John_Keates - 9:37 pm on May 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

There is only one real benefit of a WYSIWYG, and that is that you can use it as a standard text processing application, with a little bit of designing stirred in. If you make one static html page a day, then it'd be the tool of choice, a WYSIWYG application. However the only real use would be a small website with not a lot of updates.. For those small sites, a pricy WYSIWYG application isn't an option :)

Just a text or code editor with a few autocompletion and standard snippets set-up does the trick everytime, fast & clean. Everything there is, is something you put there, something you know why it's there and what it does, and it will doe just that, and no strange things like WYSIWYG editors seem to do.

Most of the coding done for websites is in the backend program. The CMS or generator, it just takes a template, stuffs it with the right content and that's it. No coding involved when used, because that's where a built-in WYSIWYG is useful. But only then, because in that place, it's going to do what it's made for: text processing, and a little bit of designing/image placement.

You code the template once, by hand for speed and insight. If it takes 10 seconds to set one up, why waste those 10 seconds on the heavy lifting the WYSIWYG needs to do before it's even ready :)?

Most WYSIWYG applications have one simple reason of existence: make money for the company that created it! Not that making money is bad.. but it is bad if it lowers quality and speed!

[edited by: John_Keates at 9:50 pm (utc) on May 27, 2010]