Your opinions on WYSIWYG Editors?

[ridwan sameer]

WYSIWYG ( What you see is what you get) editors like Dreamweaver, FrontPage etc.. were very popular back in the say, But now you don't see them used as much

This discussion was sparked by : https://forums.prodjex.com/topic/3312-dreamweaver-good-or-bad/

Alot of people seems to be using More Normal Editors Like Notepad++ and whatnot.

Im not necessarily referring to Dreamweaver but any other WYSIWYG editor as well.... Would you rather use them... And if not why not?

[Nathan]

What do you mean what you see is what you get? You mean how it updates realtime to show what the code does? It doesn't do that for me with PHP.

[ridwan sameer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG

Editors like Dreamweaver and MIcrosoft Frontpage are known as WYSIWYG Editors...

WHere when you edit code it shows on the side in real time.. Not sure how it functions with PHP Though

[Marc]

wysiwyg is great for end users, not for developers. They tend to fill your code full of rubbish..... Thats one point of view. However in the same respect it depends on what your using. Anyone who develops in visual studio has likely used a form designer which is also a form of wysiwyg. So I suppose the answer is, it depends on how well it does what you want it to do.

[ridwan sameer]

wysiwyg is great for end users, not for developers. They tend to fill your code full of rubbish..... Thats one point of view. However in the same respect it depends on what your using. Anyone who develops in visual studio has likely used a form designer which is also a form of wysiwyg. So I suppose the answer is, it depends on how well it does what you want it to do.

Good point.

But I think WYSIWYG is good for people who dont use the Editor view, as in they dont try to place things using the "real time" View. That causes messed up code. But using it so you can see how your changes take effect in real time might be good

[Jaypee]

I actually still use wysiwig editors and my favorite is Kompozer.  I mostly use it to customize existing web templates but lately I noticed that it doesn't work with some responsive templates so I started using notepad again in some of my latest web projects.  

 

I don't know how other wysiwig editors work as I'm only familiar with Frontpage and Kompozer.  I'm not a programmer nor expert in HTML and Kompozer helps me a lot in recalling certain HTML codes, color codes, etc.,  also helps when I'm experimenting with web designs and color combinations.

[jodiann12]

wysiwyg is great for end users, not for developers. They tend to fill your code full of rubbish..... Thats one point of view. However in the same respect it depends on what your using. Anyone who develops in visual studio has likely used a form designer which is also a form of wysiwyg. So I suppose the answer is, it depends on how well it does what you want it to do.

 

I also agree with Marc. It depends on what you want to be done and what want to acheive in your coding, whcih would depend on whether you find WYSIWYG editors useful or not; but it seems as if most people prefer to use Notepad++.

[CyberGenius]

Well, IMO, it depends on what you want to use it for. For example, I use Dreamweaver(coding interface), but I rarely use the WYSIWYG editor. And that's because I want to be able to control my build effectively, and avoid unnecessary codes. Also, in the case of web editors(WYSIWYG), they can only work effectively for static codes alone and not for the dynamic ones.

 

So, in other words WYSIWYG is mostly useful for someone who is mainly coding in HTML with inline CSS. And someone who is writing say, CSS(external), Javascript, and PHP etc would rely on the code editor, browser and server(for server dependent languages).

 

 

[Jaymun]

I find WYSIWYG editors to be distracting in a way. When I get into the zone and am writing code for a long time, having things change in front of me can take my focus away from what I'm writing. I'm sure everyone experience getting "ïnto the zone", and when that concentration gets broken even for a second I have a bad habit of losing my train of thought

[OhioTom76]

It's rather misleading to refer to Dreamweaver as nothing more than a WYSIWYG editor - it's more of a complete coding environment that can be "visual" in varying degrees, or it can be a straight up coding environment. It's not just about the coding, there are a bunch of useful file management and site management tools baked into it as well. It's auto generated code is very clean, and it's a far cry from the old days of FrontPage or Pagemill. 

 

Dreamweaver has tools to preview how your site will look in various desktop and mobile devices, it's got FTP tools that will auto sync your files your sever as you are working on it, it's got template management functionality so you can manage large scale sites more efficiently, and more.