4 ms·
How WYSIWYG editors are broken, and why we need to fix them
- wccrawford 15y agotl;dr - WYSIWYG fails to provide enough control for designers. Instead, we should use this specific jQuery library. It shows the markup instead of what it will look like to the end-user. ... No. WYSIWYG is designed to let you preview your document as you go, instead of having to repeatedly preview it and fix things. It's not really for designers, it's for the common man who just want to put something in bold without a ton of extra garbage in his way. It's designed for the common man who doesn't know, or doesn't want to think about, markup. There's nothing wrong with WYSIWIG editors. The problem is that you are trying to use them for the wrong thing.
- drewmclellan 15y agoDisagree with your tl;dr, it mischaracterises the post. Mine would be: WYSIWYG provides distraction for editors, and fails to separate content from presentation for developers. Instead, we should use an abstracted formatting language that adds semantics, not styling. The problem is we need a good visual editor to work with that formatting language.
- ujjvala 15y agovim
- r00fus 15y agoPersonally I like what I get in stackoverflow... A way to preview in-ine as I write the [wiki] style site-specific syntax. If markitup can do similar for forms, it would be a great way to usefully promote utilization and expertise using those constraints/syntax.