Re: Should we adapt WYSIWYG in CSS?

On  Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:25:36 -0500 (EST) Mikko Rantalainen wrote:

>> Should we adapt WYSIWYG philosopy in CSS?

>IMO, WYSIWYG is just an overrated marketting buzzword. 
>The second "Y" in 
>the WYSIWYG means just that: "you". It doesn't try to say that any other 
>reader would be seeing the same. And even if she did see the same thing, 
>it wouldn't mean that it's the result she wanted to see. That last bit 
>is important. More about that follows...

Ok, I agree. What I like to be possible is more like:
"What You See Is What I See (If You Want)" 

This implies that the user is given the possibility to select
a viewing mode that is similar to the one used by the designer.
I think that this approach might lead to higher control for the user.

The designer can relaxe her design somewhat. She do no longer 
need to use that rigid layout, to achieve her presentational  goals. 
A floating layout might now be good enough, and is faster and might 
be easier to use. The Designer still needs to prepare pages so that 
they look acceptable even if viewed on screens with a different width, 
as user can have this feature turned off or might not be implemented.

The User has more control, because the Designer more likely has 
used a floating layout instead of a rigid one. Besides, she now has 
the possibility to apply such control to other pages as well. 
(Scrink_to_fit  or Assume_fixed_width)

Of course there is a possibility that this might be abused. 
Question is: What is more likely to happen, and in what degree? 
The anwer on this question depends partly on the way this eventually
is implemented in the UserAgents and HTML editors. 



Gaute Sandvik