To Wysiwyg or Not to Wysiwyg,
That is the Question

Staff and faculty want to make web pages. Let's decide on what software package ADC should teach and the HelpDesk will support.
 
There's three kinds of software that make web pages:
  • pure code-based (HomeSite, HotDog Professional 4, HTMLed Pro 32) where you work with tags
  • pure WYSIWYG (Drumbeat and NetObjects Fusion) where you never see the code
  • compound editors (Adobe PageMill, Microsoft FrontPage) where you can switch from code to wysiwyg and edit either (ZD Net)
 
So, which kind should we use?

Let's talk pedagogy first, shall we?

Profs don't wanna learn code. Period.
 
The next question becomes: Are there any wysiwyg or compound editors out there that are any good?

The short answer is yes: FrontPage 98.

Want the long answer? I figured you would, here it is:
 
Sean Timberlake (an assistant editor for CNET) writes (9/9/97):
 
Until recently, technical developers had little use for Wysiwyg tools. Most serious Web builders can code circles around Wysiwyg HTML editors. However, some developers use visual HTML editors to ease the wrist-wrenching tag entry involved in building large numbers of pages.
 
Edward Mendelson (PC Magazine) concurs:
 
New Web designers don't need to know HTML….Even expert HTML coders now have editors that create frames, Cascading Style Sheets, and JavaScript animations with a few keystrokes. (ZD Net)
So wysiwyg is now condoned, at least by some reputable experts.

In the college I think it has technical advantages because even if professors did write code, what's to say they won't accidentally make some bad code, they aren't perfect. And if they do hit a problem in their code that would take them an hour to solve with their nose in an HTML book or on the phone with Scott, what will this do to their desire to use the web in their teaching? I have had problems with editors too. I just start again with a new document if I can't fix it quickly, that's nothing compared to writing again from scratch: <HTML> <HEAD> ...blaa, blaa, blaa...

And what's the problem with some superfluous code? A single video clip would be WAY bigger than the few bytes devoted to setting the font for each and every cell in a typical 30 cell table!

Have I convinced you that a compound wysiwyg editor is the way to go yet?

Now let's see why FrontPage...
 
CNET gives Visual Page 1.0 ($100) a 5/5 for content producers:
 
What Visual Page lacks in bells and whistles [giving it a 2/5 for developers], it makes up for with its streamlined interface and remarkable ease of use. Its tools are well organized and easy to access. You also can perform the majority of your editing right on the workspace, without too much manual data entry. It's a winner for the occasional page creator. (CNET)
 
Hmmm... hundred bucks and a 2/5 for developers. Don't think so.
 
While Adobe Pagemill 2.0 is rated 4/5 for content producers, it gets a shameful 1/5 from the developer perspective mostly because "HTML generated by the software is clumsy at times" (CNET). Version 3.0 ($99) is better, but "FrontPage offers a better visual editor and superior site management tools" (Dan Berkes at CNET).
 
Net Objects Fusion 2.0 is a little pricey ($295) but a good content editor (5/5). The really bad part is that the
 
editor saves its designs in a proprietary format, so you can't tweak the code manually until after the pages are saved out to HTML. And once you do save them, Fusion generates HTML code that tends to be messy and bloated. Manually altering this code can be time-consuming and frustrating. (CNET)
 
Thus allotting the dreaded 1/5 from a developer perspective.
 
Now, what do they say about FrontPage?

They write that FrontPage 98 ($62+GST site license) "will get anyone up on the Web quickly, easily, and with a little finesse to boot." And give it a 4/5 as a content producing tool AND a 4/5 as a developing tool in case our employees grow sophisticated. They checked out the beta version and
 
liked what we saw, rough edges and all. ...site management is its greatest strength...Site tools such as link verification and find-and-replace are exceptionally useful for developers maintaining a large site. FrontPage also supports multi-user authoring and will alert users to potential file conflicts. FrontPage is at its best as an intranet development tool. Its Themes, and the ability to easily import Office 97 documents, makes creating attractive and informative intranet pages a cinch...is in many ways the jack-of-all-trades of the Wysiwyg HTML editors; it does a little bit of everything, and does it well. (CNET)
 
Edward Mendelson (PC Magazine) gives FrontPage 98 the Editors Choice Award for graphical web page building.
 
FrontPage 98 is the premier WYSIWYG editor, giving you excellent control over creating a site with a consistent look and feel. Its site management features are the best in this roundup, including a graphical view of your site. (ZD Net)
 
Scott Clark, who reviewed FrontPage98 for wedeveloper.com confesses that when he first started using wysiwyg editors he "felt bound up by the user interface, not freed by it" so he stayed with a code-based editor that had short-cut keys for tags,
 
Until last month, that is. I'd read the press releases about FrontPage98 like everyone else, and I figured, what the heck, …I found that the reason it is so large is because there's so much to it-the Microsoft Personal Web Server, the Composer and GIF Animator, the FrontPage Editor and FrontPage98 Manager-it's a full featured package…. This is a slick product. (www.webdeveloper.com)

...If you've been waiting for a real WYSIWYG HTML editor/manager, you don't have to wait any longer. FrontPage98 offers the best of both worlds for hardcore coders and novice designers. (www.webdeveloper.com)
 
Even the O Holy Webmonkey (who sneers repugnantly at those menacing neotechs) recommends FrontPage 98 (as well as Adobe PageMill) to new users
 
For newer users, budget shoppers, the technically disinclined, and folks who want to make fairly simple pages without a lot of fuss and muss, we recommend Adobe PageMill and Microsoft FrontPage. Both commit some HTML crimes, like inserting their own proprietary tags, and neither helps you with advanced features like JavaScript and dynamic HTML. If you don't care about those kinds of things, they'll perform pretty well for you.

Both FrontPage and PageMill are relatively straightforward and easy to use. Both let you drag and drop images and text around a page, view the HTML source code, make frames and tables, and conduct the usual business of putting a Web page together. (Webmonkey)
 
Most web developers hate wysiwyg editors because they know the code and what it will produce, they know exactly what they want, and they have already learned how to get there. So why relearn with an editor?

Yet Daniel Keller (a webdesigner form Switzerland) wrote:
 
I love FrontPage (that doesn't mean that I love Microsoft)

I also experienced the same things like many people wrote here - FrontPage messes up your code and isn't truly wysiwyg. I also wrote my first pages with a text editor and that's probably the only way to really learn HTML. But Text editors have two problems:

  1. While writing HTML you will make mistakes - forgotten end-tags, misspelled tags, ... (If anybody doesn't make mistakes - wow!)
  2. It's hard to imagine how the written code turns out, when it is displayed in a browser. You always need to switch between code and browser. Most editors have a preview mode but you still need to switch.

I started using FrontPage and had to learn how FrontPage generates HTML. When you want to use Frontpage as a professional you need to know what happens in your HTML-code when changing / writing / pasting something. Then you can enjoy its great advantages:

  1. Websites are much quicker done
  2. The Edit-mode gives you a pretty good idea of how the page will look
  3. Tables are much more easy to handle and edit
  4. You always have a great overview of your page
  5. The JavaScript-Assistant helps much
  6. Publishing pages is easier and more secure than publishing with FTP
  7. And very important: FrontPage manages your whole site. You won't have broken links even when you rename anything or when you move a file to another directory

Most of my projects look horrible displayed in the edit mode. But because I trust in my abilities of knowing how HTML-code is generated, my pages always look great in ANY web browser. For example open http://www.revoca.ch/test in FrontPage and see the difference.

(To read this reference, first register here, then click here, or just email the author)
 
I was talking to Brian Sevik from Chem/Bio yesterday (6/10/98) who has used FrontPage 98 to create his course pages. He likes the program and when asked "what if we asked you to learn code first" he said he would simply not make web pages, not enough time.

So I think FrontPage 98 is the way to go. Professors are busy and want to focus on their discipline. Not code. As a college we're already married to Microsoft for our office products. CNET likes it, ZD Net likes it, wedeveloper.com likes it, even Webmonkey permits it. Our profs would like it, and even that lovely man Bill Gates would smile on our decision. Let's go with it.