Difference in hard HTMl and WYSIWYG

If you want a critique of your site, then please go to the website critique forum, help others by reviewing their sites and then start a new thread asking for a review of your site.

I use DW for all of my sites but even using that it does help to be able to read code and hand code to a certain degree as DW does have it's quirks (wait for the onslaught) and it helps to be able to change the code direct.

I also use DW & then tidy up the code in notepad, I normally find that I can remove about 15% of the code without making any difference to the page appearance

Mika

The differences really depend on which WYSIWYG you're talking about. I think that when it comes down to it, knowing HTML will give you a lot more control over your designs. If you're having a problem with what the program's doing, and you know HTML, you can always go into the code and see what's actually going on. (ie. When you press "enter" in Dreamweaver it starts a new paragraph. This confused me at first because I expected it to insert a line break. Since I already knew the code I could see what it was doing - if I didn't know that I would have gone through a lot of headaches trying to figure out how to get it to do what I wanted!)

There's also the matter of writing clean code which can have a big impact on your download speeds and how the page renders in different browsers. Programs like FrontPage and Adobe's GoLive for example tend to insert a lot of extra code or change code written by others. They may also have problems with cross-browser compatibility (especially in the case of FrontPage).

I also find that some of their features can cause people to do things they shouldn't. Like using layers for layout Dreamweaver, or designing with layers and then convert to tables which can end up with insanely messy code. GoLive uses these things they call layout boxes, which are actually tables. If you don't know what the code is doing you can end up with really terribly messy table structures.

Overally it may not matter too much. It depends on where your priorities lie. However, if you want your pages to show up the way you intend in all browsers without taking too long it's best to know the code. It may be best to use a combination of both.

knowing the language means you can control it. When something goes awry in Dreamweaver, you must know some HTML in order to fix it.

Dreamweaver is also not 100% compatible with all browsers and as of the last version, is not 100% compliant with standards.

If you don't know what I just said, that is all the reason in the world to learn more about what you are doing.

Yes, you can create a web page with just about anything out there, but it won't necessarily work in every browser, and more importantly, your page may fail to work in the future, meaning all your work is for nothing.

alistapart.com
webstandards.org

Those are nice places to do some reading on the topic. From there, there are links to sites all over the web talking about standards and code and how vital it is to understand it.

One thing, though. "Hard" HTML, by which I think you mean each page is coded entirely, is not the ideal for many web developers, as it's hard to maintain. Instead, most go for either use of a database, XML, or using server side languages to generate pages from a template with perl, jsp, asp, and/or php.

Understanding HTML is vital to being able to create a good template.

Suzanne

I think its all been said, but the main things to remember is that no WYSIWYG editor is even close to the W3C standards, nor equal in browser display (most favor IE - sloppy coding).

HTML 4.01 is actually trying to be phased out, the next version is XHTML 1.0 which I dont think any WYSIWYG editor can do, if they can they cant do it properly. XHTML has been out for over a year, it hasnt caught on in big numbers yet but when it does people relying on editors will have a hard time swapping to it, knowing HTML can only be a bonus, but start smart, start right, write all code in lower case, use double quotes on all values and remember universal sites always win out in the end (universal meaning displays similar in all browsers).

another handy thing to learn, or even to just know the basics of is CSS

Here is the dumb coming out in me

WC3??????

Yea, my teacher for online media 1 (in which i will learn how to write out html) wants to teach a course in XHTML. Now, what will XHTML be able to do that the current language cannot. Will XHTML be like a combo of ASP, PHP, and HTML all in one? When XHTML becomes popular, will that probably mean more money is out there for the web designers. Because i know now web designers have had to lower their costs because of generality of web designing.

W3C is the group that sets out the standards for browsers, designers etc to work to (or meant to) w3c.org has all the standards etc if you can find your way around, very easy to get lost in that site, not user friendly

learning HTML before XHTML will probably be easier, knowing HTML the switch over is really easy, XHTML is a tighter version of HTML with a lot of tags being made obsolete, such as font, b, i, bgcolor, align etc, XHTML is also made up of XML which isnt something you really need to know anything aboutat this stage.

heres a few examples of how html and XHTML differ

html:
or

xhtml:
or

the main things being, has to all be lower case, everyhing has to be in quotes and single tags like ,, etc now have to be closed, hence the "/" at the end of the tag for single tags, this also makes it backwards compatible. but normal tags like

)
and in scripts, the word "language" has been replaced with "type", CSS now (or will) be used for things like font (color, size, style etc), text effects (bold, italic, underline etc), background colors (body and table) etc etc

If you know HTML the change over is real easy, if you only know editors or code for IE only then it will be harder, things like wont be used, instead will be done with style sheets (CSS), but the thing to remember is CSS isnt widely supported yet, so in a way its probably best to learn HTML and wait a while before learning XHTML, I know XHTML1.1 was released and made (or rather the browsers) made its even more limiting.

sorry for the ramblings, lesson over for the day

Hmmm... I would think that it would be easier to just start with xhtml. I definitely think that it's going to be hard for me to get into the habit of closing IMG tags and things like that, simply because I've gotten into the habit of doing it the other way. If you start with xhtml (which is really just html with stricter formatting requirements) you wouldn't have to worry about that. Yes, it probably will be a little harder in the beginning, but easier down the road.

I agree with Megan! Start with the current standard (XHTML 1.0) and you will have LESS problems. If you start behind the game, you're already at a disadvantage.

Suzanne

Well, i have to learn the html because of my class, but it doesn't mean i can't start learning xhtml now, right:) Are there any online tutorials or online sites that help with beginners learning xhtml?

bryan

When i mentioned learn HTML first, i was meaning the basis, tag layout, nesting, open, close etc as not many XHTML sites go into as much detail as the HTML ones do.

There are plenty of sites out there teaching HTML and XHTML
Just don't put all your faith into one site no matter how big or popular they are, many sites out there teach bad habits and/or wrong info.

If you cant get enough info on XHTML, refer back to HTML for things like tables, lists etc, a good HTML how to site should be able to teach you with as little adjustment into XHTML as possible.

Should warn you, HTML etc can be addictive