If you use an HTML text editor, such as Homesite, BBEdit, or Notepad, you have to know the HTML. Some editors help you along a little bit, but if seeing the < and > tags intimidates you, then you would prefer a WYSIWYG editor. Both sides of the fence feel very strongly about their editors, but I heard mostly from the hand coders out there.
Kriis writes:
“if you import [a page I created] into a WYSIWYG editor the look is virtually destroyed. Most editors add spaces where none existed before and for some reason lots of them put end codes on the next line and add codes that do virtually nothing.Extra spaces are a bane to designers, as they make tables do strange things.”
Bill Biega writes:
“I always code by hand from scratch. It’s faster and I get much shorter scripts without all the extra do-dads that editors, including FrontPage add.”
And Nicholas Jordan adds:
“When one uses the WYSIWYG editors on a page one has carefully crafted and constructed, they rip the code into unrecognizable lunacy and tend to put in unrecognizable constructs like 5-10 nested blockquote tags and the C token "{}"”
Frontpage seems to be particularly despised:
“...the HTML code FrontPage puts out is just plain ugly.”
from O/Siris (OSIRISTECH)
But whatever choice you make, you’ll still have a web page. There are reasons and situations for both learning the HTML and using an editor.
