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

[Jake Stetser]

My feeling is similar: WYSIWYG editors are great tools if you understand
what they're doing. I can consciously make decisions about using or not
using them because I know how to make them produce clean code and how to
clean up what they leave behind.

Some people believe that all they need is a WYSIWYG and not a clear
understanding of HTML. I don't follow that philosophy. Any tool is dangerous
unless you know how to use it correctly, and that involves an understanding
of the materials.

I'll often use it for rapidly developing a layout, and then go in and tweak,
clean and optimize by hand. Best of both worlds!

Jake

-----Original Message-----
From: Fortune Elkins [mailto:fortune_elkins at summithq.com]
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 2:31 PM
To: 'thelist at lists.evolt.org'
Subject: RE: [thelist] WYSIWYG editors (was: WebReview responds to WaSP)


hiya!

>yet I'm unconvinced that DW will help them to author any better, or
>even any faster.

don't know about newbies.... if i do say so myself, i'm pretty good with
HTML, but i think that DW4 *does* increase my productivity dramatically. its
template feature and library items are great; when used in conjunction with
FW4 menus and graphics, my productivity goes through the roof. recently i've
found myself able to crank out up to 40 or even 60 pages in a 7-hr. day! i
redid our archived press release section -- about 150 pages -- in just 2-1/2
days. no overtime, just cutting and pasting and editing the content from a
big MS Word doc. 

then when they asked me to change all the graphics, i bought some stock art
online, made the new graphics in about 2 hours, used FW to make the 6 new
menus in about 40 mins., and applied them to all the pages with the template
and library item update feature in about 10 mins. then i rechecked the pages
to ensure no links were broken and printed out a nice report. that dropped
some jaws around the office! <grin>

lately i've been using UD 4, too. 

these tools allowed me to crank out a 10 page .asp site along with another 7
admin pages (17 .asp pages) in 7 hours. since i do all my coding with ASP
for dummies in my lap, it's great. 

and the code worked the first time in IE5 and Netscape 6, the target
browsers. no debugging. so no need to tie up valuable programming time when
i can just crank it out myself, it works, and the pages are under 35k.

sure the code could probably be trimmed a bit. ok, so if you code by hand
and save say 100 lines but it takes you 2 days, forget about it. this ideal
of "perfect" code is great; we do appreciate elegance in technology. but in
the real world where time is money and the site has to be up the same day,
i'm sticking with DW4/UD4. <grin>

of course, ymmv. 

just my 2 rupees,

fortune