HTML Editors? I thought they’d be so great in the future

December 7 2010 by B-Drive in Uncategorized |No Comments

I don’t know how old you are or from whence you came but in the 1990’s a lot of us were using crazy tools that had nice WYSIWYG html designers in them like Visual Interdev, or Macromedia Homesite or Dreamweaver, or Frontpage or whatever.  There weren’t many but in our little two-tiered world these were awesome for getting a UI up off the ground and running.

But nowadays I am hard pressed in the programmer world to see anything that well, seems like some awesome futuristic create a great app solution with a great WYSIWYG editor.  In fact if anything, things have become (at least in my world) much more “codey.”  I mean for the sake of the gods even Actionscript/Flex UI’s are all code with no real fun drag an drop interfaces; none worth mentioning at least.

Its sad isn’t it?  I mean, in the way that those kids from the 1950’s thought we’d be living on Mars now disappointing.

WHY?

I think this situation came about for a few reasons:

  1. A division between designers and programmers.  So, designer tools  are predominant for UI.  Developers might use a prototype tool to wireframe something out but that’s about it.  Generally, all the CSS and skinning is handled by a design pro.   It’s better that way, because it takes a lot of work, talent, and its not the same thing as coding the guts. (Fireworks, Balsamiq)
  2. Its just as fast to code.  Why bother with a drag and drop layout when you are going to have to tweak the code anyway?
  3. Scaffolding.  If the UI is predictable, the domain is sound, and UI work is just not that important (Craig’s list for instance)  then just do the ultimate code generation.  You can sidestep WYSIWYG editors for that. (Django, Grails)

WHAT I USE

For some of my straight sites, I just use a tool called HTML Kit build 292 from Chami.  It’s shareware, and does the things I need: HTML, CSS, and Javascript code coloring; term library, ftp client, and a quick preview and button for browser display.  I know several powerful programmers who use just something like TextMate or VIM or Text Wrangler, or Notepad++ or whatever.

I use Grails for quick prototyping because of the plugins and GORM, that allows me to quickly get a domain up, if I need something that powerful.

I tried different WYSIWYG editors and, honestly, cant justify the expenditure on the Adobe products because I don’t design for a living, I code the guts.  The Eclipse plugins are wanting, and anything in Firefox etc. just isn’t worth the trouble.  HTML Kit just lets me get at it quick and I am well versed in the web languages so, its nothing.

Wireframing tools ARE cool.  I took a product through a lifecycle trying both the newer Adobe Flash Catylist, and Adobe Fireworks just this year and it is cool but I don’t believe it.  Code generators outside of raw scaffolds make me nervous — doing a UMD (up-middle-down)  design is ALWAYS a bad idea if a domain is involved.  Because, the domain is a different beast  — different requirements, different technology (for instance, an object cannot be always be stored in its natural state if the domain has reporting or audit requirements).

For wireframing I kinda settled on Pencil, a Firefox plugin.  Also I love Visio but I just use that for documentation and UML.

Oh Well

Those days like in Star Trek where you can create an application by clicking on a few giant buttons on a touch screen aren’t here yet — because some of us are in the business of writing those touchscreens.

Guess you’ll just have to wait.

Comments are closed.

« »