WYSIWYG or hand coding? And why?

I handcode with the help of Allaire Homesite (Which has shortcut keys for adding tags around blocks of text etc, but without using WYSIWYG).

I can code faster by hand than I can with an editor, and contrary to popular belief, HTML isn't hard to learn. I'm a designer and an artist and I have a good grasp of HTML.

If I had to learn how to use dreamweaver I would, but feh. I prefer to code by hand, it's just as fast for me to format text in homesite (ctrl b for bold, ctrl i for italic, ctrl p for paragraph tags) as it is with a WYSIWYG.

 

Hand coding all the way--I hate all the guff the programs put in your code. And I'd be terrified to tweak it, lest I remove some vital element.

 

I first learned HTML using Notepad and tweaking other people's pages and finding out what all the tags do. I remember trying to figure out how the color codes worked. I finally found a neat little text-based HTML editor, I can't remember what it's called - "Derekware ...". It's gone now, but at the time it was a good program.

I got the MSDN subscription from Microsoft, so I had a choice of Frontpage with Office Developer or Visual Interdev. I used Frontpage because it had site management features that Interdev didn't have. Frontpage 98 introduced all sorts of code and changed my pages around. When Frontpage 2000 came around, I knew the program so well that I made it do what I wanted - so much so that the pages I made with it worked with Netscape, IE, Mozilla and Opera. They even validated once I added in the right DOCTYPE and charsets. I still maintain that if you understand the program and when it adds things, you can produce proper HTML code.

Nowadays, unless it's a site that I have to produce quickly, I hand-code everything with the old Wordperfect Editor (ED.EXE) - a DOS-based editor.

I don't use tables for sites that I can spend time with, so I don't need the table generation of Frontpage or Dreamweaver. In fact, I maintain that table layouts are not compliant HTML. They may validate but that is not what a table is for. I'm no HTML purist, but tables really screw up the intent of a markup language. It's for structuring and not for formatting. I try to avoid tables whenever possible. Of course, it is harder to write a page with the exact layout you want without tables, but it's well worth it. Especially when you can create a printable page without resorting to content management or making a new page.

 

i started off doing it by hand - but i found i made errors all over the place which would take me ages to fix, and i just dont have the time.

i use dreamweaver - much quicker

i spend more time on my graphics and content than writing code.

 

I also started off coding by hand, but then got Dreamweaver. It actually a lot more decent than other HTML helper applications and doesn't produce as many redundant tags (although I still have to clean up after it). I'd say knowing how to code HTML is an asset even if you're using an application to help you. I usually just use Dreamweaver to set up the layout, since I need a visual on it. Then I add CSS and JavaScript and do other code cleanups myself.