I use Visual Editors
Do you use the WordPress visual editor?
Two posts have recently come up in my feed reader, from Jim Stitzel and Abhijit Nagouda, confirming something I have thought all along- people hate the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
First, I’ve always thought as WYSIWYG as What You See Isn’t What You Get, because it never is. At iface thoughts, Abhhijit refers to this as WYSIWYM (what you see is what you mean). The text on my website is meant to be displayed in Lucida Grande, and the WPVE works in Georgia. That’s the first step to not giving me what I see.
I use the the VE because I like looking at it better than all my HTML code. I go back and forth all the time to tweak the HTML code, but for the most part I use the default visual editor.
There are problems with it, however. The main one being the automated “fixing” of any code you place in the “code” version of the editor. If you write some code, then switch back to the VE, it will be totally ruined, and there isn’t a way to turn it off. You can uncheck the option in WP that you would think would do that, but nothing happens in reality.
Also, because I have it enabled by default, any posts with special code in them are destroyed when I go to edit them.
Is This WordPress’ Fault?
WordPress uses the TinyMCE editor. I don’t know the extent to their modifications, but I don’t think there are very many. I think the TinyMCE install is pretty clean, as you can extend it your self much like you can extend WordPress.
I use the VE editor in the end for a couple reasons:
- It looks nicer than my code.
- When using images and the like, you can get somewhat of a visual representation.
- I can focus and read/proof read much easier without previewing.
- Adding headings and links, etc… are as easy as they should be!
- I always have, so switching would throw me off.
Do you WordPress users use this VE? I know a lot of people don’t, but I’d like to see how many people do, and why.
Leave a comment
Abhijit Nadgouda
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:38 PM
Good post. I grant that it can be easier to proof the text in a WYSIWYG editor, but I would rather do it in a text file mode
And WYSIWYM is about using semantic elements and names. e.g., when we use h2 element for the title, the author should be visually indicated that it is a h2 instead of using the correspnding formatting in the editor.
Michael from Pro Blog Design
September 22nd, 2007 at 4:01 PM
I use Windows Live Writer. It lets me write from my desktop, and the backdrop of the page is my actual blog’s design. It gives a really great way of seeing exactly how your post will look.
(I gave up on the WP editor when the “code” view kept “correcting” my code. Urgh.
)
Neil Turner - Acopic Web Design
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:14 AM
To be honest I don’t really use wordpress that often - although I do use TinyMCE in projects a lot. I used to use FCK Editor but I found that TinyMCE offered better stability and features. It’s ALOT easier to extend in my opinion.
With TinyMCE it’s pretty easy to update the internal stylesheet to better reflect your actual blog design. You should add in your general fonts and header styles (but you’ll probably need to add !important after these to get them to display correctly). This will make the content you create look closer to what you see when it goes live.
TinyMCE has many problems and I’ve discovered a lot of bugs as I’ve used it more and more - and yes it does mess up code you paste into it (and has real problems with form code etc).
Personally I’m thinking about useing Textile for purely text based HTML layout in future - much cleaner.
Ryan
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:14 PM
I pretty much switch between the code and visual editor. Sometimes I write from Google Docs but they are pretty similar
Mike
September 24th, 2007 at 1:50 PM
I use the VE, I kind of hate how sometimes you cant make it what you need it to do and then if you change it in the html you cant really go back to the VE or it screws up again!
Lewis
September 24th, 2007 at 4:02 PM
Although TinyMCE has its downfalls, I personally believe it is the lesser of the available evils.
I think it’s best to offer people a mixture. In previous projects I’ve offered the ability to use HTML, textile, BBCode, WYWIWYG and the most used one was a Richtext hybrid. It was WYSIWYG - but only to a limited extent, so people didn’t see messy BBCode/HTML everywhere, but could still have advanced layout and code without having it messed up.
David Hopkins
September 24th, 2007 at 5:23 PM
Connor, you blog seems to be becoming a sanctuary for UK web design companies - an interesting phenomena.
If your looking for ease of use, widg is a very relilable and simplistic solution.
Tom Taylor
September 24th, 2007 at 5:28 PM
I agree and also find it terrible how it messes up your code. I save all my files in a file and use those for editing and won’t even look @ the visual editor.
Robert MacEwan
September 25th, 2007 at 6:07 PM
Blogtk is an excellent wysiwyg editor for Ubuntu Linux.
Connor Wilson
September 25th, 2007 at 7:55 PM
3% of the visitors thank you, Robert.
Pushchairs
May 26th, 2008 at 8:52 AM
Any WYSIWGY editor falls well below the mark in my opinion.
They are all just very amateur and have no good quality algorithms to keep the code lookign neat, and working well.
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