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Unless a designer knows how to go in and tweak the code they will always be at the mercy of their WYSIWYG software.
Automatically generated HTML/XHMTL from a WYSIWYG program such as FrontPage does not always turn out to be What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get. So what do you do if the page does not look or act as you would like it to, if you do not know how to go "under the hood" and fix the HTML? Not only that, but it is becoming more important to have pages that validate to the Web standards being developed in the industry and this auto-generated code often does not conform to W3C standards for a particular HTML/XHTML doctype, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or other requirements such as declaring the character encoding and the document language.
Frequently, WYSIWYG programs insert proprietary tags (which are not in any W3C standard), use incorrect syntax for the doctype (if they include one at all), include unnecessary tags such as empty table data cells and empty font tags, include repetitive tags such as font tags, get the nesting of tags out of order and do not include important information that is becoming a necessity for modern Web pages.
If the HTLML/XHTML is not correct or is missing information the browser will need to guess what the designer really intended, and since the different browsers do not adjust the same, the result is pages that look different from browser to browser. Even correct code is not always handled the same (correctly) from browser to browser because of the vendors lack of adherence to standards.
Designers who have the confidence and knowledge to go into the code can take back control of their documents and produce Web pages as they had envisioned them. And if these pages validate against a DTD (see the UniNetNews article about coding to standards) they will endure as the languages of the Web evolve.
Through the years, as the success and popularity of the Web has grown, HTML has evolved. What started out as a simple text markup language that described very basic structural elements such as paragraphs, headings and of course the hyperlink has grown into a markup language that now includes many tags that affect the appearance of a document. In HTML 4.0 important tags were added to increase page accessibility for the disabled.
XHTML has become modular to prepare for a future that is moving away from the desktop browser, to varied platforms such as wireless devices, televisions and assistive technology such as Braille readers or screen readers. XHTML is intended to be used in conjunction with other XML languages and the modules provide a means for extending XHTML to accommodate these emerging platforms.
Designers who are dependent on their WYSIWYG programs must wait until their particular WYSIWYG software supports these changes in technology, if it ever even does! They cannot take advantage of these improvements unless they know how to go into the HTML/XHTML and modify the code themselves. They cannot evolve with the industry and they are soon left behind.
Learning at least basic HTML/XHTML will give a designer the knowledge and confidence to go into their WYSIWYG code and tweak it to comply to standards, to function and display accurately from browser to browser, and to evolve as the technology evolves.
Just as students learn the multiplication tables before they are allowed to use a calculator, it's crucial to understand basic HTML/XHTML before relying on WYSIWYG software. If you don't understand how the tags work how can you know what the limits are or how to resolve problems?
My question to you is this, "Why create Web pages that are already behind the times or not displaying as you would like, just because you are dependent on a software program?" Learn the basics of HTML/XHTML and you will be rewarded with skill and power over your Web pages.
Personally, I find that it is easier and faster to create all my code from hand then it is to try and go back through a page that was generated by a program and clean it up. If you write the code yourself, you know exactly what it is doing and you can take advantages of changes in the languages or standards immediately.
