Comments on: Should Web Developers Avoid WYSIWYG Editors?

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:44:01 +0000

I think it depends upon what the application is. Many people didn’t learn to code HTML in notepad when many of the rest of us did. Now with tableless CSS things are a bit different.

But it’s always been my experience that WYSIWYG editors always add extra code that is really superfluous and just makes the code messy… which I never liked. Like MS Frontpage… Microsoft just stuck tons of “we’re Microsoft” meta tags in there when it wasn’t necessary and I’ve had the same issues with other editors as well. Worse, is when you “inherit” a project someone did in Dreamweaver where they just drug stuff all over the place and then sliced things into a thousand little bits… then when you go in to try to just update one little thing… it breaks the site.

Personally, I really dislike WYSIWYG… but what I do like are applications that work like Widgets where you can move them around to get the functions, and where things are controlled by style sheets so it doesn’t create such a mess. But that’s just me.

By: Travis

Travis — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:12:29 +0000

Before I started outsourcing all website design, I would do everything myself in Dreamweaver. Then I ran across a freelancer who told me he worked in table-less, hand coded mode only. The results have really been spectacular. The code is so clean. WYSYWIG and Drag-n-drop can really produce a messy bunch of html and css.

By: Taylor

Taylor — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:03:26 +0000

I can only say that I recently purchased a couple of software applications that decided to stick in a WYSIWYG editor to add more value to the overall application… which could have done without one.

The result of this decision has been endless problems with the integration of the editor with the core software, bringing excess attention and effort to something that is more of a support tool in the big scheme of things.

By: Anup Shah

Anup Shah — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 11:12:50 +0000

Hi Sam,

I’ve not used Dreamweaver CS5 specifically so I can’t comment on that. More generally, since writing the above post, I’ve tended to stick with writing by hand as I have not felt the need to revisit this. That being said I would not be surprised if Dreamweaver in particular was producing better code.

By: Sam Dorrington

Sam Dorrington — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:48:51 +0000

I know this post is now almost 4 years old – my question is that has your opinion changed on WYSIWYG? Do you think that most of these, ie Dreamweaver CS5 have vastly improved and continued to evolve to improve their markup frailties, or do you still see them struggling to cut the mustard?

I don’t disagree that knowing how to code properly is without doubt the best practice, but I feel that the WYSIWYG editors such as Dreamweaver do a good enough job in some cases.