[thelist] WYSIWYG editors (was: WebReview responds to WaSP)

[Calum I Mac Leod]

I've not used Dreamweaver's FTP client, but a couple of customers do and
they've had problems from time to time.  Usually it just takes a fix from
Macromedia, but WS and Cute using customers don't seem to have anything like
the problems, so why suffer bugware?  Anyway...

Charles F. Johnson:
<snip>
> the point remains (and is well taken) that WYSIWYGs can encourage the
> development of bad habits. but IMO dreamweaver is getting close to being a
> useable WYSIWYG editor even without HTML knowledge. especially version 4
> which includes many features especially designed to aid in hand coding.
it's
> biggest failings right now are 1) its terrible CSS handling, and 2) that
it
> makes inserting evil FONT tags way too easy.

Many bugs are fixed, but the paradigm isn't.  Sit a Web-newbie in front of a
WYSIWYG tool and what they'll produce will be good DTP, or bad DTP.  It's
unlikely that they'll author well for the WWW.  Sure, if you sit someone
with a clue about authoring in front of DW then they'll probably be able to
author; yet I'm unconvinced that DW will help them to author any better, or
even any faster.

If you write a nice little browser based update system for a non-techie
customer, someone needs to teach them that having 200 pages titled "Page 1",
etc. won't impress GoogleBot.

If you give a non-techie a copy of DW4, someone needs to teach them that

  <BR><SPAN style="font-size: 150%;">Used Volvo 960 for sale</SPAN><BR><BR>

is not the same as

  <H1>Used Volvo 960 for sale</H1>

even if it looks the same.

The Web's not only about NetExploder.  Not yet, and I hope not ever.

Calum
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