WYSIWYG I.e. what you see is what you get – But is it always true? Obviously a lot of non coders/newbie designers love the overall idea of a tool that actively enables them to maneuver the elements of a Web page by just dragging them around on the page and placing them exactly where they want them. The typical drag-drop stuffs, largely seen in web 2.0 arenas. There are hundreds of editors/applications out there, where you won’t see a single line of codes, yet can have a full scale web site build in no time. But is it really “what you see is what you get”, or “what you see is what you likely to get”?

No! It’s not that I hate WYSIWYG editors, its just I don’t trust those tools to be the sole authoring tools. That means instead of fully relying on editor, prior to publishing further check should be done. Why?

That’s a million dollar question, and the suitable explanation isn’t straight forward. First of all you need to understand WYSIWYG editors are tools not the browser, where your visitors will view your site. You can’t predict what your visitors browser type, OS, resolution etc.

For example my mate (who isn’t a coder) was building his e-commerce site using a very first class WYSIWYG editor, and end up having a serious nightmare. When he built it in the WYSIWYG mode the page appeared great. Everything lined up perfectly, and was exactly what he wanted. Then when he uploaded the page and tested it in Opera and Firefox it looks brilliant, but matters became serious when he tested it in IE. The layout was messed up with things overlapping and not floating correctly.

So where did it go wrong? Especially interesting is that WYSIWYG editor actively allows you to view the pages in the Web browsers as well as in the WYSIWYG viewer. He did that and they looked great there too. The problem encountered when the page was uploaded and tested independently on browsers. Problem was the editors default viewer was adjusted with Firefox not IE. Same way every WYSIWYG viewer is sync with a browser, not with all types of browser, not to mention different resolutions.

Just because it looks great in your WYSIWYG editor doesn’t mean it will look great when it’s viewed in another browser or resolution. Designers that use WYSIWYG editors on Windows often have problems when their pages are viewed on a Macintosh or Linux system.

So what should a novice/hobbyist designer do? Obviously learning codes or hiring someone isn’t excellent idea :P. So my suggestion would be -

• Choose your WYSIWYG editor wisely. The application is great doesn’t mean it will be good for you, you should understand the learning curve required for using that. Without proper learning, no WYSIWYG will give you desired results. For example-Adobe Go Live is the best WYSIWYG editor (not counting Dreamweaver) I have seen, but for a novice it is a hard nut to crack.
• It is always possible to write Web pages in lot of WYSIWYG editor without learning HTML, but the more HTML you understand the better your sites will be.
• The key to a quality site is accessibility and functionality. Either a text editor or a WYSIWYG editor can achieve that. So before publishing test your site in different browsers and resolution, if possible different OS too.

Related Resources

Check how your site will look in different browsers:

• Browsershots.org (Free)
• Browsercam (Commercial testing)
• iCapture (looks in Mac)
• Browser Photo (Paid)

Free WYSIWYG Editors for windows:

• WebDwarf (drag-and-drop editing)
• Amaya - Open Source
• XStandard

Free WYSIWYG Editors for Mac:

• Amaya - Open Source
• Nvu (also have Windows version)
• Aptana (Cross Browser)
• SeaMonkey Composer