| 5 May |
WYSIWYG Can Be Annoying |
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If you haven’t been online all that long, you probably forget the days when all web pages had to be written by hand in a text editor, like Notepad, TextPad, WordPad, and all those other pads. Everyone had to learn HTML because that was the only way to get your stuff onto the Web.
Enter WYSIWYG, which means, “What You See Is What You Get.” WYSIWYG HTML editors abound from the free versions, such as Nvu to the expensive alternatives like DreamWeaver. And you know what most of them have in common? Overblown code that can make you nuts if you half know what you’re doing!
Well, I know at least that much and the WYSIWYG editors I’ve tried from MSWord to that freebie, Nvu work, but how well? Often the code they create isn’t compatible with all browsers. For example, some center a table with <table align=”center”>. Firefox doesn’t mind, but Internet Explorer says, “So what?” You have to physically go in and add the <center> and </center> tags fore and aft. Annoying!
Here’s a link to the Boing Boing short for an interview with the NY Times Design Director, who says they hand-code everything:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/30/nytimescom-handcodes.html
Probably a very good idea, if you’re uber picky about how your code looks.
But… also important for another reason.
Our Tech genius at Overcome Everything, Johnny Meehan, just discovered something very unhappy, at least for me, who uses Nvu a lot—it doesn’t work with Google Analytics. For some reason the code it manufactures makes the Analytics stats come out all wrong. Please don’t ask me why or what they are… I don’t have a clue. Johnny’s the genius. I’m just lucky to work with him.
I recently did a page for one of the OE sites that was totally screwy when I tried to edit it and enter new content into the page. Pfffttt!!! It got me so crazy that I just hand-coded the whole page from scratch. It was much, much simpler.
Anyway, WYSIWYG is great for pages that don’t have to be reworked or for pages that you’re throwing up in a hurry or whatever. I use it, too. But… if you want reliability, learn some HTML.
It’s not rocket science.
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