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 Word is an example of
a WYSIWYG HTML editor. You type text and insert pictures using Microsoft Word. In the background the editor is quietly creating
HTML text, (a LOT of text), that web browsers such as Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Chrome 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
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