Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

WYSIWYG Authoring Tools

WYSIWYG HTML editors have graphical interfaces that make writing HTML more like using a word processor or page layout program. So for instance, if you want to add an image, just drag it from the desktop onto the page; the authoring tool creates all the HTML coding needed to accomplish the effect on the screen. In addition to simple style and format shortcuts, many of these tools automate more complex tasks, such as creating Cascading Style Sheets, adding JavaScript, and adding PHP functionality.

WYSIWYG tools offer several benefits:

• They offer considerable time savings over writing code by hand.

• They are good for beginners. They can even be useful for learning HTML, because you can lay out the page the way you want and then view the resulting code.

• They are good for quick prototyping . You can try out design ideas on the fly.

• They provide a good head start for creating style sheets, JavaScript behaviors, and other features.

On the downside, they are expensive and have steep learning curves. Some experienced web authors feel that the markup these tools spit out is not as efficient as markup carefully crafted by hand.

If you are a professional web designer and developer, a web authoring tool won’t excuse you from learning HTML altogether. In many cases, you will need to do some manual fine-tuning to the resulting HTML code.

Some of the most popular tools as of this writing are:

Macromedia Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver has emerged as the industry-standard HTML authoring tool ...