April 27, 2008 8:25 PM PDT
Hand-coding HTML is still hip, says NY Times Design Director
Being that my first "real" job was at a web design shop as a code monkey, it warmed my heart to see Khoi Vinh, Design Director for the NY Times state that they still write HTML code by hand. Of course, I have to believe that he was referring to templating and such, as there is no way they could maintain or deliver that amount of content without some kind of CMS.
It's our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to "hand code" everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results.
At my company we've been through this ordeal several times, finally settling in on PHP templates for the corporate site and Atlassian's Confluence for our developer sites. The corporate site still requires manual code intervention but we're modularized enough where the risk vs. reward is still OK. I'm waiting for Matt Asay to give me the green light on the Alfresco web product before we move to a full blown CMS. He knows that I am a difficult customer.
In the meantime I continue to enjoy/loathe our blog system here at CNET that requires us to format HTML. I like the control versus other blog tools, but it gets a little onerous.
Dave Rosenberg is currently working on a new stealth start-up based in San Francisco. He is Co-founder of MuleSource, an open source integration and infrastructure software company and is a recognized thought-leader in open source software and service-oriented architecture. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Lord knows the priesthood keeps its position by maintaining a sacred language that common people can't use or understand. Keep it mysterious and our jobs are secure.
And it's why web pages are way more boring and sterile. Kind of like Windows and most non-Apple cellphones.
HTML is not difficult or mysterious. Besides, programs like Dreamweaver produce terrible html code.
HTML is not difficult or mysterious. Besides, programs like Dreamweaver produce terrible html code.
Even something as simple as writing web pages, if you don't understand the underlying concepts of XHTML or whatever you are using you have no business doing it, especially professionally.
If you think that you can learn how to shuffle elements around in Dreamweaver but don't understand the code it is producing, yet can get a job you are kidding yourself.
I never use DW for any of its wysiwyg features, only exclusively code view.
I wish Adobe would do a stand alone code version.
Software like Dreamweaver that give you the HTML view is a step in the right direction, though.
It is no different than the idiots using VS to create the VB code for them. It is crap code and the person doesn't have the elementary knowledge to be able to refactor it properly,
I have never seen a wysiwyg produce good code, ever. Good code whether it is a markup language or a programming language is always written by the programmer, not a program.
This comment really caught my eye, "I'm waiting for Matt Asay to give me the green light on the Alfresco web product before we move to a full blown CMS."
I guess I'll wait too. ;-)
thank you
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This comment really caught my eye, "I'm waiting for Matt Asay to give me the green light on the Alfresco web product before we move to a full blown CMS."
I guess I'll wait too. ;-)
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by Lorel509
May 8, 2008 4:48 PM PDT
- I've been writing HTML code by hand on a Mac for about 10 years and have never found a WYSIWYG editor that didn't put out massive code bloat and deprecated code. I use BBedit to write the code. I make my own templates for frequently used sections of pages. The major problem I have is in trying to find others in my city who write HTML by hand to refer jobs to. It's a dying art.
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