Download Should I Learn HTML or Just Use a WYSIWYG

Should I Learn HTML or Just Use a
WYSIWYG Web Editor? Pros and Cons
of Using a Visual Web Editor vs Learning
HTML
I'm sometimes asked by visitors whether they should take the trouble to learn HTML or
just use a visual web editor like Dreamweaver to design their website. Very often, these
people have heard from others that "it's better" to learn HTML. This article addresses that
question.
Preliminary Matters
If you're not entirely sure what HTML is, please read What is HTML? What is CSS?
What are JavaScript, PHP and Perl? before continuing. In fact, even if you think you
know what HTML is, it may still be a good idea to at least glance at that article. From
experience, I find that many webmasters-to-be only think they know what HTML is, but
have actually misunderstood it. Don't worry. That article is written in plain English. And
it's short. So you can quickly pop over to that page and be back here in a jiffy.
The Answer: It Depends
Whether you actually need to learn HTML or just let a WYSIWYG ("what you see is
what you get") web editor do the hard work for you depends on what you're trying to
achieve.
For the Incidental Webmaster (and the Casual
Webmaster)
Generally speaking, the incidental webmaster doesn't really need to learn HTML. By
"incidental webmaster", I mean that your website is just a means to an end. For example,
you want to create a website so that you can sell some product or service, blog about
something, display your resume (curriculum vitae), or show off your holiday photos, or
the like. That is, you want a website so that you can accomplish some specific purpose
(other than just creating a website for the sake of creating one).
For such people, I personally think that it's a bit of an overkill to learn HTML. It's like
thinking that you need to know how to build and repair a car before you can drive one.
While there's nothing preventing you from learning HTML, and it's certainly beneficial to
know it (just as it's definitely helpful to know how to build a car from scratch before you
drive it), is it really worth your time and energy to learn it? Why not just use a visual web
editor?
Visual web editors are computer programs that let you design your web page without
your needing any knowledge of HTML or CSS. You design them visually on your
computer using your mouse and keyboard, so that what you see in your computer monitor
is what you get on your website. That's why they are called What You See Is What You
Get web editors, or "WYSIWYG web editors" for short. As you create your web page,
these editors generate HTML and CSS code behind the scenes for you. They are an
efficient and user-friendly method of making websites, since anybody, laypersons
included, can create websites with these tools. No technical knowledge is needed. You
can design your website quickly this way, and then devote your time and energy on what
is really important to you: generating sales from your site, delivering your products or
services, etc. That way, your website doesn't become your life. It remains as what it
should be: a means to an end, a way for you to sell stuff (or whatever you want it for).
Visitors who write to me asking this question have usually encountered well-meaning
friends who have advised them that it's really "better" to learn HTML. Let me address
what is usually said about this matter.

(Myth) WYSIWYG web editors don't create valid code; you can do
better writing HTML manually
Some people claim that WYSIWYG web editors don't create valid HTML code
(that is, code that has no errors). This may have been true in the 1990s when the
Internet was new, but it is no longer the case today for the major web editors.
Good commercial WYSIWYG web editors like Dreamweaver and even free web
editors like KompoZer have been generating valid HTML code for many years
now. Sure, it's possible to get invalid code when using those editors if you
deliberately insert invalid code which you import from some website. But then,
you will get invalid code if you do that when hand coding in HTML as well. In
fact, with the state of sophistication of web editors today, there's a greater
likelihood that you will create invalid HTML when writing HTML by hand, than
by letting the web editor create it for you.
Note that my statements above only apply to the editors I specifically mentioned,
that is Dreamweaver and KompoZer. It doesn't necessarily to apply to all web
editors in the known universe. I don't go around testing the code generated by
every web editor, so I can't make a definitive statement about every web editor
available today.

(Myth) WYSIWYG web editors create bloated HTML code
While it's true that the HTML code automatically generated by a web editor may
not be as highly optimised ("optimized" in US English) as hand-coded HTML
code, it's not true that all code generated by modern WYSIWYG web editors are
"bloated". In fact, my examination of the code produced by Dreamweaver shows
that it's mostly the sort of code I would have produced had I written the code
manually myself. Yes, there are situations where the code is a bit bigger than what
I'd have written manually, but that's a far cry from "bloat". And the extra code
usually occurs because I want the web editor to take over some of the labourintensive activities (like automatically updating all the pages of my website when
I change the overall site design) from me. I consider such a trade-off, which
allows me to save a huge amount of time, a fair one.
I've not examined the code generated by KompoZer lately, but I don't recall it
generating a lot of excess, unnecessary code either.
(Again, note that I'm talking about true web editors like Dreamweaver and
KompoZer. If you use a word processor like Microsoft Word to create a website,
you will get a lot of code bloat. But to be fair to Word, it is not a web editor. It
merely provides the facility to convert a document into a web page for
convenience of its users. It was never intended to be a proper web editor, nor does
it pretend to be one.)
Let me put it this way. Even if the code generated by web editors are a few bytes
bigger than what you can create yourself, it's probably worth it. It saves you the
time you take hand coding the page, and attending to the nitty-gritty. It is
analogous to your washing your clothes by using a washing machine and washing
them by hand. Washing your clothes by hand may lead to cleaner clothes, since
you can pay special attention to specific stains you spot. But for the most part, a
washing machine is more than adequate. And you're freed to attend to more
important things. In the same way, WYSIWYG web editors today are more than
adequate in generating good code. And they save you time.
Generally speaking, it all boils down to what you're creating a website for. Which is why
I divided my answer in this way. If you are an incidental webmaster, where your site
exists to serve a bigger goal, you'll probably find it frustrating if you are going to spend
all your time learning HTML, just to build a website so that you can sell some product or
service. Like I said, it's like having to learn to build and repair a car, just so that you can
drive it to go to work.
Note that those friends that advise you to learn HTML aren't really wrong. You do lose
out some things when you don't know HTML. It's the same thing you lose when you
don't know how to build and repair a car and yet want to drive one. If things go wrong, or
you really want to do something non-standard, you won't have the knowledge to deal
with it. But those are unusual circumstances, just as they are for car drivers. And on those
special occasions, which actually don't occur for most webmasters, you can always get
help; for example, one way is to search a site like thesitewizard.com for answers.
Think of it this way: would the fact that you don't know how to build a car from scratch
or repair one stop you from learning to drive one? What would happen if your car has a
problem? Or if you want to do something really unusual with your car, like soup up your
car engine? If you don't know how to do these things, does it mean that you need to learn
to build a car by hand before learning to drive?
The same thing goes, in my opinion, for the incidental or casual webmaster. If you have a
lot of time to kill, and you love learning new things, by all means go for it. In-depth
knowledge is usually helpful in any task. But if you just want to quickly get a website up
and running and focus on the things that are really important to you, then why bother?
Like all other things in life, you can always consult others when there's something special
you need done. In this day and age, "consulting others" may not even be literal — you
can just search the Internet for the answer.
For the Professional Web Designer
On the other hand, if you plan to design websites as a profession, that is, you want to get
paid by others to design websites for them, then it's probably a good idea to learn HTML
and CSS. While I know of many people who have courageously started a web design
business knowing nothing but how to use a WYSIWYG web editor, I personally feel that
a knowledge of the nitty gritty of HTML and CSS in such a case will be extremely
beneficial.
I'm not saying that professional web designers don't use WYSIWYG web editors. Far
from it. Of all webmasters, they are probably the ones who want to design a website
using as efficient a process as possible, so that they can attend to more customers in a
short time. As such, chances are that they probably use web editors more often than
casual webmasters.
Be that as it may, if you plan to design websites for a living, knowing HTML and CSS
will allow you to more effectively use your web editor, since you will know what sort of
underlying code is needed to create a particular result. And you can be more confident
when dealing with your customers, because you will actually know what you're talking
about.
It's also a matter of professionalism. It allows you to be more competent in the job you're
doing.
For the Web Programmer: HTML Knowledge is
Required
Of all the different categories of people I've addressed in this article, I think that a
knowledge of HTML and CSS is mandatory only for the web programmer. By web
programmer, I mean the person who is writing computer programs for the web, such as
scripts written in PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby or whatever computer language your
application is using.
(For the newcomer, note that knowing HTML does not make you a web programmer any
more than knowing how to type Microsoft Word documents makes you a computer
programmer. HTML is not a programming language. HTML is a simple document
formatting language. See my more detailed explanation on what HTML is if you're not
sure what I'm talking about.)
The reason I say that HTML is required knowledge for the web programmer is because
most reasonably complex PHP programs (or Perl programs or whatever) need to be able
to generate HTML / CSS code. If you don't know HTML and CSS, your programs are
going to be very crippled, and they won't be able to display customised output for your
visitors to see in their web browsers. Remember, after all, that web browsers don't
execute PHP code. They expect to see HTML code. It doesn't matter what language your
application is written in; it will still need to generate HTML code for your visitors' web
browsers to display.
On the Other Hand, HTML is Actually Very Easy to
Learn
However, in spite of everything I mentioned above, I must clarify that HTML is actually
a very easy document formatting language to learn. It was deliberately designed that way.
Even if you're an incidental webmaster, and not a computer geek, the language can
usually be mastered by many people with little effort.
But like I said above, this doesn't mean that you're obliged to learn it. There are many
things in life that are easy to learn. That doesn't mean that we have to learn them all, or
that they're worth our time and effort to learn. It depends on your current priorities and
time commitments. All I'm saying here is that if you actually want to learn HTML, it is
by far the easiest document formatting language I've encountered. It's very logical and
easy to understand, and it doesn't contain many constructs that you need to memorise.
Those who really want to learn to hand code your website in HTML can find more
information on how to do it in the HTML Tutorial - Learn to Design a Website using
HTML series.