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

[Calum I Mac Leod]

Charles F. Johnson:
> aardvark <roselli at earthlink.net> typed:

> > well, while the statement may not be qualified correctly, it is still
> > accurate... those who use WYSIWYGs *exclusively* (which is the
> > missing qualifier) are still going to churn out non-compliant code...
<snip>
> clean, tight, compliant code is possible with DW 4, but not unless you
have
> a solid understanding of HTML. if you don't, it's all too easy to create
> nightmare tables with unnecessary column and row spans and tangled
thickets
> of redundant FONT tags.
<snip>

MS Word has some interesting features for marking up content in a structured
fashion, _and_ for separating style from content.  What proportion of Word
users do this?  Almost none.  Why?  Because Word's WYSIWYG paradigm is
easier to learn.

Similarly, WYSIWYG HTML generators don't necessarily churn out bad HTML, but
the people who use them tend to (especially those who start with WYSIWYG,
and who don't know what elements and attributes are).

Still, it's always good to poke fun at _really_ nasty HTML generators,
especially in the hands of people who've never even seen pointy brackets.
Here's something I've just rescued form groups.google.com  It's a real
example of some MSHTML I was sent by a client a few months ago.  I swapped
the six words of content for the text "Six words".

<p class=MsoNormal
style='margin-left:18.0pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:
-14.4pt;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list 21.6pt'><![if
!supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Symbol><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Symbol'>·<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New
Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></font></span></font><![endif]><font size=2><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt'>Six words <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>


This can be replaced by the following:

 <LI>Six words</LI>

The result is pretty much identical in IE5 with all the Windows defaults,
but the former doesn't adapt as well to other contexts.

I'm not trying to knock DW here, after all it's a significant technical
achievement.  However, most people who've learned what the pointy brackets
are for, how elements like to be nested, and how to bond CSS to structural
mark-up; don't seem to find that DW's interface is any more useful or
efficient to work with than VIM, PFE32 or whatever.

I could have just saved myself a load of typing by pointing to Grey Matter
Web Pro, but the author of that article is not exactly known for his support
of the Browser Upgrade Campaign.
http://www.pagetutor.com/misc/grey.html

Calum
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