Is it worth using a WYSIWYG editor?

I've been coding all of my web pages by hand for quite a while now and I have become a bit of a stickler for 'clean' code.

Can anybody tell me exactly what the advantages would be if I changed to using a WYSIWYG editor, and is there a good one that doesn't produce superfluous junk code?

T

 

Mainly for time saving. Im sure theirs a few areas Dreamweaver can be optimized (and Frontpage could use ALOT), and if your a good hand coder than you'd probably have lighter pages than by using a WYSIWYG.

I do my edits by hand, like adding links and stuff to my link pages, but do the design in DW. I'm learning html by using DW, but I don't think I'd ever try coding an entire "quality" site by hand.

 

Dreamweaver is very nice but can still give crazy code. Hand coding is the only sure way to keep your code nice and clean. Try using Dreamweaver in code view or in the split screen code and design view

 

Benefit?
They let me focus on the content rather than the page's complex under-the-hood stuff.

I still check DW's codes sometimes and alter it here and there.

 

I used to use Dreamweaver for my sites, but the code is bulky and I didn't want to pay the 100's of dollars. So at first I just did the edits and additions by hand, but when I finally took the big step of dropping dreamweaver, I was realy pleased, as Infact I could make a quality site with a simple text editor like notepad and as time goes on, its no big deal, infact you feel as if you should have ditched dreamweaver earlier.

 

I can't agree with that. Dreamweaver in code view is nice and it has some other nice features for connecting to your server and other things.

 

Most of these editors drop in a lot of rubbish. GoLive has some nasty bugs including "you just THOUGHT that was deleted" but is better than iti used to be and is more responsive than Dreamweaver. I think Dreamweaver is OK 99% of the time. FrontPage is well known for bloating code (no offense to users) and also may stick in some stuff that only works on Explorer for Windows (and/or on FrontPage enabled servers). nVu is a good cheap editor but always keep a backup handy with nVu!

I use BBEdit for playing with source code but I'll never go back to a non-graphical editor. Just too much trouble for common tasks - I can single-click color complex tables, drop in formatted Word and Excel files, etc.

Oh, the other gotcha - edit the preferences if you use GoLive so it doesn't use character numbers but uses their names for special characters.

 

if you're really into editing it by hand, you should get a nice editor like vim.

I have lots of respect for ppl who are still doing it this way.

 

Exactly. Use a wysiwyg to save you all the mundane tasks and edit the code as you see fit, template the pages for your site and you have saved yourself a load of time and trouble.

 

That is why Dreamweaver is a nice tool. You can switch back and forth from design view to code view and make pages quickly with code that is hand coded and cleaned by you.

 

I've never used Dreamweaver (I hand code the markup), but it seems like an easy way to prototype a design. What you do with that design is up to you - leave it as is or tinker with the code.

I was reading how you can do web standards using DreamWeaver 8 in a SitePoint article (it's a competing site I know, but DigitalPoint doesn't seem to be as against competitor links as a certain forum I know *cough*WMW*cough*)

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/dreamweaver-8-standards

 

VIM is really nice editor.

 

Well, I actually draw out the design in Fireworks first then I code it in Dreamweaver. Fireworks HTML wizard is crap.

 

I've been using Netscape Composer (I had it on my computer before the disconinued it.) I've become disgruntled with the fact that they do not use bold, font, italic, etc. tags. They use thise stupis span style thingines which are a pain.

Does anyone else know of a good free editor that would similiar to Composer but would have cleaner code?

 

I use an editor built into my cms called etomite (I think there are actually a few different ones to choose from). It renders compliant code and is an amazing time saver. If you've never heard of etomite I highly recommend you check it out...sorry for the tangent.

WYSIWYG saves time. If you are still hand coding your site then it's my opinion that the content is being neglected.

 

Damn them for following standards! The < font > tag went out with the Intel 386.

Every site I make is coded 100% by hand, HTML and PHP. Please point out where my content suffers because of this?

 

Those stupid span class things are called Cascading Style Sheets. You can include it in the tag or make an external style sheet. Once you get some expereince using style sheets, they are great.

You could try AceHTML for a free editor.