Wysiwyg applications have their place. Often wysiwyg output can be optimized post-production. A wysiwyg-application can lower production-times and provides an excellent way to experiment/demonstrate design options.

Many web developers shun wysiwyg-editors… And for fair reason. They have been known to produce sub-standard “spaghetti-code”, poorly optimized sites, and headaches for those maintaining these wysiwyg generated web-projects as time goes on. When used with caution, a wysiwyg-editor (aka : template producers, skinners, themers, or shapers.) can be a priceless asset.

Often a wysiwyg-editor can generate massive time savings on a project. Saving time and money is a good thing. While often overbuild and loaded with style-sheet clutter a wysiwyg-editor can provide prompt turn-around on a web-design project. We can work around the cluttered css and html.

Any web-designer worth their salt has found their way through worse piles of ‘spaghetti-code’ than you are likely to find in modern wysiwyg output. A simple trip to cssdrive.com can compress those cluttered stylesheets for you. Be careful though, keep a back-up copy of your styles before they are compressed.

Using a wysiwyg-editor such as Artisteer you can design your web-pages from one root file, then export them to static-html/css, a drupal template, wordpress theme, or even as joomla skin. A wysiwyg-editor also provides an excellent tool for demonstrating design options to your clients.

When planning to use a wysiwyg-editor have a look at the outputted code. If you create your wysiwyg-output with future hand-coding in mind (say by removing all padding from a container div so that it does not affect the %-units within that container.) you can really make a wysiwyg-program sing. Familiarizing yourself with the flaws of a particular editor will help minimizing the impact a wysiwyg-editor can have on project quality.

Wysiwyg applications have their place. Often wysiwyg output can be optimized very simply. A wysiwyg-application can shave hours off production-time. Don’t overlook the code behind a pretty design. A web-page may spin around like a top and cause your computer to hover over your desk… But that doesn’t mean the page will show up in google or be easy to add new pages to. Have a good look at the code your wysiwyg spits out. You may want to leave certain features out of a web-page at the wysiwyg-stage in add them later with hand-coding.

Using software to design a web-template, then cleaning it up can save time compared to building everything from scratch. Please, don’t rely on wysiwyg editors, they can be useful but cannot replace hand-coding.