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

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Mon Feb 26 20:16:07 CST 2001


> From: jdowdell at macromedia.com (John Dowdell)
>
> Sidenote: The Dreamweaver team itself has always demurred on use of
> the term "WYSIWYG", because it's a non-sequitur with flow-based
> documents... instead "visual editor" has been the standard term for
> what Dreamweaver does, thanks.

this i can understand, since it is clearly more geared toward both 
code monkeys and visual designers... but i couldn't handle all the 
precise clicking just to ensure it didn't start nesting font tags where 
i didn't want them...  ultimately, we have it around, but we don't use 
it...

> FreeHand can often be faster for getting conceptual approval on a

this i'm going to have to challenge, based on experience... it 
doesn't mean you are wrong by any means, after all, everyone 
does things his/her own way, but some of these assertions aren't 
always good... and i'm an avid freehand user, preferring it to 
illustrator, and dumping pagemaker and quark years ago since FH 
can handle page layouts just fine (just look at my gallery)...

> site: it's editable vectors rather than frozen pixels... offers

this is the most immediate issue i have... ultimately, i believe in 
working in the medium to which i will eventually output... my 
designs are in pixels (we're not talking Flash right now), so i'd 
rather stay with pixels from the start...

i've got some ad agency clients who constantly show designs in 
Quark or Illustrator to their clients, and then the client wants to 
know why the colors, fonts, copy, etc., aren't *precisely* how they 
were shown on paper when it gets built... overall, i never show a 
site on paper, i always show the client on-screen... it's in the right 
color space, in the right medium, and still just as easy to modify 
(assuming a solid workflow process)... print designers making the 
transition are most guilty of this -- it's a hard change for many...

> multiple pages on a pasteboard for quick navigation and comparison...

that's nothing major for me, i tend to keep working docs as layered 
files, and demo docs as a page-per-layer document with browser 
chrome for context...  makes for real easy on-screen presentation, 
without any question about colors or correct sizing...  i love it when 
clients ask me to move something X millimeters... they're so used 
to print that when they see it isn't the right distance, i have to 
explain differing screen resolutions all over again...

> exports directly to basic HTML as a starting point for actual web

i think i'll just let that go... there's no assault there, it's just not a 
feature i would use, so i can't comment... and if i did, i'd just 
assume it wasn't good enough anyway (can you tell i have a bias 
against generated code?)...

> work... offers updateable repeating elements as symbols for quick
> site-wide changes... has layout-style layers for quickly changing the

symbols do nothing for me, it's easy enough to maintain my vector 
master files in one place, and my raster images elsewhere, 
sometimes within the document... this also keeps me from having 
to do all sorts of other work i could have done during the 
prototyping phase (scaling vector file properly, converting the 
colors, using some keen color and fill tools, etc.)...

the layers feature is well-understood in the context of photoshop, 
so there's no reason to go over that...

> overall viewing options... offers site-wide search'n'replace of text
> and graphic elements, as well as updateable styles... has stronger

well, i don't put real text in my prototypes, and s-n-r of graphics 
elements, while nice, is a slightly more cumbersome interface than 
turning a layer on or off in PS (again, this assumes a good 
workflow)...

as for styles, well, doesn't impact me too much again...

> text options than Photoshop... can export individual graphic elements
> as GIF/JPG or SWF or whatever.

exporting to SWF is the bomb... exporting to a raster format 
without pixel-level control bothers me... i don't even use IR slices 
without tweaking the images, there's no way i'm going to trust a 
vector app to do it right (colors, sizes, transparency, etc.)

> Both tools are helpful for quick concept work, because [emphasis] you
> avoid getting lost in HTML details [/emphasis]  -- just as with a
> cocktail napkin sketch, it's easier to focus on ideas than
> implementation when working in a quick design medium instead of the

and that's important.... using the tool you like is the best way to 
go, as long as you understand the issues of transferring it to 
another medium...

> final delivery format. FreeHand is a bit more tuned to quickly laying
> out a site design though... Photoshop is more concerned with the
> details of the appearance in one particular illustration.

FH is great for quick layouts, but i feel it should be restricted to 
element creation and extremely basic prototyping, given my 
warnings below...

> But whatever works for you is great, of course... FreeHand is just
> usually a faster and more flexible way to accomplish this type of task
> than Photoshop and ImageReady would be, that's all.

that's the only statement i would categorically state as incorrect... 
for some folks, it's quite true, for others it isn't at all...

ultimately, the overall point of this post is to remind people that if 
you don't do it right, you can build incorrect expectations in your 
clients (colors, text flow, sizing, layout) and even be stuck redoing 
some work (trimming, color correcting, tweaking transparencies, 
color palette trickery, etc.) that would have been part of the 
prototype process if done with a raster tool...

if you know all this and it works for you, great... if you're 
experimenting with it, be forewarned...





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