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

Charles F. Johnson charles at littlegreenfootballs.com
Mon Feb 26 13:35:06 CST 2001


Calum I Mac Leod <calum at ciml.co.uk> typed:

> 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.

the first thing i did in DW4 was turn off all its code formatting features
-- indenting, line breaks, etc. -- so it would leave my markup alone. if you
do this, i think it's quite effective for automating tasks that don't need
to be done by hand. and the built-in FTP and synchronization features come
in very handy.

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.
 
charles johnson
lgf web design
http://littlegreenfootballs.com





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