WYSIWYG

By Anna Dalea, ERT Website Solutions

WYSIWYG means: An acronym for "What You See Is What You Get".  A WYSIWYG program is one that allows you to create and edit a web page, text, or graphical user interface so that you can see what the end result will look like while the webpage document is being created.  WYSIWYG web page editors conceal the markup language (HTML) so as to allow the user to think entirely in terms of how the page should appear.  Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe PageMill are two common WYSIWYG editors.

WYSIWYG relies on the visual aspect only.  One such editor is Adobe Contribute CS3 (currently). Any professional web designer will use either hard coding methods or editing programs that produce both the code and visual aspects and allow for publish/previewing (such as Dreamweaver). 

Normally, after creating a web design in Dreamweaver or hard coding in HTML, JavaScript or CSS, if the clients choose to maintain and update their website themselves, I will have to determine their level of competance with computer coding.  If they understand or can find their way around HTML coding, I will suggest using CoffeeCup HTML Editor in which they can view code and visual aspects of their website.  If they do not understand coding, however, they should use Adobe Contribute to edit the visual aspect only.  This means that the website has to be set up with the competance of the client in mind so that the visual aspect will be easy enough to maintain.

 

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