What You See Is (Not Necessarily) What You Get
WYSIWYG design software is a great concept on the face of it.
Giving individuals the ability to create web sites without the need for HTML coding, it has not only created a whole new facet of the web design industry but is also responsible for making the field accessible to home users.
There are however limitations to this approach since 'What You See Is What You Get' only if you happen to be using Internet Explorer™ in many cases.
During the mighty Internet Explorer's™ reign as undisputed ruler of the web browser market, this was not really an issue and thus ignored by most WYSIWYG designers.
The growing popularity of Mozilla's Firefox however, has raised definite questions regarding the cross-browser compatibility of sites produced with programs such as FrontPage™ and DreamWeaver™.
This article is not the usual "WYSIWYG design programs are evil because..." tirade trying to make the purist's case for hand-coded HTML, it is merely an observation that certain aspects of these design packages need to be watched in order to prevent potential embarrassment with clients at a later stage.
According to W3Schools (Sep 2006), Internet Explorer™ still holds a collective market share in excess of 61%, although Mozilla Firefox is mounting a determined assault on Microsoft's© supremacy with a total share of over 27% of browsers used.
Whilst there seem to be few problems with FrontPage™ and DreamWeaver™ sites being displayed properly by Internet Explorer™, Firefox is a different story.
Known issues with this browser include dramatic text overlap as well as a tendency for floating layers to be displayed in new and interesting (but sadly incorrect) positions.
Ergo; if you are using a WYSIWYG design program to produce web sites for paying customers without at least testing them on Internet Explorer™ and Firefox, you could wind up with egg on your face at a later stage.
Furthermore, the use of these programs without a basic knowledge of HTML raises definite W3C Compliance issues, as designers will be unable to effectively repair the flaws in their HTML code and thus leave their sites handicapped in the eyes of major search engines.
That however is a different story to be addressed elsewhere.
The conclusion then must be that although WYSIWYG web design software has a definite place within the Industry and is a handy means of creating web sites without the need for hand-coding, it should not be relied upon to produce results which display 100% correctly across a number of different web browsers.
Instead, designers should (as ever) test the finished results on various browser platforms to ensure that "What You See Really Is What You Get".
Giving individuals the ability to create web sites without the need for HTML coding, it has not only created a whole new facet of the web design industry but is also responsible for making the field accessible to home users.
There are however limitations to this approach since 'What You See Is What You Get' only if you happen to be using Internet Explorer™ in many cases.
During the mighty Internet Explorer's™ reign as undisputed ruler of the web browser market, this was not really an issue and thus ignored by most WYSIWYG designers.
The growing popularity of Mozilla's Firefox however, has raised definite questions regarding the cross-browser compatibility of sites produced with programs such as FrontPage™ and DreamWeaver™.
This article is not the usual "WYSIWYG design programs are evil because..." tirade trying to make the purist's case for hand-coded HTML, it is merely an observation that certain aspects of these design packages need to be watched in order to prevent potential embarrassment with clients at a later stage.
According to W3Schools (Sep 2006), Internet Explorer™ still holds a collective market share in excess of 61%, although Mozilla Firefox is mounting a determined assault on Microsoft's© supremacy with a total share of over 27% of browsers used.
Whilst there seem to be few problems with FrontPage™ and DreamWeaver™ sites being displayed properly by Internet Explorer™, Firefox is a different story.
Known issues with this browser include dramatic text overlap as well as a tendency for floating layers to be displayed in new and interesting (but sadly incorrect) positions.
Ergo; if you are using a WYSIWYG design program to produce web sites for paying customers without at least testing them on Internet Explorer™ and Firefox, you could wind up with egg on your face at a later stage.
Furthermore, the use of these programs without a basic knowledge of HTML raises definite W3C Compliance issues, as designers will be unable to effectively repair the flaws in their HTML code and thus leave their sites handicapped in the eyes of major search engines.
That however is a different story to be addressed elsewhere.
The conclusion then must be that although WYSIWYG web design software has a definite place within the Industry and is a handy means of creating web sites without the need for hand-coding, it should not be relied upon to produce results which display 100% correctly across a number of different web browsers.
Instead, designers should (as ever) test the finished results on various browser platforms to ensure that "What You See Really Is What You Get".
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