Ask The Wizard (WYSIWYG)

Dear Wizard of 'OZ',

I have heard of this term WYSIWYG. I am curious what does it stand for?

Signed,

George.

Dear Curious George,

For web content creators who are new to HTML or who are somewhat familiar with its purpose but don't have a use reference handy without leaving their task (hint: this is most of the web, millions and millions), WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), pronounced "Whizz-E-Wig", editing is a boon. Microsoft Front Page is an example of a WYSIWYG HTML editor. You type text and insert pictures just like using Microsoft Word. In the background the editor is quietly creating HTML text, (a LOT of text), that web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape and Opera decode and present your page almost exactly as you designed it.

For those creators who are familiar with simple uses of HTML styling like bold, italics and hyperlinks but who would like more stylistic control over their content (hint: this is a significant number, and perhaps a majority, of users in the "participatory web") then mixed-mode WYSIWYG and additional style controls like making bulleted lists or changing the horizontal alignment or adding keyboard shortcuts can reduce the number of mistakes, reduce the amount of information needed to be retrieved during an editing task that is outside the scope of that task, and generally reduce the time and effort it takes to generate content.

For content creators who require more advanced styling controls and content information including positioning, page counts, floating elements, templates, varied encodings, and block-level margins and padding there are many tools available that they prefer using to a browser. I know for sure because I've asked and asked and asked and, to date, advanced content creators find the convenience and ubiquity of browser-use less useful than using a feature-rich client. Additionally, many advanced content creators (hint: if you're reading this, I'm very likely talking about you :) know enough HTML and CSS that hand-coding style attributes and class selectors enables you to create content faster than when using WYSIWYG components for the same tasks.

It is really WYSIMWYG.... What you see is mostly what you get.

I believe that is helpfully pronounced "Whizz-ah-ma-wig".

Hope this helps.

Yrs,

The Wizard