What you See is not Always What You Get
WYSIWYG
Mother always said, “You cant judge a book by its cover”. The same applies to websites. “What you see is what you get” editors can lay a website out to your liking.. most of the time, there is a greater problem which remains hidden away. WYSIWYG editors do not make people readable code. Software like Dreamweaver, Frontpage, and other programs allow you edit a page without ever touching the code. These software packages are considered “What you see is what you get editors” (WYSIWYG).
Whats the big deal?
photo credit: Jeffrey Beall
Think about an office desk, one all the files are stacked in neat piles with labels, and the other looks like a hurricane swept through leaving documents and files everywhere. Which person would you like fill in for?
The Bigger Picture
More importantly, search engines like cleaner code. They have a harder time making their way through jumbled code. Which makes it harder for you to rank high in Google and other search engines.
Examples
WYSIWYG Editor
<strong> <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <a href="index.html">Projects</a> </span> </strong> |
Human
Html
<a href="index.html">Projects</a> |
CSS
a {font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;} |
You can see the html page is cleaner (easier to understand) and the CSS portion makes loading faster.
Tags: code, hand coding, wysiwyg
Category: CSS
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