WYSIWYG editor vs Hand Code

Question

What are the pros and cons of using a WYSIWYG editor for web page development vs hand coding?

With the exception of just not knowing how to create something by hand coding is there any reasons to use WYSIWYG?

Answer 1

I handcode, but I prefer to work with a wysiwyg editor in tow, and for that reason I'm still using Dreamweaver as an editor. What I'm doing 95% of the time is handcoding inside the Source editor and viewing the results in the preview. Occasionally I'll drop into the wysiwyg editor to move blocks around directly though and when I do I find it invaluable. I never use any of Dreamweavers wizards or generated code and I clean up the html manually too.

I see nothing wrong with this approach, it strikes me as the HTML design equivalent of an IDE prompting to complete functions etc. (intellisense or whatever your IDE may call it)

I also always use a templating system of one form or another so my scripting code is totally separate from html.

The combination with Dreamweaver of the occasional wysiwyg edit (invaluable I find when laying things out or making 'macro' layout changes) and the one click preview has kept me with it despite looking at better tools - Aptana, NetBeans etc. Indeed I would dearly like to move to another system - see this question - preferably something that runs on Ubuntu and strips out the crud in Dreamweaver leaving just the wysiwyg features and possibly an intelligent Javascript editor, but I'm yet to find anything. KompoZer is starting to look promising though.

Answer 2

There are a variety of reasons to use a WYSIWYG editor when creating HTML.

• Allows for quick prototyping
• Allows designer-y people to be actively involved in front end development
• Some WYSIWYG tools will set you up with a clean base to be modified (Dreamweaver's CSS layouts are actually pretty good)

I think the important thing to remember is that after you get it into approximate shape, you should dig into the code and make sure there's nothing weird going on. Nested spans, odd absolute positioning, and (lord almighty) table based layouts count as weird things. Even if you use a WYSIWYG to start with, you should always check that the code is valid and looks the way you would expect it to.