Why hand-coding?

We still remember nice times when hand coding HTML pages was so mysterious that we could spend hours assembling few tags one after another and being amuzed by their magical transformation to something great looking in good old Internet Explorer.

One couldn't make web page without knowing and understanding HTML thoroughly. But today with numerous WYSIWYG editors on the market it seems that one doesn't need learning HTML any more and can build complicated web site without any cue how it works.

However some people still prefer doing their job in text editors or for complex time consuming tasks creating web pages in DreamWeaver and tweaking a bit afterwards in HandyHTML. I beleive, hand coding gives you much more freedom, power, flexibility and control over web code especially when you need to insert your HTML code in asp, php or perl scripts. Besides only hand coding supports all the latest technologies in the fast changing world of dynamic web pages.

Here's what developers and designers say why they do not use WYSIWYG editors (extracts from Builder Buzz on ZDNet):

Terminator

mod_perl/embperl consultant + Web Engineer

Briefly: because they screw up your code.

spar

Let me add browser compatability and faster loading.

Jdavia

Your miss-takes become my user Tools.

You get what you see on the page, but see what you get in your code with WYSIWYG, it should be called WY IWY S Hand coding puts wysiwyg in more in perspective, you get what you see.

But the real bebefits of coding by hand ( at least in part), is you can be more creative, able to solve problems, clean up, and correct some of the mess that WYSIWYG editors make. One more, to help others solve their code errors.

Krazy Yak

Hand coding gives you much much more freedom, i believe. Dreamweaver is great, and I do use it for stuff (dont have 3.0 yet btw), but I still prefer hand-coding, with help from HomeSite of course. I used to use DW for complex tables and stuff like that, but recently switched back to hand code for darn well near everything now, even if it does take a bit longer to write.

SoopahMan

"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" would leave the world blind and toothless - Ghandi

If you're doing anything complicated, hand-coding can take a LONG time. But then of course, a WYSIWYG editor can give you a lot of crap. I think WYSIWYG will always have the potential for being the better tool, with some hand-coding built-in, but I personally relish hand-coding even given the powers of Dreamweaver. Making complex page is complicated enough, you don't need a new interface and its own possible bugs to complicate things :o) Hand-coding gives you flexibility and power, and occasionally speed you couldn't get with a WYSIWYG. And of course, only hand-coding supports all the latest features...

</george>

Even DW. as good as it is, requires hitting the old F10 and cleaning up the code by hand. Of course you can go in and create your own source formatting profile and stuff, but who has time for that!? We are trying to make pages/sites here. I still say a good straight up text editor is best.

Mike C.

Freelance web builder

Hand coding definitely has advantages over WYSIWYG. Besides what has already been mentioned, I think hand coding gives the designer the most control over the page. But then I also feel that every designer can take advantage of a WYSIWYG editor to just make minor changes (like in the text, etc) and thus save time.

jon stephens

I use DW and a text editor. I hate coding large tables by hand, but I don't mind letting DW do most of the work for me, and tweaking a bit afterwards.

Another advantage of using DW (and perhaps some of the other "visual" tools) is that it lets you create templates and library items like headers and footers and make changes in them that are immediately effective sitewide. Admittedly, much the same sort of thing can be done using a text editor and some finding and replacing, and I do updates in that fashion as well -- still it can be awfully handy when a client wants something changed on every page, and he wants it done yesterday...

I don't see DW, FP, GoLive, etc., completely replacing hand-coding. And I think that those who can hand-code and do so well will retain at least a slight advantage over those who can't. Nevertheless, something like DW can be (and is, for me) a valuable addition to one's sitebuilding toolkit.

geraldharris

Actually, I do see hand coding going away someday in the future. Far in the future. If anyone out there has experience with quark express or any other publishing software you know how simple it is to create a layout design text flow etc. to create an easy to read easy to navigate text/hard copy document. These editors basically use a language inside the document to describe the contents of that particular document. The descriptive language, which we do not see, describes the content, it is not actually content. Sound familiar doesn't it. (Check out WordPerfect's reveal codes for a reat example)

HTML, XML, and everything else like it is designed to describe content, it is not actually content. WYSIWYG editors are not as efficient or reliable as the decent publishing applications out there, but someday they will be.

Personally, I use ColdFusion and VisualInterdev . . . mostly ColdFusion's Development environment (Which is basically Homesite with some extra tabs). The fantastic thing about an editor like ColdFusion/Homesite is the level of customization that you can apply to the interface. I know that I can produce websites faster in ColdFusion/Homesite than anyone in my organization can with FrontPage or DreamWeaver. The reason why I can do this is because I know my interface and I have modified it to reflect my production style. An added bonus, clean code.

So, my assertion is that an experienced coder can produce site's faster by hand (with the right interface) than anyone can with a WYSIWYG. That's from start to finish, top to bottom, testing, modification, corrections included.

My suggestion, stay on top of the WYSIWYG technology but use the text editors for real work.

Skulk

I've always maintained that I can type out a site faster than I can make one with a mouse. And there's no doubtyou have a finer degree of control with a text editor, too. But the following can help: multiple open files at once, global search/replace, and customizable color highlighting of tags, etc. Also, it'd be nice to have some sort of automatic template system for making pages that have to go on a server without dynamic generation.

Other than that, who needs a wysiwyg? I think HTML is a pretty non-cryptic natural language standard. I've never spent more than 1 hour teaching anyone basic HTML, hex #colors, and frames on a text editor. And that includes their practice time. I send 'em on the way with the bare bones guide, a link to w3, and a text editor, and they now can make their own pages. I know I'm drifting off-topic from advanced to beginner websites, but the point is HTML is supposed to be EASY. And if I can't trust (most) wysiwyg's for basic stuff, then how could I do my real sites (back-ends and all) with them?

Monte

First off, I stopped using complex tables about the time that I figured out how CSS works.

Second off, I have yet to find a WYSINWYG editor that can handle CSS to the degree, and with the complexity that I can by hand.

Third off, if I didn't know hand-coding inside-out, upside-down, backwards-and-forwards, I couldn't write PHP to generate it on-the-fly.

Lastly, I'm on linux and there just aren't any WYSINWYG editors for linux. But that is mostly a moot point because I was a hand-coder long before I changed over to linux.

What I would like is a nice GUI XWindows text editor that color-codes HTML tags according to my specifications.

Richard C.

I always hand-code as it gives me complete control over what's going on - and if the code doesn't act as I expect, then I know why and can learn from that.

The other thing is that I code mainly for ASP and this involves lots of modular code that you simply couldn't do with a WYSIWYG editor, as it's basically a script with HTML embedded in it.

Having said that, a friend uses DW extensively and the quality of the code it produces is surprisingly good.

Nicholas Taylor

As a die-hard hand coder, I was taken aback at a job interview this week for a web site manager position at a relatively large corporation and their main concern was my lack of experience in FrontPage and ColdFusion!

Sounds like Dreamweaver is something I really need to check out though from a production stand point. I haven't heard that much bad about it in any of the threads here or elsewhere. I'll still stick with Textpad for my daily chores as it is loaded with features for the hand coder. I can open all my pages and do global search and replace, save workspaces so that I can work on mutiple sites at once, very good spell checking and a lot of shortcuts. Very easy to learn. The newest version is even better. Well worth the meager investment.

Shirak

I don't see hand-coding going away. In fact I think that the WYSIWYG editors are going to start dropping away pretty soon. Most smaller WWW pages can be done in MS Word and saved as HTML. For those people that don't want to learn HTML and want a simple, static page, thats all they need and all they'll every use.

Professional WWW pages however are rarely static anymore, and WWW design is moving from typing in content to writing scripts that dynamically create the content from a data source (DBMS, XML, proprietary format, etc.) Once you start coding in ASP (what I do 99% of the time), PHP, or something, WYSIWYG editors are not much good for anything except making the original TABLE tags. It doesn't take long before half the file is enclosed in different ASP tags, IF statements and stuff, and then you need a good text editor to do any work. I'll stick with Visual Interdev for now. I only ever use the source-code view and it's got nice syntax highlighting for not only the HTML, but also the ASP and any client-side JavaScript. And if I ever can't remember an HTML tag for something, I can use the WYSIWYG tools to drop a whatever object into the source view and then edit it till I like it. I can hardly imagine a corporate WWW site without some ASP, PHP, CGI or something in it.

kevlar

(#14) But the following can help: multiple open files at once, global search/replace, and customizable color highlighting of tags, etc

(#19) I'll still stick with Textpad for my daily chores as it is loaded with features for the hand coder

notetab is my text editor of choice, you can have multiple files open at once, and do a global search/replace... i downloaded textpad to compair and it seemed to be a matter of layout. though i couldn't figure out how to global search/replace.

anyone else have good text editors they use for html production?

SilverAge Software

HandyHTML Studio.