Readers Respond: Should Designers Know HTML or is WYSIWYG Enough

Are you sick of code? Do you wish you never had to look at another <, > or { } again? Do you only write your web pages using a WYSIWYG editor? Or is HTML (and CSS) what you live to write? Can you write an HTML table faster by typing tags than searching for the table menu?

Share your thoughts on whether writing web pages should be more like using word processors or if knowing HTML adds value. And find out what other readers think.

• Should Beginners Learn HTML?
• What do Hiring Managers Want to Hire?
• Other Thoughts About Learning HTML or Using WYSIWYG Editors

Just Learning....

I created a website for my place of employment about a year ago, using a template and a WYSIWYG editor, pretty much out of boredom. Well, a year and a half later, the website gets about 10 hits a day, and people love it! My companion mailing list, where I send out a weekly sales flyer, is up to 1,000 subscribers. And a few of our customers, who own small businesses, have expressed interest in maybe someday for me to make THEM a website? So I started Jennifer's course in learning HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I struggled with the question of "should I learn code? Or can I just continue to use WYSIWYG? And I found that I kinda feel like a "fraud" because I do not know code. So before I take any jobs creating websites, I am going to spend all the time I need learning how to write code!

—hppiefrk

I don't know that is why I am here!

As a network programmer, phone system programmer for corporations and an artist I can see both sides of this coin. I am taking the free HTML course on here because I know from expirience in my fields that working in the raw terminal mode is both easier in the long run and much more valuable as far as trouble shooting problems. But I love the tools you can use now days to be artistic on the computer and there seems to be no work around on them. So I think an intelegent blend of HTML and WYSIWYG would be very important.

—Guest bmessinwu

WYSIWYG editors don't do .ASP very well

I use WYSIWYGs for static webpages, and occasionally to start an asp Webpage, but without being fluent in HTML my work would be very limited or look very amateurish. I do a lot of Data Entry Forms and reporting types of lists both in my personal websites and the companies Intranet.

—Guest OldCoder

There is only one true WYSIWYG editor...

...and that is MS Word. Granted, the code it generates looks awful but at least I can pump out tables, multilevel lists by the dozen. Inserting pictures or figures is a simple drag&drop. We currently use it in a wiki product (called wordonwiki) to lower the barrier for those people not capable of learning obscure textile or markdown. Even the so-called wywsiwyg editors are a disaster (ever tried to explain someone how to include a picture?). To say everybody should learn how to code is like requiring everybody to be able to drive cars with manual gearboxes. Most of use are not handcoding the facebook home page, like most of us are not formula 1 pilots.

—Guest Sir_Wiki

Just look pretty or work, too?

WYSIWYG is not good enough! Sure, someone can make a website that looks good with WYSIWYG, but, more often than not, it adds great wads of extraneous coding that slows down loading (especially if the end user is still on a slower system). Add to that the challenges of modifying/updating said WYSIWYG code, well... Perhaps, as another commenter suggested, have one person design with WYSIWYG and another clean up the code. -I- hand code!

—Guest Linda

Should Designers Know HTML or is WYSIWYG

That is a question that theologians and philosophers will probably bandy back and forth until the end of the world wide web. Sometimes I might have needed to just throw something together for a visual confirmation for a client without having to worry so much about the coding being validation compliant or even functional for that matter... Just something the client could see with their eyes in a hurry... Prior to visual editors I used desk top publisher for that, and now days I tend to use photo shop or flash to throw visual presentations together, but there are times when you just need something to show in a hurry and while most clients don't understand diddly about the behind the scenes razzle dazzle of hand coding, they they just understand what they see... So as a bare bones hand coder myself, the fact is that visual editors do sometimes make life a little easier so let's not burn them at the stake just yet???

—Joe_S_Watson

Both worlds

Web designers should be using WYSIWYG to create their pages quickly but they need to know the underlying code to understand and tweak what they're creating. I think the hand-coders here are kidding themselves about the code bloat from WYSIWYG programs, though. Current generation software writes fairly clean compliant dynamic pages - we're not tralking about MS Word here! If a few redundant tags leak in, they're pretty trivial in a broadband world. When my designer is done creating and refining the look and layout we want, the code is virtually complete. I just can't see the creative and code happening as fluidly or as quickly in a plain text editor.

—TagTeamInt

Let the coder code it!

I am a programmer, not a designer, and I have to say that none of the designers I have worked with had to write a single line of code: I normally expect to get the stuff in any format that can be opened with gimp, a browser, or some other tools. As the programmer, I take for myself the task of coding everything so it renders as intended. IMHO, forcing a designer to deal with the intricacies of different computer languages is, on the best case, suboptimal (and, on the worst, highly counter-productive). Let'em focus on defining the layout, colors, typography, etc (which is after all what artists best do) and let the coder (or programmer) do the coding. It's us (programmers) who are used to methodical debugging (highly useful when you have to test pixel-perfectness and behavior on half a dozen browsers, on an insane amount of setups). Just like I wouldn't waste my time on making a functional prototype "look good", I don't expect artists to waste theirs on making their designs "work".

—Guest Eduard

Hand coding is a vital skill

WYSIWYG editors don't just generate the code you want. They generate a lot of extraneous and sometimes harmful garbage that can increase your file size and slow download speeds. Besides, it just looks awful and very unprofessional. To create a minimalist, correctly functioning, well formed and professional web page, you need to hand code, check, double check and run it through the W3C's code validators. Auto processed pages just don't cut it.

—Guest Cat

A designer must know HTML and CSS

WYSIWYG editors are good but they are for novices, not for professionals. A page created by a designer can look just the same as one created using a software but it might be twice in size and poorly formatted.

—Wickedself

Design

Design is about control. If you use a tool, or a shortcut, in any type of design, you lose flexibility and thus control. So if you like designing things you can't control, enjoy.

—Guest sdev

Knowing HTML remains vital

Dreamweaver can turn a person with no code experience into a webmaster -- at least on the surface. It's good enough for most applications and uses So, why learn code if you are not going to "code?" It's for when something goes wrong! Unless you have a good understanding of the code you will be clueless when a client or supervisor asks you to fix an unfamiliar website (and they will). Unless you can write code, you can do far more harm than good. Dreamweaver can get you into lots of trouble. This topic reminds me of how many thousands of diagnostic meters are sold at AutoZone to over-confident backyard mechanics who think they know how their car works, only to get in way over their heads. Owning Dreamweaver does not equal mastering the process, grasshopper.

—Guest Chris

Should Designers Know HTML or is WYSIWYG

I'm like you, in that I have always written straight code. I started designing when Netscape had their WYSIWYG product, Navigator, out. I found myself frustrated with battle of the HTML bulge. My files had way too much weight in them. If there ever was a design problem, I would get frustrated trying find the error. Some errors can only be found by knowing your code. Sifting through all that HTML fodder was a tremendous headache. However, with that said, I know that WYSIWYGs are getting better. I would love to give up the code. BUT one should always understand it and be comfortable with it.

—hafnerdesigns

You should know HTML!

Yes, it's not completely necessary to know HTML or CSS but it helps a lot, even when you're using a WYSIWYG. When you know what HTML and CSS can do, you can design websites that can be translated into code easily, without a lot of images and extras to bulk up the website. If you're a graphic designer, then you're just a designer. But once you call yourself a web designer you have to be ready to design for the WEB, and learning the basic code and their limitations is extremely useful.

—Guest Katie

Jim

HTML helps muddle through some of those cross platform issues that a shake and bake program can't deal with. IMHO

—Guest oldbrakeman