Whither Art Thou, WYSIWYG? An Open Letter.

It’s 2004. The Web, as a usably worthwhile thing, is a little over 10 years old. In that time, we’ve gone from Windows 3.11 for Workgroups to WIndows XP and 2003 Server and from plain text editors for HTML coding to… well, where?

That is something which has been bothering me for quite some time. What is the real state-of-the-art in WYSIWYG Web page editor? It would seem to me that in all that time, SOMEONE would have written something so good that it would be the ‘killer app’ in that category.

Before the screaming dies down (or perhaps beofre it starts), let me say that I realize that there are tons of perfectly good HTML editors out there that offer some kind of preview mode or what seem like rudimentary WYSIWYG edit modes, but we’re talking REAL WYSIWYG, here.

The software needs to be oriented to WYSIWYG as the primary page creation engine. We’re also talking the ability to drag and drop graphics anywhere on a page and have the location stick. I don’t mind right-clicking on the resultant graphic to choose the text-wrap type, but I want to take the graphic and just drop it. Period. Don’t make me create a table or frame to hold it. Don’t make me choose the location via a numerical grid. Just let me drop it where I want it and make it stay there. Let me go in with another right-click and change the background color of a frame or the whole page. Let me define a text box by click/drag/release and drop THAT where I want it to go. Then, finally, let me set defaults like the font family to use for the whole site without jumping through 18 hoops.

That’s it. A ’simple’ WYSIWYG page editor that turns out halfway decently tight code. ANd for goodness sake, DON’T make me go through the fires of ‘you know where’ just to get graphic files to show up in the finished site! I’m evaluating a program right now, we’ll call it Page X. It makes a valiant effort, but when I published the site, none of the bullets in the template had transferred into the actual site that the software uploaded. It wasn’t even graphics I’d ADDED. Go figure.

So that’s it. I really want to find this program, if it exists. This seems like an excellent place to put out the call. I’ve been looking for it for several years, now. The old PageMaker 6 DTP program came pretty close, except that it didn’t turn out HTML code and wasn’t meant for Web site creation.

I’m so serious about it that I’ve created an e-mail address just for the search and any suggestions you might want to propose:

 webcreator at thepeartree.net

Anyone who thinks they know the right program, PLEASE let me know. Oh, and PLEASE don’t nominate Word, DreamWeaver, FrontPage, or the various ‘Fusion’ products. Been there, done that, didn’t even get a stinkin’ t-shirt.

Thanks in advance!