In previous years, when I've asked this in the past I've gotten a lot of responses from people who write HTML from scratch insisting that knowing HTML and CSS is critical to doing the job. But as spreng says in a comment last week, word processors used to require that you know codes to get them to print and now they are all WYSIWYG. I've heard from beginners, hiring managers, and others, what do you think?
Should designers learn languages like HTML and CSS?
By Jennifer Kyrnin, About.com Guide August 30, 2010
In previous years, when I've asked this in the past I've gotten a lot of responses from people who write HTML from scratch insisting that knowing HTML and CSS is critical to doing the job. But as spreng says in a comment last week, word processors used to require that you know codes to get them to print and now they are all WYSIWYG. I've heard from beginners, hiring managers, and others, what do you think?Explore Web Design / HTML
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Using hand coding, I think you have more control over your page, and also easier to make it XHTML valid or anything else valid.
It’s true, everyone likes to use WYSIWYG, because it simplifies the job. But also hand coding is nice, since you build your experience, and, you understand “what’s behind the scenes”.
The problem with WYSIWYG tools is that they are capable of everything: the good and the bad. If the person using the tool doesn’t know the difference between good and bad practices in web building, the results are not good. If the person using the tool does understand things like web standards, accessibility and other best practices, the results can be quite good.
I think the best option is to work as a team with a web developer. Leave the designer to concentrate on the design, and the developer to code the pages.
In that case, everyone is doing what they do best and love while the client gets a highly professional result.
WYSIWYG are a no-no as far as I am concerned. There’s more to a web page than how it looks – there’s accessibility, SEO, etc – and WYSIWYG don’t let you deal with those.
I don’t consider it crucial, but it helps you and makes you better at what you do – and I think that’s worth learning and using if you consider yourself serious about your job.
Otherwise, I bet if you compare a piece of well written hand-coded page with an automatically generated page by a good visual editor, you will most likely notice that the hand-coded page is better.