flexed.zip - HTML Editor with built in WYSIWYG Viewer (fwd)

[Peter C. Gorman]

Peter Scott writes:

>I tried this out very quickly today, and it seemed to do everything claimed.

<stuff deleted>
<quote from product announcement:>

>While you are creating your HTML documents, you can view the
>document at hand with FlexED's viewer.  That is, you can view your Web
>Pages as it would display in any Web Browser while you create your
>documents.

That would be surprising - "as it would display in any Web Browser". Does
that include Lynx? Talking web browsers? Even successive versions of
Netscape display pages differently, not to mention Mosaic, Internet
Explorer...  When "WYSIWIG" editors claim to display the pages as all users
supposedly see them, it reinforces the misconception that HTML is a word
processing or page layout environment. If you want to see how your users
are going to see your pages, you need to use the tools (e.g. browsers)
they're using. Using the editor to view the document will only tell you
what other users of (that version of) that editor will see.

That's not to say that it's a bad thing to have viewing capabilities in an
editor. It does make it convenient to see *roughly* how it will appear in
browsers, which is good for basic layout and debugging. But the freedom for
browsers to decide how to display/interpret a document is inherent in the
web's design; the concept of the "one, true display" is meaningless.

Unless you're using Acrobat. :-)

PG
_______________________________
Peter C. Gorman
Automation Help Desk
Memorial Library
University of Wisconsin
pcgorman at facstaff.wisc.edu