Preserved Topic: IWYSRWYG? (Page 1 of 1)

OK, I'm mainly interested in the opinions of people who frequent this forum, since they tend to be professionals one way or another, in design or web design or art or whatever. Newbies, of course, are certainly free to post, but I'm really interested in the opinions of the regulars.

My friend recently brought up the subject of WYSIWYGs (you know, like frontpage and dreamweaver, etc), since she knew I would have at least a little to say about it. Personally, I'm very strongly against their use, except in specific circumstances, as I'll explain in a minute. But I'm interested in hearing your opinions. Let me show you what I told my friend:

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"Alright, let me set up a situation and ask you a few hypothetical questions about it... let's say I made a machine which could paint a picture. You could describe the picture you wanted, including what objects would be where, what colors to use for what, and stuff like that. And you could choose the style, like, impressionist or whatever. Then you'd just fill it up with paint and put a canvas in front of it, and it would paint your picture for you, making it more or less the way you wanted it.

OK, so here you are in the museum of fine arts, and you're looking at paintings made by great painters, like, um, monet, I guess. I don't know many great painters. =) But you're looking at these paintings, one by one, and you come across a few that were made by this machine, and signed by the person who used the machine.

How much respect would you have for the creator of the machine-made paintings? How much would you admire the painting itself? Would it be half as good as the hand-painted ones, even it looked similar to them? And how much pride do you think the "artist" had in it?

That's why FrontPage is evil, and hand coding is not. =)

Actually, there are more reasons. WYSIWYG editors tend to make pages that aren't cross-browser compatible (*especially* FrontPage... do you think it's coincidence that the pages made by *microsoft* frontpage tend to only work in *microsoft* internet explorer? Hmm...). They make pages that contain more HTML than is necessary, usually, resulting in a slightly longer download. And often they won't do things quite as you want them to be done, forcing *you* to compromise the quality of your page.

That said, there are a couple of things that I don't mind wysiwygs being used for... one is learning. I think it's ok to use a wysiwyg for like your first page or two, looking at the source, getting an idea of what does what. And sometimes if you don't know how to do something with html, and you have a wysiwyg at hand, you can find out how the wysiwyg does it, and copy that. The other thing they're good for is handling large sites with many pages - they can have features that will help with that sometimes, to avoid, say, doing the same small change on thirty pages, which can be time consuming otherwise. But I'm still wary about their use."

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My friend, who seems to really like her WYSIWYGs, looked for a second opinion from one of her other friends. This is what he said:

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"...the program is like spray paint, things can be done at a faster pace and sometimes more efficiently, however, the end product may not have the same quality as a real paint brush. To compare it even further, a large paint brush is coarse and covers a large area, however to cover the fine details a small, thin brush must be used. The finer brush may take longer to paint with, but will add beauty to the picture. A true artist (or web designer) will have both things in his repertoire to create a beautiful painting. Definitely not a cop-out.

When editing in html code, the page tends to be cleaner than the program generated counterpart. I have made a compromise. I use programs to make a sort of rough draft and then iron out the page by editing the actual code myself and purging any useless text..."

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This guys opinion is obviously a lot less purist than mine, he thinks it's ok to use WYSIWYGs a lot more than I would ever use them.

So, my question is, where should we, as artists, and as professional designers, draw the line? How OK are WYSIWYGs, really? I'm just looking for some opinions that may hold more weight than mine and my friend's friend's.

Personally, I don't use WYSIWYG editors because they rarely make the page look the way I see in my head. I stick with notepad or dana, just basic text editors, but I don't think less of someone who can make a great page using one of those editors. In fact, I'd be a little impressed, considering I *can't* make something look great using one of those programs.

Using your analogy, I would certainly not be impressed with some painting drawn by a machine... but I don't think of a webpage as a work of art... I think of a webpage as a canvas. I don't disrespect the people who use programs to organize and layout their canvas... I just prefer to have my fingers in the dirt. If they want to use a hoe, that's fine by me. (No doubt there will be many witty responses to THAT statement. )

It all depends on the purpose.

We have a couple of non-HTML people at work who use Dreamweaver for some intranet stuff.
But in that case they are already stuck with a basic layout (header,nav,footer) so they really just make the content area.

It's not a pretty picture, but it's fine for it's purpose.

Myself (not being a coder by trade) use Dreamweaver on occation. Mostly 'cause my syntax are not totally accurate when it comes to DHTML. But I always finish off in notepad.
I can read it, understand it. Just not write it from scratch without tons of hassle.



-nimraw
If you can't convince, confuse!

'firm foundations lead to sturdy structures'

I use DW and I use UltraEdit, and I like them both.
I have no problems with wysiwyg editors (except of FP), as long as you know what is happening behind the scenes. Bad thing is, you use wysiwyg's and you have no idea what is happening with your code.
DW has a nice feature called "apply source formatting" for example. I often start the program just because of that, so I use it for something where the visual stuff is not involved.
To me the most important thing is that you know html and coding then use whatever you are comfortable with.

P.S. I use "you" here but do not mean you Slime. You know too much

It's been my experience that generally, a WYSIWYG spawned site is not going to be as intricate and interesting as a hand-coded site. In my opinion however, this is just because the majority of people using visual editors are just hobbyists and hand coders are more of a perfectionist breed.

I've known a few people that know their tools well and can use the WYSIWYG to knock out some reeeally nice stuff, stuff that doesn't even look too bad when you view the source. This is because they know their tools. Chris Figat comes to mind. He puts together some really class stuff using Flash and (I believe) DreamWeaver. He may go in and clean up the code cuz it looks pretty sharp, but the sites are cross-browser and real skippy. He's a designer that knows what he wants to do then does it, and I happen to like it.

Which brings me to your art analogy and my opinion on it. I love art for art's sake. If it stimulates my eyes, I'm happy. I've seen art everywhere I've cared to look, some effortless and some extremely disciplined, and I've liked both. I definitely respect the disciplined effort. If there was no effort involved and I still get a kick out of it, well, I'm not going to turn a positive into a negative on principles.

I'm not gonna get my panties in a twist over it, I'm just gonna enjoy it. Or not.


Jason

I have an opinion or two about WYSIWYG editors.

I always laughed at the pundits of editors who boast the superiority of notepad, (and all variations of that are basically text editors, including line editors, PICO etc.) I just find it ironic that someone would limit themselves to such a small set of tools.

A person can build practically anything with a saw, a hammer, and a crank drill. The Amish seem to do well without power tools using wooden pegs instead of nails building each item they need. But try and imagine a construction crew assigned to add a new subdivision in suburban hell just walking up with a stack of wood and that limited set of tools...its just not realistic. I think that when you start to build bigger and more having proper tools saves time and as the old adage goes, time is MONEY!!!

Yeah Jo-Blow-Pico can get by maintaining small websites using notepad type tools but do any of you believe that companies interested in quantity, quality production rely solely on notepad to build and maintain sites like Disney, Nike, Oakley, etc. (yeah I know, some are database driven)

I remember Doc chimed in on this topic awhile back, something about starting by draining the ink out of squids....At the end of it I think he expressed a partiality to homesite, I cant recall exactly.

I used to have a stock response every time this came up on DBM. I would usually start with "Notepad is for bitches" and then begin how I write out my code by hand in binary on papyrus that I made by hand and then scan it in with a scanner I built by hand with software I wrote,(again by hand) then convert it to hex by hand, then to machine language then finally to HTML using a program I wrote in assembler...blah, blah, blah, you get the sarcasm

To simplify...
Editors are tools created to help streamline the job of creating and editing HTML documents.
just like...
Photoshop is a tool created to help streamline the job of creating and editing Images.

For those that refuse to use an editor to code then stay CONSISTENT...Refuse to use photoshop to create images. I hear MS paint kicks ass! Just take it one pixel at a time...

Posting before reading any other post, so that I will not be influenced.

I find that both arguements are completely invalid, and I find it a true shame that someone would think that learning to code HTML with a WYSIWYG is a good thing. When I was 12 years old my father took me to meet a friend who was going to do a website for our non-profit group. He talked to us and told us how he used HotDog to do his HTML.

I decided based on his reccomendation to use hotdog. My skill level then dropped off the face of the earth, I designed like shit, and was completely worthless in this field. One day I happened upon the "Barebones Guide to HTML" which is a basic syntax reference. That changed my life, because I believe the first line was "Open up notepad".

Now I am able to code weller than before (the bad use of grammer just worked, let it be).

I would also say that WYSIWYG editors are not in any way shape or form faster than hand coding. My friend told me that he used frontpage to do his layouts, I told him to hand code the stuff. He looked at me kind of funny. So I challenged him to a coding contest. I won with hand coding. Because it is much faster than the WYSIWYG.

I don't understand handling large websites thing at all. Doesn't make and sence to me. Editplus handles multiple pages just as efficiently as FrontPage does. And I didn't notice any extra's.

I think WYSIWYG is completely evil. They add extra code that is hard to decifer.

moaiz, it's not that my fellow web designers and I are against using the tools at hand to complete our work. The reason why any professional designer refuses to use a WYSIWYG editor is that every one of the things on the market today is crap. If someone would write a WYSIWYG editor that would create HTML files with concise, good code that worked in all browsers, I think you would see more people use them.

Going to your construction analogy, if the crew had a crane that would only raise I-beams up and down but couldn't move them from side to side or forward and back, I think they would quickly stop using in favor of something that actually worked.

Besides, Amish furniture painstakingly crafted by hand with a few tools are worth more money and are more coveted by collectors than any furniture built with powertools today. Even with all the tools available in the world, there's still something to be said for craftsmanship. Also, the homes constructed in suburban subdivisions may be built in a week, but they are crap and I wouldn't want to live in one.

It's your God, they're your rules, YOU go to Hell.

Thanks for the kind words JK. I do actually use Dreamweaver for most of my work, but I also spent a good part of one semester when I was in college with Notepad and Webmonkey and Doc's site before I had any idea what a WYSIWYG was. I've taught HTML to folks on several occasions, and I always make them show me that they can hand-code a fairly complex image layout in a table before letting them open DW

I don't think that DW makes me less of a designer or anything else, quite the opposite actually. I let it do the little messy stuff and worry more about the aestetics (sp?) of a site, the navigation, etc. I could code the entire site by hand if I really wanted to, but the end result of that would be more time spent coding plus the same amount of time spent designing, which equals more hours spent by me for the same paycheck. I might get slightly cleaner code, but I can easily go in and make a few minor tweaks (and usually do) that do about the same job.

Chris


KAIROSinteractive

Well! We have some pretty strong opinions here. I think I'll respond quickly to each one with a witty and/or sarcastic comment, just for the heck of it. Er, I'll also give my thoughts about what you said.

Human Sheild: You wouldn't think of a web page as a work of art? That's probably where the differences between our opinions are based. I would disagree with that. I completely agree with your first paragraph, though.

Nimraw: I agree that WYSIWYGs are generally OK for pages that have a small audience and will be used only for something random, like a small forum for, like, a book club or something like that. Where there are only 5 people who will be looking at the page anyway, and none of them really care. But I encourage you to practice hand coding a bit yourself, so that you're able to do more than just understand code, it's good to be able to write it yourself. (Regardless of whether or not you use a wysiwyg.)

Soc-X: Well said. (Actually, I'm not sure *you* said that, since you put quotes around it, but it applies well here.)

Sash: thanks =)

JKMabry: Good point. I guess if you can really create the same page with a wysiwyg that you can by hand, it doesn't really matter. But as you said, there are very few people who can do that successfully, and I think the rest of the people who think they can do it may be fooling themselves.

Moaiz: I see you have a pretty strong opinion about this, too. I found it funny that you mentioned MS Paint - I, not owning a copy of Photoshop quite yet, frequently use MS Paint to add detail to some parts of some images. (Granted, I *would* use photoshop given the chance. I just thought it was funny you mentioned that.) But I think the comparison between pages and images somewhat breaks down - over time, I've seen that people who use Photoshop make better images than those who don't, but it also seems that people who use WYSIWYGs create *worse* pages than those who don't.

WarMage: Glad you agree =)

St. Senaca: Good points.

Fig: I think that's a good example of how learning HTML is important. I'm still wary about using WYSIWYGs, but I hope people who *do* use them will follow your example, and keep from them until they have HTML down.

BTW: Let's all just be careful not to let this turn into a big debate/flame war, OK? Its probably best to just state your opinion, and try to avoid commenting on ones that you heavily disagree with if you can't do it in a completely friendly way. Just saying this to try to avoid it all, no one's really gotten mad yet, certainly. Let's just keep it that way. =)

I do both.

If I use DW *just* for word processing, it leaves my code alone. So, build what I need, enter DW, add/edit content while leaving the lay-out aspects alone. Seems to work just fine.

Sometimes I use DW for complex tables and such. Hack it together, then clean it up by hand. I can get clean, really complex lay-outs done in almost nothing flat. Much faster for me than doing it all by hand. Select the cell, click on Edit TD and go. Love it for visually doing a big and complex table. (Let's see... I want this cell to have this fixed width... this one to have this percent...)

Personally, I can't imagine doing a site with just wysiwyg editor.

If I were to teach web-authoring, I would start with the NCSA Primer and go from there. Eventually get into the evils of wysiwyg and how to avoid/fix them by hand-coding (by not using wysiwyg or to compliment the work). And I would stress responsible(!) use of tools.

But that's me. And I use both.

I find that using GoLive 5 effectively is actually pretty efficient. Sure the code is bad sometimes, but when you're trying to turn around sites quickly or make updates to an entire site with a click, it does the job. However, I work with two other designers who know very little code and I can't tell you how way beyond them this makes me even with a wizzywig. I mean, problems crop up that you have to dig into the code to sort out, for example.

There is an important point I would like to make:

Knowing HTML well, and subsequently scripting like JavaScript, I think the transition from a "manually edited" sitesto a "database-driven" ones is not turning out to be that hard for me. Clearly, when you're talking about PHP and SQL, etc, not only do you need to know HTML very well, but the baddest wizzywig in the world ain't going to help you design the database interaction. (Though I imagine the new Dreamweaver/Coldfusion packages will make a good shot at it).

I learned how to code by hand after a made 2 webs in MSFP... It just couldent *do* what I wanted. I rarly use the thing now, but i did open it last night so i could look at a table that was being VERY stubborn.

If I make all my code in editpad I can really understand it better and fix it better...

Dreamweaver 4 rules. I love it. I love WYSIWYG. Makes it sooooo much easier. Open it and you are ready to go. You can also learn HTML on it. Just look in a code... oh looke here... there is a little tab to click on to see the code.. uh uh uh... oh wait... what's that over here??? A quesiton mark....oh man.. It also explains it to me what this tag does and means!

I am sorry.. but why would I want to make my job harder and type all this shit by hand when I can do it quicker in DW and tweak a code if something is wrong?????

Simplified.E.Solutions

Ducati:

its what separates the men from the boys.. know what I mean?

To me, wysiwygs is tool just like any other program, if I feel that a certain tool will make my job easier at the moment, I will use it.
DW is a very nice tool to quickly generate the base for complex tables as an example.
However, as I keep diving deeper and deeper into serverside code, my use of wysiwygs is a lot less than before, sure I've tried UltraDev on an asp-site (bad word, i know) but it cannot code the way I want...

So, back to a regular HTML-editor, in my case 90% of what I do is from Homesite.
(no disrespect intended Max, I've tried HTML beauty and still prefer Homesite for now, I'll give it a new trial with the php-syntax installed though.)

Notepad is useful because it's so d*mn small and fast, but to use it for a big site, nope, that's torture to my eyes A matter of taste.

But to open the source of a large company's site and see "Generator Dreamweaver" or any other wysiwyg, I tend to think, what a rip if they paid good money for this... There is pride in hand coding after all.
/Dan

I think Slime covered anything I was going to say, So I will save some space and simply say Ditto to slime's comments..............

you allready used space

"I am about to -- or I am going to -- die: either expression is correct."
~~ Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian, d. 1702

quote:

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The other thing they're good for is handling large sites with many pages - they can have features that will help with that sometimes, to avoid, say, doing the same small change on thirty pages, which can be time consuming otherwise. But I'm still wary about their use."

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That's funny, I just made a little program that lets you make little changes to multiple documents, kind of a suped up find and replace program.

Anyways, I like to compare wysiwyg editors to programming API's like visual basic. It's just a tool, and if you can use it well and effectivly you will get good solid output. However the compiler in both cases does not optimize the code as well as if you were to write it yourself (html for wysiwyg; machine code for APIs). And since I am a stickler for optimized images and code, I do not use wysiwygs very often. The only place I ever use them is to build complex tables. Don't confuse that with slicing images, the tables made by those programs for slicing images SUCKs worse than anything else. But I often slice the image and build the table in a wysiwyg separately.

I'm also with HS on the web pages as art statement. I don't see pages as art, simply because you may not be seing it the way the 'artist' intended you to. There are for too many limitations and variables that often change the output to be able to call them art (imho anyway).

I just finished a job where I had to change some of the content in most of the pages for a company site. The person who originally built the thing used GoLive (and I don't think they new how) and the code was absolutely gut wrenching. I found lines like this everywere...

quote:

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<font face = "verana, arial, helvetica, sonnet, blah, blah, blah" size = "2" color = "blue" ><b></b></font>

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Now what good is that? It's easy to see that he had formatted some text, then later removed it. However the program didn't remove the formatting, just the text. It's little things like this that make wysiwyg editors extremely uneffecient.

Soc-X hit it on the head. You gotta know what you are doing to be able to effectivly use a wysiwyg, and the fact that it's marketed to folks who don't know the code is sad. It only leads to weak, sub-par, mediocre web sites.

After reading other post, I think the general consensus is that wysiwyg editors have their place, but they are only tools (and fairly weak ones at that). And to be efficieant with a wysiwyg you have to know html in the first place. Otherwise you get garbage that works but clogs us your phone line for much longer that it needs to.





-Have I got a fish story for you!-

Heh. Use tools responsibly. As long as it's clean and doesn't break. Pride in a job well done regardless of tools. (Beware the non-sequitor.)

I was chatting with this guy about making web-sites and such. I was checking out one of his sites and the code is attrocious. Came across this at the top:

quote:

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<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Mozilla/4.7 [en]C-CCK-MCD NSCPCD47 (Win98; I) [Netscape]">

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Well, that explains a few things.

So I showed him one a site that I had done. He came back with this:

quote:

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...and looked at the code source discovered you are using a program to write the HTML and are MISSING a zillion features needed in today's pages.

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WTF? I could write *pages* about this comment, especially since I did it all by hand. A real web-monkey. I think I pissed him off on several levels when I responded to his comment. Haven't been in contact with him since.

It's not just fighting the (irresponsible) use of tools, but the attitude of some of these web-monkeys.


[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 08-13-2001).]

quote:

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Soc-X hit it on the head. You gotta know what you are doing to be able to effectivly use a wysiwyg, and the fact that it's marketed to folks who don't know the code is sad. It only leads to weak, sub-par, mediocre web sites.

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I'd have to say that poor design, unfocused marketing on the corporate side, and lack of content leads to sub-par mediocre web sites far more than how you create your page. If you know what you're doing then you know what you're doing, and if you don't you don't. As far as "separating the men from the boys", if I can finish two pages in the time it takes you to do one and the source difference is minimal maybe we should all think like kids a bit more

Chris


KAIROSinteractive

Like Moaiz said

quote:

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For those that refuse to use an editor to code then stay CONSISTENT...Refuse to use photoshop to create images. I hear MS paint kicks ass! Just take it one pixel at a time...

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Naah. I don't think you should. The big problem is that we don't have a PS for HTML yet. (is adobe working on it?)
I myself use a REALLY old version of frontpage. Doesn't do anything except for making tables and inserting text & pictures.

my biggest issue about wysiwygs?

Quite simple, really...and it has a lot to do with professional integrity as both a web developer and a creator.

Did Michaelangelo want to have a sculpting wysiwyg so that everyone could carve?
Did Einstein want a wysiwyg created to help create physics answers?

I don't mind that everyone can publish on the web--quite the opposite--i support it wholeheartedly. I do not support, however, clients refusing to use a professional in light of a 15 year old kid that can open up his warezed copy of FrontPage or Dreamweaver to create something for the client. It's not only not fair, but it's not professional, it's not powerful, and it's not useful.

You want to code something, you code it--simple as that.

Truly.

Simple.

As.

That.


s t e p h e n

I like the Michaelangelo reference....but

If you sat Michaelangelo down in front of a WYSIWYG image editor like say photoshop would his work be any less valid than what he could create with other tools? Its the person using the tool that makes all the difference. Not the tool being used. Did Michaelangelo forge his sculpting tools? No he bought the correct tools from a blacksmith. In other words he used the correct tools to complete the task at hand. What was the task? To move his artistic vision from his mind into the medium using a tool.

Coding is not art, there I said it, develop coping skills mabye start with a 12 step program. Those of you who feel pressed upon by the unwashed masses of 15-year-olds who knows how to use editors must not have much faith in your artistic abilities. Code is just one step in moving your vision of what a site should be onto the web. The quality of the overall piece is what matters.

IN my Ever so Humble opinion...as the avaliability of high bandwidth increases the web will become less about code and more about that visual quality, motion graphics, computer animation, webcasts, etc. So yeah if you're stuck in the notepad only mindset then perhaps you should fear those warez kiddies out there who are willing to use any and all avaliable tools to complete the job and satisfy the client.

Where I used to work we had a saying... Semper Gumby - Always flexible
...so be like the willow grasshopper



[This message has been edited by moaiz (edited 08-13-2001).]

Glad you replied twItch^, I've been hoping for more comments from long-time members.

It seems to me that there are two types of people in this discussion:

1) the people who believe that web pages and coding are art

and

2) the people who do *not* believe web pages are art.

And, if I may say so, it seems that everyone in group 1 does not support the use of WYSIWYGs, and everyone in group 2 *does* support their use.

So, perhaps the real question at hand is, are web pages and the code behind them art or not?

(Oh, and I'd like to urge one more time, it hasn't become a problem yet but it always can in this particular forum so easily: be gentle and humble in your posts, lets not turn this into a flame war, 'cause there's a lot of good opinions going around here. Resume! =)

Moaiz hit the nail in the head... thank you my friend.

:: Max ::

Short Answer:don't like it don't use it don't bust your balls trying to act like not using an editor makes you or your site is somehow 'better'. Its the outcome and the idea/creativity that matters now how they went about doing it.

Long Answer:
Its all good and fine for people to like notepad, i might think them a bit odd but hey, whatever floats your boat

But to get high-handed because you use notepad and not an editor is PURE arrogance, pure and simple.

Maybe we should stop using photoshop because your not creating 'real' are. I mean, no one can possible understand art and colors without first sweating over paints that they made themselves on a paper that they produced themselves with a brush made out of the rabbit you keep in your backyard *rolls eyes*

Your missing the point, the tools you use shouldn't matter when its the idea that matters. Art is about the idea and creativity not always the way you went about doing it. A painting IS more amazing because you know it took alot of work but it doesn't make me any less impressed with digital art which isn't as limited!

Sure people use the tools badly, blame the person not the tool.

Just beause it doesn't take me 10 hours to create 15 complex tables within each other doesn't mean its somehow not as good as hand-coded that might or might not be exactly the same. I know HTML fine, thank you. I don't need to waste my time, its not practical.

Development tools are there to help and make things easier. And it does, and no one has the right to act better because they refuse to use it. I work by the hour for a ad agency and i do all the develeopment side of webpages. it would be TOTALLY unpractical for them to hire ANYONE who did it by hand because all they care is that it works and its not going to break and they want you to do it as fast as possible or they just hire someone else who can do it just as good but faster.


Self-Mutilation: The Fun and Easy Way To Prove You're Stupid

A good friend of mine is a sculptor. He makes, with his own hands, huge statues and monuments seen all over the world. He is not the artist who thinks up the idea. He does not draw the subject in intricate detail. He works for an artist that does that. He is also not the scientist who developed new and superior alloys, and decides what metals or stone to use. There is a guy in the shop who does that too. He is a craftsman. He takes this drawing--this fine, careful drawing--from a very good artist, and he takes this technologically sound metal, and he builds a fire...a big fire. And he molds and shapes and twists and bends this metal until it is a wonderful work. He gets his hands dirty everyday. Often times he comes home with the skin burnt from his fingertips. Sometimes he sits for hours working on the the finest detail--an eyelash or a wrinkle--and sometimes he pounds the hell out of this granite slab with huge hammers. His hands, though rough and callused, are two of the most careful, nimble hands I know. When he is finished, the artist signs his name to it and has it shipped to it's final resting spot. The artist and some suits generally show up to drink champagne at some grand ceremony. Most people don't even know that Marty exists.
One could say, "That is so silly. Why does he waste his time? Somebody could just make a big mold in a factory and make 3000 statues or monuments in the time it takes your friend to make one. And he doesn't even get credit for it!"
Maybe I'm romanticizing a little bit,
but if I ever need a statue or a monument built, I'm gonna ask Marty....

mobrul

Just got around to rereading this...

Slime...

quote:

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Human Shield: You wouldn't think of a web page as a work of art? That's probably where the differences between our opinions are based. I would disagree with that. I completely agree with your first paragraph, though.

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I consider a webpage to be a canvas. The work of art is the content. The canvas maker never becomes famous... but the artist does, for painting upon the canvas.

No ones disagreeing mass-produced shit is just that, shit.

But you can't claim that hand-coded things are REALLY that much better than using an editor

Christ this is HTML and simple javascript we are talking about, thats not what makes a good make. The layout and apperance is what makes a good page. I've seen shitty pages out of notepad just as much as i've seen good one.

The editor doesn't make a page stop actng like it makes that much of a difference.

You can't say a painting is better than digital art just because it look longer. Both can be beautiful works of art.


Self-Mutilation: The Fun and Easy Way To Prove You're Stupid

*grabs the talking stick*
ok, my turn.
at the end of the day, it's the finished product that matters.
do you get me?
i look at a webpage, i don't care what you used to make it, how many framesets you managed to fit into the site, how much flash there is in it, how many hours it took you to code it, or how much you paid for some program to code it for you.
it's the finished product that matters.
h o w e v e r . . . .
if i were to see two people carving, i would expect the person with the carefully selected wood, and arsenal of fine knives and chisels to come out with a better product than the guy with the lump of wood he found and a chainsaw (as to which is the notepad and which is the WYSIWYG in this analogy, i'll leave up to you ).
BUT, if the guy with the chainsaw has vision, creativity, and talent, then he will do better.
because in the display case, there will not be the tools he used to create the carving, there will just be the carving itself.
it's the finished product that matters.
why do i believe that hand-coded webpages can be better than WYSIWYG'ed ones? because you need experience to code by hand, you have to have done it before.
truth is, you need experience and talent to make a webpage no matter what you use, but people are fooled easier with the WYSIWYG, and the mentality that you can install it, and straight away start polluting the web with your useless shit. (again, not all webpages made by WYGs are useless shit, but it's a lot easier to come along and make a useless page with them than it is with notepad).

Is a webpage art? I would say yes, but let's not dwell on that - another fact remains.
a webpage (particularly in the commercial sense) is also a tool, a machine if you will, made not jsut for visual appreciation, but for a purpose.
and when it comes to a purpose - you guessed it - it's the finished product that matters.

Microsoft, noticing the growing popularity of home handymen making their own cars by hand in their garages, have released a machine, the Microsoft Garage toolkit.
By specifying your requirements, it will create a car for you, that can look exactly as you desire, simply by slapping on extra bits of extraneous sheet metal until you end up with a car that looks how you want. "There are still bugs to iron out of the system," the chief engineer admitted; "most cars come out weighing over 4 tons, and having a durability life of about 4 weeks. But don't they look great?"

truth is, they may not even look great - only as good as the person behind the machine.

anyone knows that it a real car requires real hands to get under the hood and tinker with that baby until it's running smooth, and all the useless bits are gone.

truth is, i use notepad. but i love WYSIWYGS, and i would use one right here and now if it could code cross-browser compatible code with consideration of how to code so that the page will render as quickly as possible, and no useless code is in the site. And if i knew that it could make a nice, clean-looking form that validates properly, and sends the right information to the right place. And used stylesheets perfectly so that i can change that appearance of my site easily and consistently throughout all my pages.
but they can't.
heck, i can't do all that perfectly in notepad either, but i do a hell of a lot better than i ever could with a WYG. But if you know how to use what WYG in a way so that it works like i mentioned above for you, then go ahead and use it.
because at the end of the day, i don't care what you use.
do you know why?
it's the finished product that matters.
or at least, that's what i think.
*throws talking stick, and wanders off*

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The possibilty of some newbie stumbling on a program and creating something and it being bad is VERY high

Too bad thats not the issue huh? I totally agree that its the final project that matters, but for some silly reason people seem to attack the program when all they really hate is newbie creators who strut around because they can make a bevel and a rollover and they suddenly claim they are a 'real design company' now.

hate the idiots, not the program that let them become one.




Self-Mutilation: The Fun and Easy Way To Prove You're Stupid

WYSIWYGS don't make shit websites, people make shit websites.
this has been a community service announcement.
..there's no reason to blame the programmers, all they did was make the WYSIWYG, put it in the incompetent person's hands, load it, and point it in the right direction, and tell the person exactly where to put his fingers...

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I don't hate newbies... we were all newbies at one point. And why talk down about people trying to start out design companies? I highly doubt someone who has just learned to bevel is going to be stealing customers from a 4 year old design firm. Let them do what they like. When we were little, didn't we have dreams and aspirations? "I want to be a fireman!" and that sort of thing? Well, these are just some people acting out their dreams. Who knows, maybe they'll become big and famous and better than us someday.

Personally, I don't like the idea of "beautifying the web" that I hear about so often. I like finding the little pages made with a bunch of animated gifs or a cheesey unicorn background or what-not. If every painting was a picasso, the painting world would be boring. You've got to have the ugly pages to contrast the ones that were meticulously hand-crafted by the indigenous tribes of who-knows-where.

LOL buncha...pretty much my thoughts exactly. If it works then cool, worry about how it navigates, how it looks, how it functions.

Chris


KAIROSinteractive

HS, on that point - i don't hate newbies either, and i think you can tell by the assistance that several people here give to newbies in the site reviews section that they don't hate them either.
i love going to a personal website with crappy gif animations... for a background... you know, those absolute nightmare pages.
BUT...
It is the newbies with no experience and just a couple of pagemaking programs who go off and try to start a company that i'm against.
this should be a professional industry, a carpenter needs to go and get certified before he can sell his services, a web maker can jump straight out of the womb, and pull some poor sucker in with his copied designs.
do i feel threatened by these sorts of people? no, i don't think that they will steal my job anytime soon, or take my share of the market. what i don't like is when i hear about companies paying big bucks for some shit site. sure, it's partially their own stupid fault for a poor choice of developer, but it's still the shit developer who is pulling the industry reputation down.
It's so easy for a new web designer to realise that some people like him should be able to charge big bucks... but what he doesn't realise is that some just don't have the right, and are ripping people off.

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Well, not to merge topics... but...

First we discussed why websites are art. Now it is said that some people shouldn't have the right to design sites... so, by those thoughts, people shouldn't have the right to create art if certain people who came before them and consider themselves good "artists" decide that that person doesn't have enough talent to make a piece of art as good as some ranking, again decided by those "artists"?

So "artists" get to decide the minimum basic skill required for someone else to make a venture into the art world... or am I reading these words wrong? Certainly, I agree that stealing design and claiming it as your own to get customers is bad... but making your own design, no matter how shitty, is anybody's right... and if someone is actually dumb or desparate enough to pay that person for a shitty design, it's not for us, others who work in the same area, to say that it is wrong or that the person has no right to do it. We can judge, based on our own opinion and experience, but we cannot take away a person's right to create art, now can we say that a person shouldn't have that right.

hey hs - if that was aimed at me, my apologies if i sounded arrogant.
ok... time to search for analogies...
the web is art, but it is also machines, tools, business.
i love it when people venture into the art side, and play around with the other side, but that is not what i'm talking/bitching about.
i'm talking about experienceless morons who see experts charging a lot of money for their creations, and go off and try and do the same, and give the industry a bad name as a result.
all i'm talking about is a bit of respect for the media used - the people who simlpy abuse the net as a way to scam money off people, they piss me off - they aren't the artists, they are the wannabes who have no idea about earning your money, and providing a service that is proportional to the amount charged.
am i making sense?


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