[thelist] Re: WebReview responds to WaSP browser death march

Mon Feb 26 15:05:07 CST 2001

> Message: 21
> From: "aardvark" <roselli at earthlink.net>
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 08:03:46 -0500
> Subject: Re: [thelist] Re: WebReview responds to WaSP browser death march
> Reply-To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
>
> > From: "Sabrina Dent, Apperception"
> <sabrina.dent at appercept.co.uk>
> >
> > > i think we need a "to hell with bad WYSIWYGs" campaign...
> > > nobody who uses a WYSIWYG editor is going to change...
> >
> > Jesus, generalise a little more, why don't you? That is just *so*
> > rude. <shakes head in dismay>
>
> 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...

As do a lot of developers who don't use WYSIWYG editors.

> those users *can't* change as they are at the whim of a tool that
> won't write correct code...

>
> but if you're dismayed because you think i was talking about those
> who use one and hand code as well, i've qualified it... i often forget
> to do that when writing late at night, it happens... but with the
> qualifier, i stand by it...
>
> it's kind of hard to respond to this, however, if you don't tell me
> *why* you're dismayed...  can i assume you use a WYSIWYG?  if
> so, do you use it exclusively?  no hand-coding?  if so, then, not
> much i can say, except the tool holds you back... if you are hand-
> tweaking the code, good for you, but you might want to consider
> the limitations of the tool...

Yes, I use a WYSIWYG editor. I use FrontPage, which I suppose makes it even
worse. If I care, or if the clients cares, about vailidation, then I can run
it through a validator and change the HTML as required. To be frank, most of
my clients don't care, and you know what? Neither do I. I care how it
*looks* -- in all the browsers I can get my hands on -- and not how it
"complies" with some "standard."  As Andrew points out,

<body bgcolor="#ffffff" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" topmargin="0"
leftmargin="0">

... ain't compliant but is used by a lot of folks. So?

Until the people writing the standards are the people writing the browsers,
then this is all a semantic/tree-hugging excuse to rant, as far as I'm
concerned, and just one more way in which we draw the invisable line to
decide who's "cool" and who's not, who's code is "good" and who's isn't.

It should, IMHO, at the end of the day be about the user experience. Does it
load fast, does it deliver information, does it work in all browsers, does
it look OK, is it easy to use?

The end user doesn't give a hoot as to what the code behind it looks like.
If it works for the users, then the code is good.

I'm dismayed because I think your attitude towards WYSIWYG editors tarred
all WYSIWYG designers with the same brush. It's not that I can't change, or
don't know enough HTML to change, or don't understand the drive behind the
change.  It's that I can't be bothered to change. I simply discount
validation as a criteria.

--Bri