Web-site Development Tools

[John R. Little]

While it's true that WYSIWYGs tend to put more garbage-HTML 
into the code, and it's true that one can take greater, or 
qicker rather, advantage of HTML advances with manual tag 
editors, it seems to me that the real issue is what works 
best in your environment and how portable is the document 
(to other browsers or even other markup standards). This 
can only get even more difficult/fun/interesting as DHTML, 
CSS, and XML become more widely accepted.  

Both points, manual tagging vs. WYSIWYG, have merit and 
both fall short of being universally satisfying solutions. 
I think the trade off in WYSYWIG vs. tagging is that the 
more manual tagging you do the more time you must spend 
learning the markup language and composing your documents. 
One of the hardest aspects of web page development (*I 
think*) is, and will continue to be, the ability to write 
portable HTML that degrades gracefully to lower version 
browsers.  This is true, I think, whether one tags 
manually, validates, or WYSIWYGs.  In short to do it well 
takes conscious effort and time. 

So I just want to underscore Thomas Dowling's point that 
"the markup languages we rely on are becoming increasingly 
complex".  With that complexity should come improved 
document identification standards -- which should improve 
indexing and retrieval -- and it should increase the amount 
of time it takes to create universally browsable documents. 
I wonder if we will be bound by a more practical rule: that 
we have to evaluate what level of markup will be employed 
against a time/convenience/use factor (on a document by 
document basis).  Not every document put on the web is 
worthy of extensive tagging (my opinion, no doubt).  
Moreover, the evaluation and more precisely the complex 
markup implementation is easier said than done.

Cheers.

--John
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  John R. Little       Web Developer/Systems Librarian 
  Perkins Library * Duke University * Durham, NC       
  VOICE: (919) 660-5932    Email: john.little at duke.edu 
              http://www.duke.edu/~jrl/
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