WYSIWYG or hand coding? And why?

Well, I don't use Notepad, but I do it basically the same way. I use the plain editor on GeoCities (which has even fewer features than Notepad).

I started out on Homestead , but I grew tired of it and taught myself HTML. (HTML Goodies was (and sometimes still is) one of my favorite resources.) So now I do all hand coding. Yes, there's always an error in the status bar, but the pages look okay, so I'm happy. I like it because I have (as Tarkin so wonderfully said it) "direct control" over my pages. I work on it until I get it right. I've tried using a few pieces of software before (Frontpage Express among them), but I didn't really like it. Not to mention how GeoCities doesn't even offer free FTP anymore (but that's another thead...).

(And wow, that was a lot of parentheses! )

 

Just as a thought (a smidge off-topic here), but this forum would be a great place to meet other people who might like to do an R2 site, and you could go in together on costs and material gathering/creation.

I'm personally a total loner when I comes to making websites - I wouldn't want to work with anyone else (even if the final product was better than what I could achieve alone).

I just do it for fun, thats all.

I think if you are making a personal site, then using FLASH is ok. Its not like you are trying to sell something, or represent a company so it shouldn't matter if a certain percentage of the population can't view your site.

malkie

 

I'm personally a total loner when I comes to making websites - I wouldn't want to work with anyone else (even if the final product was better than what I could achieve alone).

I was of that opinion as well, especially when I started off doing TFNG. But Mark changed my mind, together, we make it better than either could apart. And while there are some "I thought you were doing that!" situations, on the whole, being part of a staff is prety good.

¤Night

 

I usually use Dreamweaver, but I do hand coding as well, to sort off details, etc.

Also do some PHP coding, although not much. Started actually coding it last week, but what I did so far worked.

So basically, I use a combination of both. Programs like Dreamweaver can save up a lot of time, but there's nothing like changing details and adding one thing or the other to the code while it's being done.

 

So basically, I use a combination of both.

thats a good point sometimes DW doesn't get things quite right, and you need to edit the code slightly in notepad.

I had problems getting the correct colours to match one time, and I found myself copy and pasting the colour codes from photoshop into notepad so that everything matched.

Night4554 said But Mark changed my mind, together, we make it better than either could apart.

I totally agree, but I'm a stubborn person when it comes to design, and I really prefer to work in my own time.

In my work place I always work as part of a team, adding my own uniqueness to the collective. Its the only way to achieve maximum efficency.

For my personal stuff I'm happy to work on my own. I find its a good way to learn new codes, styles and techniques.

Following on from that, I must confess to looking at the coding of other people's sites to work out how they managed to do something. I'm not a theif, I'm just being educated by other people's skills. I'd never rip someone elses work off

malkie

 

Following on from that, I must confess to looking at the coding of other people's sites to work out how they managed to do something. I'm not a theif, I'm just being educated by other people's skills.

THEIF!

I think that's how everyone learns at one point or another. I know that's how I learned anything beyond basic HTML.

¤Night

 

well, I learned where that 1-UP is on level 1-1 of Super Mario Bros by watching someone else - call me what you will

almost everything I learned as a youngster (programming and graphics) were by looking at other people's stuff, its the best way to learn practical things without having to read doorstop-like reference manuals.

It also resulted in me picking up some bad habits though My computer studies teacher at school asked my where I had learned to write arrays as they were terrible. It took him ages to unlearn me and then reprogram my programming skills.

Ah, those were back in the days when we had to code arrays the long way

anyways, on topic, WYSIWYSG rules

malkie

 

without having to read doorstop-like reference manuals

I love those things, but mine are always a little old, cause I buy them when they're knocked down to under 10 bucks.

Nayway, on topic, Hand coding rules.



¤Night

 

I've been using hand coding all along, even though I can operate FrontPage and Dreamweaver perfectly and even conduct tutorials on them. For me, I want to be sure of where I placed each part of the webpage, instead of having to sift through a whole lot of stuff if I later find errors. Also, I find that using Dreamweaver or Frontpage tends to create a lot of extra code that is actually unnecessary and only takes up space, and doesn't use CSS code. CSS code is one of the things I love about hand coding

 

For the second time in my life, I downloaded the Dreamweaver trial from Macromedia. Once again, it seems much more like Greek to me than normal HTML does. I understand HTML, for the most part, but this just confuses me more.

 

I use a bit of both. I have Trellan Web Page which is WYSIWYG (because I could get it for free really ) but spend most of my time fiddling with the code anyway because it gives me more control and it means I can use CSS and stuff. I love tweaking. However, I like being able to just type text for instance without having to worry about formatting it with HTML. Saves me time in the long run!

LittleJedi

 

When people can't even type out their HTML, that's getting sad.

I can type out my HTML, but why should I when I can create much more complex pages with Dreamweaver UltraDev, and now MX? When dealing with complex sites, it makes no sense to give in to the programmer snob in me. I use Fireworks to divide up my graphics, import the HTML into Dreamweaver MX and hand code a bit for the sake of perfection, then go to town with extensions to add links and MM content. I can finish a site that would by hand take a week in one or two days -- and it will look better.

If you're new to WYSIWYG editors, I highly recommend you try the demo of Dreamweaver MX w/Fireworks, since it codes more like what I would do by hand than GoLive! or Frontpage. In fact, I gave my copy of Frontpage 2000 away.

 

I just got Macromedia Studio MX I haven't had a chance to use it yet

I think it contains Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX, Fireworks MX and Freehand MX

"yipeeeeeeee"

malkie

 

I have both Dreamweaver MX and UltraDev, I still use Ultra Dev since I really haven't noticed too much of a difference in MX. Plus it my copy of MX is only the educational version and I can't use it for profit.

 

There are a few of the new extensions that seem to work better with MX, and I like the layout a little better, but for the most part I still use UltraDev since all of my older sites were built on it and I don't feel like porting them over. Also the Quicktime extension won't work with MX and I use that alot.

 

I hand code. I learned from books and htmlgoodies.com mainly. I've tried programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver, but they were just too complicated to bother with, so I stick with writing my own pages.

JediFarfy

 

I handcode {usually}.

 

I used Dreamweaver in my Day job, and edit the html with either "BBEdit" on the Mac or "Homesite" on the PC. The color-coded-text that both programs offer make hand coding so much easier over Notepad. Also default/converting all my linebreaks to UNIX linebreaks makes a world of difference when submitting pages to CGI scripts.

For my personal pages I handcode with BBedit and I run with the W3C 3.0 specifications for maximum accessability for all browsers and platforms.

The 4.0 specs are just not implemented well enough on the two main browsers for me to justify coding on that level yet.

-Jeff Allen
"How to Build a Stormtrooper Costume"
http://www.studiocreations.com

 

For musclecars.blueygrey.com,

I hand coded everything but the Java scripts.

For swg.blueygrey.com

I'm using a combination of Photoshop 7.0 and Image Ready for graphics. Then i'm hand coding all the CSS (i'm very new to CSS. hehe)

I've learned as I go, so this is my first step away from trying to use tables for positioning, but it seems to be working out rather well, and it's a lot less hassle. heh.

 

For the next version of my portfolio site I am going to actually give hand coding a go. It's been too long since I did something without help and I could use the practice. Should be fun.

 

I would totally use dreamweaver except that it costs money so I use notepad instead. The problem is I don't really know how to use the HTML so if I want to do something I have to scroll the internet till I see a site that has what I want, then jack it from them. If it has a big blob of scripts at the top I just forget it.

 

I used to do the two first versions of my site with MS Frontpage, because I had no knowledge whatsoever of HTML

OK, then I really got fed up with it, since I couldn't do everything I wanted in it fully, so I used the help of few tutorials ( Tutorial ) and this wonderful editor called AceHTML (It is not a WYSIWYG, its an HTML editor with more options than the windows notepad and it has this really handy preview tool, too.)

And now I wouldn't go back to Fronpage Sure, I sometimes use it for viewing some stuff if I have problems or something, but nah

 

Handcode. I'm a programmer so it's just what I'm used to and WYSIWYG editors give out some NASTY code. Especially frontpage and it's IEcentric pap.

Not in notepad though. PFE all the way!

 

I just finished a 100 page (that's 100 indidvidual HTML files) contract website, with 800+ images this week. And I tell you what, if it wasn't for Composer I would have shot myself in the head about 2 days into this job. Normally I would hand-code anything and everything I put online (cause I hate the code-kibble that WYSIWYG editors put in a file), but if it wasn't for having Composer there to get the plan simple files and tables done (one was 150 rows high, 8 columns wide) I don't think I could have brought it in on deadline. Though I still had to clean up a lot of garbage in the post-process.

I like long code cause I can control exactly how the page behaves cross-browser wise. Composer and Frontpage dumped a lot of trash code into a file (especially in the <head> tag) and some of it is browser-centric; meaning that it's going to cause display glitches in a competing browser-- CSS code down in a Composer and Frontpage are really bad for this.

On a side note: Know how much I made for this job (and this was for one of the major lcoal businesses owners)? $50.00, roughtly 50¢ a page.

 

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.