A Complete Guide to Web Design

WYSIWYG Authoring Tools 69

HTML

Overview

WYSIWYG Authoring Tools

Web Design in a Nutshell, eMatter Edition

HTML purists insist that hand-writing HTML in a no-frills text editor is the only
way to do it “right,” and that the HTML documents made by WYSIWYG tools are
of unacceptable quality. On the other hand, many developers appreciate being
spared the grunt-work of typing every HTML tag and find the WYSIWYG environ-
ment useful for viewing the page and making design decisions on the fly.

Of course, there are many reasons both for and against using these tools. The
controversy should lessen as the tools, which are currently in their infancy, work
out their kinks and start producing clean and robust code. If you do use a
WYSIWYG tool, expect to do some manual fine-tuning to the resulting HTML
code.

Pros

• They are good for beginners. They can even be useful for teaching HTML
  because you can lay out the page the way you want, then view the resulting
  HTML.


• They are good for quick prototyping. Design ideas can be tried out on the fly.


• They provide a good head start for creating complex tables and other
  advanced functions such as JavaScript and DHTML functions.

Cons

• They are infamous for not generating clean HTML documents. They add pro-
  prietary or redundant tags and often take circuitous routes to produce a
  desired effect. Some may even produce HTML that is incorrect.


• Some editors automatically change an HTML document when you open it in
  the program. They add their own tags and may strip out any tags they do not
  recognize.


• The built-in graphics-generating features do not offer much control over the
  quality or the file size of resulting graphics.


• Software releases tend to lag behind the quickly changing HTML standards, so
  the HTML you create using the tool may not be completely up-to-date.


• They are expensive. The more powerful packages cost hundreds of dollars up
  front and additional costs to upgrade.

Some Available Tools

The following is an introduction to a handful of the tools that are popular as of
this writing (versions are omitted because of the speed of updates). All are avail-
able for both Mac and Windows unless otherwise noted.

Macromedia Dreamweaver
As of this writing, Dreamweaver is emerging as the industry-standard HTML
authoring tool due the fact that it produces the cleanest code of any of its
competitors. In addition, it provides many shortcuts for creating style sheets,
JavaScript, and DHTML functions. It has a fairly steep learning curve. For
more information, seehttp://www.macromedia.com/.