The big question many people ask is why is it such a bad idea to use wysiwyg editors? This article will go through everything from the ground-up and soon you’ll realize why wysiwyg editors are not the solution to designing Web pages.
First of all, a wysiwyg editor is an illustrative editor for those who want to make Web pages quickly and effectively without needing knowledge in HTML. Well first of all, they aren’t that effective at all, all editors alike are restricted to what it can do – wysiwyg editors don’t have every feature built in. And besides, HTML is not the best way to styling Web pages nowadays.
If you don’t know HTML and you use these types of editors, you’ll find they are well certainly useful and handy, but it is quite hard to learn the HTML code it generates, and actually most editors force you to create Web templates in tables.
Another clear example is some editors do not comply to XHTML standards. I’m not going to go through XHTML in detail, but in the simplistic detail, it is a stricter and cleaner version of HTML. You may find rendering errors in some browsers from the code you receive from such an editor, and if you don’t have knowledge in HTML, there’s not much you can do to rectify the error.
The best way is knowing HTML, and creating the Web templates from a plain editor such as Notepad for Windows or possibly Notepad++, which is a useful tool for Webmasters as it makes HTML colour-coded so you know what is what, and when you have done something wrong.
If you wish to create basic and simple designs without needing the fuss of knowing HTML, you are better off with such a wysiwyg editor; although they aren’t that useful in the overall comparison. If you have a bit of patience and are willing to create templates and Web pages with more freedom and with less errors in browsers, you should learn HTML.
Below is a reference to some Website resources and tutorials on HTML, or alternatively you could check eBay and Amazon for some cheap books on HTML (perferably HTML version 4).
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Also Check: Is it better to create a website using a WYSIWYG editor, or to code it by hand?
