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The problem: After much debating and arguing, I've finally managed to make my boss see that doing our documents in HTML Strict would help our site in terms of code management et. all (PHBs can be soooooo annoying =P). However, he feels that with HTML being too "techie", and the fact that some of the site maintainers already use WYSIWYG editors, he wants to know if there are any WYSIWYGs that can either output HTML Strict documents, or be modified to do the same thing.
The site in question is currently a complete code nightmare. We're talking about a very information-oriented site with atleast 15 000+ HTML documents, most probably more, and the vast majority of those has been made with Frontpage 2000 and similar. It's a non-profit site, so most of the work is non-profit made by teenagers/students with too much spare time. Basicly, there are three or four HTML "Experts", the rest kinda sorta knows a little bit of HTML tag soup, and that's about it. The info on the site is great and all, but the code just takes so much time to manage. There is a template system, but, well, it's not uncommon to find
<CENTER><FONT FACE=VERDANA SIZE=7 COLOR=YELLOW><B><STRONG><U>Header</B></STRONG></U></CENTER></FONT><BR>
<BR>
Text blahblahblahblahblahblah<BR>
<BR>
More text<BR>In the content outside the templates. In fact, almost all documents are like that (90+%), and that example is just one of the lesser coding nightmares. We're talking nested upon nested upon nested tables and a tag soup extraordinaire - I doubt there'll ever be a tool that fixes up that mess. So, doing all that manually it is. -_- But either way, back to the subject.
My boss and I are also trying to consider everything that can be used to publish in HTML, so we're not excluding Word-ish applications that can export to HTML. If it's free, it's a plus, but it doesn't have to be.
So, if anyone out there happens to use a WYSIWYG that actually produces decent markup (aka (X)HTML Strict), or using one that _can_ produce decent markup if you modify it a little, please post your findings here, and what it was that you did to get it working. It'd help a lot. =)
You could also look into using a CMS software of some sort to control the site.
And I'm still unclear on this entire CMS thing; What is it? What does it do? From what I've seen it looks just like a templating system, and that's about it. Care to shed some light on the thing?
And as for the current problem with the invalid code; If I could use F&R scripts, I'd have done so already. It's far from easy to fixing up all these pages. HTML Tidy would just mess things up beyond repair, and a F&R script would do even more so. especially since quite a few of the pages have been mangled first by a person using DW, then by a person using notepad and not quite knowing what he's doing, then by another person using Frontpage, and so on and so forth. There really is no consistency in the errors, so... Yea. I think it's time for a total re-write in this particular case. Don't you? =P
Lastly; Any DW users out there producing Strict (X)HTML? Anyone?
