreamweaver for certain tasks.

[unruly]

a good wysiwyg editor can be found attached to Mozilla. It produces clean, readable, and HTML 4.01 transitional compliant code with minimal fuss. Plus, Mozilla 1.0 is out, so you really don't have much excuse NOT to try it.

Make sure you configure it so that it doesn't reformat your html on edit/open, I *hate* that.

[Nafae]

PHP CMS's have nothing to do with making a webpage, they deal with generating the CONTENT of the page.

EDIT: And FYI, you would use a CMS to generate your content and a editor to create a good looking page. At least that's how I used to do it.

www.nokia.com designed their site with dreamweaver.
www.hotbot.com designed their site with dreamweaver.
http://web8.si.edu/nmah/htdocs/ssb-old/2_home/fs2.html designed their site with dreamweaver.
www.nationalgeographic.com designed their site with dreamweaver.
www.mcy.com designed their site with dreamweaver
www.hp.com designed their site with dreamweaver.
www.compaq.com designed their site with dreamweaver.
www.cisco.com designed their site with dreamweaver.
www.warnerbrothers.com designed their site with dreamweaver.
www.pg.com designed their site with dreamweaver.
www.wfu.edu designed their site with dreamweaver.

In order: nokia, hotbot, smithsonian, national geographic, backstreet boys, hewlett packard, compaq, cisco, warnerbrothers, proctor and gamble, wake forest.

They have all designed their sites with dreamweaver.

How about checking your sources before trying to base an arguement around them.

[imported_Gryphon]

Here are a few site made with Frontpage linked from FP's own site, not big big business, but very nice sites with plenty of content.

http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/evaluation/ecomgallery.htm

[Old Breadbutt]

Originally posted by Nafae
WYSIWYG actually works quite well if you aren't using an editor like word... Dreamweaver is great-alot of big sites use it for their work. It isn't the editor, it's the person running it. You always have to be SURE to check over the site code and clean up where necessary, but to get the design right dreamweaver works quite nicely.

I agree, I used to use Dreamweaver and I liked it, until it started to do weird things every now and then. I moved to Homesite and have never been happier with an editor. I whish it had an integrated ftp client like Dreamweavers... that was nice, you could just double click a file and dreamweaver would upload it to the appropriate directory ... nice. The trouble is when you get someone who doesn't take the time to learn the code or even look at it, using Dreamweaver. Especially if you have a site all hand coded so that it's easy to read and edit, they go in make a simple text change and all of a sudden your break tags are at the end of your lines and various other things depending on how poorly they understand what they're doing.

oh man but don't get started on making html from word. Come to think of it, I inherited a project from a former employee who used fireworks to build all his pages. (and edit them) he hadn't even taken time to swap out solid color images with hex equivalents... WOW ouch.

[Dru Lee Parsec]

Don't Back Down Duke. WYSIWYG's are evil! Just like IDE's are evil for programmers. I totally agree with you that once you know what you're doing it's easier and faster to write html code by hand. And that way at least you know what the code is doing.

[ThurberMingus]

Originally posted by Dru Lee Parsec
Don't Back Down Duke. WYSIWYG's are evil! Just like IDE's are evil for programmers. I totally agree with you that once you know what you're doing it's easier and faster to write html code by hand. And that way at least you know what the code is doing.

Hmm . . . I definitely have problems with what you are saying. True it is that there are those who know nothing about either HTML or any other language, and DO rely too much on a WYSIWYG to do the coding for them, or the IDE to do the programming for them, but honestly - if you KNOW what you are doing, these tools increase your productivity dramatically, and if you know your tool well enough, you don't worry about what is going on behind the scenes because you *know* what it is doing.

I have used Dreamweaver for over 2 years now, I know HTML, and could kick just about anyone's butt in creating a webpage with Dreamweaver if they are hand coding it.

As far as an IDE, I LOVE them. Microsoft's (gasp!) IDEs are wonderful and I don't care what anyone says. Those who write all of their code in a plain text editor are plain stupid, or gluttons for punishment. These people are out to prove something, but the only thing I think they prove is that their pride kills their productivity.

Disclaimer: Any of the opinions expressed by me are solely mine, and you are under no obligation to accept as true anything contained therein.

[Old Breadbutt]

Originally posted by ThurberMingus Those who write all of their code in a plain text editor are plain stupid, or gluttons for punishment. These people are out to prove something, but the only thing I think they prove is that their pride kills their productivity.[/B]

But a lot of hand coders don't use plain text editors, I use Homesite, which has all sorts of useful tools for hand coding. It's a far shot from a plain text editor and unless you've used it or something like BBedit, then you might really be suprised at how fast you can code with it. Granted, a lot of it's features and strengths aren't readily apparent, but once you start customizing it and adding your own code snippets and stuff, it's fantastic. I've been using it for about a year and a half and still havn't found all the stuff it can do.

[ThurberMingus]

Originally posted by Old Breadbutt


But a lot of hand coders don't use plain text editors, I use Homesite, which has all sorts of useful tools for hand coding. It's a far shot from a plain text editor and unless you've used it or something like BBedit, then you might really be suprised at how fast you can code with it. Granted, a lot of it's features and strengths aren't readily apparent, but once you start customizing it and adding your own code snippets and stuff, it's fantastic. I've been using it for about a year and a half and still havn't found all the stuff it can do.

Point taken, I speak simply to those who swear up and down that Notepad or vi is all they need to kick my butt in coding, be it HTML or C++. I have used HTML editors similar to Homesite, and I agree that they are very helpful. But why spend all that time typing code when I can create sexy tables and nested tables simply be drawing them in Dreamweaver?! ;-)

[stuka]

heh - vim (NOT vi) is a great coding tool, not just a "plain text editor". It offers syntax highlighting, tags features, shell command access (which MS IDE's don't), and I don't have to use a stinkin' mouse! Now, if Dreamweaver writes your sexy tables in good HTML, I couldn't agree with you more - getting visual presentation just so with HTML by hand is a pain in the nether regions. However, lumping web design IDEs in with programming IDEs is silly IMO, as the two aren't always related (though heavy GUI work can be simplified a bit with a WYSIWYG tool like MSVC, Glade, or Forte).

[daynah]

WYSIWYG tools like Frontpage works well if you don't want to teach your staff how to code. ;)

I work in a library and trying to teach staff HTML is really hard. They don't want to learn it since it's not really part of their job. They only want to put up webpages when necessary... so Frontpage works really well.

As a programmer, it's our job to strip the junk ms frontpage puts in the code. ;)

As for me, I use Homesite if I'm on a windows environment and plain old pico on a linux environment. I like seeing raw code... not a lot of buttons that will fill in the code for me. ;)

[Old Breadbutt]

In reply to Stuka,
exactly, I love text highlighting, You can set which colors you want to which tags, I think you can do that in DW too, but I never explored that part of it.

Personally I don't like to "draw" my tables, I usually lay my page out in photoshop, cut out the parts that need to be graphic/save them out, and then build my tables in Homesite and drop in images/text where I need to. I feel much more at home with it and I have a greater sense of control than I did with DW. Also with macros and custom buttons on the toolbars, I usually don't have to write much of my table code anymore, I just have to add or change a few of the attributes.

[Old Breadbutt]

Originally posted by daynah
They don't want to learn it since it's not really part of their job. They only want to put up webpages when necessary...

where I work, we've built some really great admin tools for some of our clients. They don't get the chance to mess up the code, they just fill out a form or upload an image in order to update their site. It's a lot of work initially, but once it's done, you don't have to worry about cleaning up their code. just let them go to town.:)

[buffto]

eh, it's always been notpad or cutehtml for me.

[Rox]

I used to do all html by hand, I found it easier. I thought that if I let some other program do it for me, it could mess it up, but if I do it myself I am in control of how it turns out. Well my boyfriend doesn't know HTML, and no matter how many times I tell him how easy it is, he just doesn't get it. So we have to use a WYSIWYG called Namo WebEditor. It's easy to use, plus I got it for free. The only problem is, it does add a lot of unneccessary shiznit that I personally wouldn't put in there. It doesn't need to repeatedly say that font color is yellow, because on the whole page the font color is yellow. So I do use a WYSIWYG but if it gets too lengthy I have a lot of stuff I can cut out.

[Old Breadbutt]

Originally posted by Rox
It doesn't need to repeatedly say that font color is yellow, because on the whole page the font color is yellow. So I do use a WYSIWYG but if it gets too lengthy I have a lot of stuff I can cut out.

yeah, whenever I have to edit a page that someone built in dreamweaver, I tend to find endless nested font tags. often they won't be wrapped around anything. just font tags within font tags. sometimes they'll be about a hundred font tags wrapped around a little bit of text. each tag declaring a different attribute...

[agermain]

Both hardcoding and WYSIWYGs, like anything, have their own pros and cons. Yes, hardcoding is typically "better," but if you've ever tried teaching a barely-computer-literate product manager you'll know what I mean when I say WYSIWYGs aren't completely useless. I don't use 'em, but that doesn't mean they /shouldn't/ be used.

In any case, I did have something to add -- Microsoft created a plugin to make the exported HTML a bit more palatable for folks. It's up here: http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/Msohtmf2.aspx

There's also HTML TIDY (http://tidy.sourceforge.net/), which does a much more generalized job and may even clean up code which is already "clean."

[Strike]

Originally posted by agermain
Yes, hardcoding is typically "better,"
Now, I don't know what planet you code on, but here on Earth, hard-coding values into things is almost never "better" in 99% of the cases.

[Old Breadbutt]

Originally posted by Strike

Now, I don't know what planet you code on, but here on Earth, hard-coding values into things is almost never "better" in 99% of the cases.

that don't make no sense

[sicarius]

Strike: I think agermain meant "hand coding". Besides, in HTML lots of things are "hard coded" whether or not you use a wysiwyg editor. For example <FONT FACE="Verdana"> This value of the FACE attribute would be considered "hard coded"...but in HTML there is nothing wrong with that. If this were C and I were hardcoding buffer sizes....well then we could talk about the evils of "hard coding".

[agermain]

My fault for miswording: I'd meant to say hand-coding, not hard-coding.

As for "hardcoding values", it is better for people who use Word, since the users can't change stuff, and thus the 99% of people who don't understand the values won't change the values. That's the whole point of hardcoding -- standardization.

As for whether "handcoding" values is bad or not? There's a whole 'nother discussion about that behind us here and tons more all throughout Usenet. Everyone's got their own viewpoint, of which I don't really mind either way. I just wanted to drop the URLs of those tidy-up programs for the DukeOfNukes, who is trying to clean up this whole Word mess.

[Strike]

Originally posted by agermain
My fault for miswording: I'd meant to say hand-coding, not hard-coding.

As for "hardcoding values", it is better for people who use Word, since the users can't change stuff, and thus the 99% of people who don't understand the values won't change the values. That's the whole point of hardcoding -- standardization.
And so now Word is the "standard"? I always thought it was the W3C that decided the standards.

Anyway, obviously you more or less have to hard-code values for HTML, since there's no real good standard on how to use customized stylesheets ... that is, no real good standard on how to extend a site's existing stylesheets to incorporate a user's preferences without totally changing the look or intent of the site.

But this is getting OT, I'm still of the opinion that good WYSIWYG editors for things like HTML are incredibly rare (and usually pricey), and even then that a "clean-up" process is absolutely paramount in creating a lean, well-structured site. For me, rather than learning BOTH how to use a WYSIWYG editor AND learning the standards required in the "clean-up" process, I'll just learn the latter and edit things by hand. Granted, this can often take longer (depending on how bad the WYSIWYG editor screws things up), but I always get what I want, and I know the code inside and out.

[Halide]

Most of you have valid points, and this is a difficult issue to argue.

Of course WYSIWYG editors will in almost all cases be larger than a hand-coded page; which is not necessarily bad...

Even though I'm not familiar with DreamWeaver, I bet it's a lot better than FrontPage. Microsoft tends to add bloat to just about anything.

Anyways, back to the point...

WYSIWYG editors can be more compliant with a variety of browsers, make creating and updating pages faster, and they do serve their purpose.

I just prefer dynamic web pages, and PHP is great and easy to learn! :D

[Heywood]

I have no idea what drives me to get involved in this flame war, but I must say a few things.

I have developed a lot of professional websites, and I currently own and run several now. I wouldn't do it without Dreamweaver.

Major-Losers, my biggest one, is 42 pages, all of them having a header, footer, menu and adpanel that is static across all pages. In DW, I simply modify the template, and update pages, and it takes about 1 minute. If I were to bust out notepad, that would take considerably longer to make a simple modification on all the pages. That is just one example.

I use UltraEdit 32 and Dreamweaver to do my work. DW doesn't produce perfect code, so I do have to go through the pages at times, and I will agree, that clean code, and W3C is difficult to attain with anything put out by Dreamweaver. However, considering the time you save, it is worth it. A few minutes of cleanup will bring you up to speed most of the time. Most php or perl scripting I do in UltraEdit.

Before you say I am a weenie, who doesn't truly know html, etc, I hand coded my first html in 1996, and I used Htmled pro for many, many years, and I can do anything by hand that I can do in WYSIWYG. If need be, I can break out notepad or VIM and go to town.

However, experience has taught me that you use the right tool for the job. While you can write php and perl (or any other) scripts in notepad just fine, but no serious web developer would do thier pages in it. The reason I say this, is because time is money, and wasting time for bragging rights doesn't make you a good developer. (No serious web developer would use frontpage for anything, but that is just my OPINION)

A good analogy for those who say "wysiwyg sucks, notepad rules" is: Sure, you can do anything in Notepad that you can do in Dreamweaver. Its just slower, and less efficient and organized. Just like you can create anything in Microsoft paint, that can be created with photoshop. It would just be 10x as difficult, and take 10x as long. But I don't see any Graphic Designers bragging they do all thier graphics in MS paint.

Just my opinion.