Re: WYSIWYM editors

Quoting Marcos Caceres <m.caceres@qut.edu.au>:

>
> Robert, am I reading your email correctly? are you seriously saying
> that teaching designers is a "waste of time"?  And that people who
> make graphic designs are somehow inferior because they don't organize
> some silly tags in some 'right' way? I recommend you look up the
> definition of designer because it seem to me that you have not met
> any.
>

It's not that they can't (technically a child 8 years of age, can learn it...
it's not difficult) but they don't care to.  And nothing you say/do will force
them to change, other than require XML and completely break with the slightest
defect.

> As an indication, if you want to know what topics web designers are
> interested in go to a list apart [1] or look at CSS garden [2]. There
> you will find that yes, designers understand menus as list, and that
> probably a lot of designers understand HTML/CSS better than you think.
>

These are the exception to the rule.  If only all were as good as those on CSS
Zen Garden.  Remember, "50% are below average".  These are the top 5%, at best.

And we're only talking about pro's here.  Completely ignoring average Joe.

Don't forget even Google's homepage uses things like <font>, unnecessary
<table>, <b>... and they have more resources and pro's available than the
majority of sites on the web.

> <snip>
> This is speculation. Have you got any evidence to back this up?
>

I point you to 98% of the web, which is a mess.  There aren't that many sites
that are "well constructed".  Reason being: too much effort, don't really care.
 Can you make people care?  General rule is no.  Can you make it require less
effort?  Well, that's a great discussion.

> >  They won't bother to think that way.  Programmers who do think that way
> often
> > can't fix these mistakes.  So it's a lost cause.
>
> Maybe it's the programmers who are screwing up the markup as they are
> the ones writing the PHP, .Net, Rails, ColdFusion, etc that eventually
> comes out as HTML . Have you seen the nonsense markup that .Net's web
> controls produce? Seems to me programmers just as likely to be
> responsible for poor markup than anyone else.
>
This is a very valid point.  CMS's do account for a large amount of invalid
code.  But that's partially due to hacks thrown in to compensate for code
that's fussy to begin with.  I've personally been stuck with that in several
situations.  CMS was designed to do <br/> instead of <p></p> because that's
what the designers preferred.  Years later, that's what's done, and will likely
continue to be done.

It will take some time for all these outdated products to clean up, or be
replaced.


> What is a " typical web development workflow"?
>

In most organizations the majority of the front end code (HTML/CSS) is done by
designers, whose main IDE is Photoshop not vi.  That's where the HTML starts. 
Unfortunately in todays organizations it's all about speed and maximizing
productivity (rushing).  Guess what, if <font> gets the job done it gets used. 
Why bother with css 3 column layouts when tables get the job done quicker, and
look fine from a designers point of view?

THEN it goes to developers who have to further muck with it.  Designers don't
have to hook it into the CMS (for anyone who has templated a page with many
nested tables, your cringing right now).

The point is, HTML/CSS is largely a designers language.  That's where most of it
starts.  If anything, the trend is for less-experienced people to be writing it
as time goes on.  The web is for everyone now.  That's my main point.

A big win here, would be if the future of HTML was moving towards simplicity.

>
> I could not agree more;-)
>

I'd be scared if you didn't ;-)

-- 
Robert Accettura
robert@accettura.com

Received on Sunday, 18 March 2007 06:17:21 UTC