[loren s]

I present this question in hopes of finding a developer.

Artists need a way to create CSS powered websites faster. And cleaner. And the buzz word that comes to mind is WYSIWYG stuff. So far the market is saturated with text editors like CSSedit or Taco, or BBdit, Hyper edit , Golive, Dreamweaver, and multudes of others. But there is only one simple accessable tool for quick easy site making for the masses called Freeway retail 100$. But the problem that lives in it is that lack of style that one gets from it. The the digs of cyber space is CSS and PHP.

And editing code is fun in its own right. But after days of tweeking code and looking at code just nails a coffin in your head at times.

So the question is. What is stopping it ? There are already great editor programs, now all that is needed is a way to visualy create and move the visual image and box data around in real time along with the code tweeking

[larkost]

Have you looked at any of the content management systems out there? Try doing a little research over at OpenSourceCMS, there is likely something useful to you there.

[Jan Van Boghout]

It's really not as simple as it looks. To make a true WYSIWYG editor, you basically need to create our own web browser. The Freeway way is slightly easier, but still a huge amount of work.

[philzilla]

web developers get paid a lot of money because it isn't easy for Joe Public to do a lot of that stuff.

stop trying to take money out of my pocket!

[OptimusG4]

Originally posted by philzilla:
web developers get paid a lot of money because it isn't easy for Joe Public to do a lot of that stuff.

stop trying to take money out of my pocket!

Exactly!

[NitzJaaron]

Originally posted by philzilla:
web developers get paid a lot of money because it isn't easy for Joe Public to do a lot of that stuff.

stop trying to take money out of my pocket!

Yeah, seriously.

[lenox]

Yeah! Don't take our jobs and we'll try a bit harder not to take yours...heh

[loren s]

Originally posted by philzilla:
web developers get paid a lot of money because it isn't easy for Joe Public to do a lot of that stuff.

stop trying to take money out of my pocket!

It's not "to" easy, but don't you as a developer want a little bit of a quick tool to ?

I did try Golive and I must say... *yuck* ! It is slow and poky, even on a fast machine. And it follows Adobes cluttered interface. I quickly deleted it. Its wywinngsy editor was not what I was looking for at all. I want something clean and simple. Like Taco, CSSedit or the other safari live render apps. They are nice and clean and simple to use and the code access is imediate when editing and reviewing the out put. Now if you could add a little bit of a power to move around the items just a bit by hand instead of code, I think it would help speed up code work and present a new mannor in redesigning the page layout.

You would still need to make the Style sheet and it's code, but then the power to move stuff around would just be sweet!

[nsxpower]

There is no WYSIWYG CSS editor. CSSEdit is the best we've got and it is damn good at what it does. A WYSIWYG CSS editor is a very difficult undertaking, keep in mind that we don't even have a single browser that can display CSS properly ... FireFox and Safari come close ... IE is way behind (god, my site looks like **** in IE) ... .

[philzilla]

Originally posted by loren s:
It's not "to" easy, but don't you as a developer want a little bit of a quick tool to ?

It's not "too" easy, but don't you as a developer want a little bit of humour too?

[OreoCookie]

Why do you need WYSIWHG for CSS? I mean, I don't think you can properly put the relationships that you might define into a useful diagram. I mean, the stuff isn't easy, and so you need some expertise. Sometimes, plain text is the easier solution.

[loren s]

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
Why do you need WYSIWHG for CSS? I mean, I don't think you can properly put the relationships that you might define into a useful diagram. I mean, the stuff isn't easy, and so you need some expertise. Sometimes, plain text is the easier solution.

It just buggs me to much staring into code for to long.... Makes swooshyyy brain all woozzzzzyyyy...

What ikes me is that these kind of programs DO! exsit! But they are on the windows front. I have tried a few they are not that hot still as they do not have Safari's live render and they are not smooth, and font alissing is not even there so it is a poain to look at. But they do have them. So why do we not ?

It is just another tool in a coders belt, but a tool full of color and instant feedback... sigh ...

[Millennium]

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
Why do you need WYSIWHG for CSS? I mean, I don't think you can properly put the relationships that you might define into a useful diagram.

I'm not so sure about that. Basic semantics, at least, aren't so bad; it's a matter of clicking on an "Emphasize" or "Cite" button instead of an "Italic" button. You can handle paragraphs in a manner similar to LaTeX: single linebreaks are simple linebreaks, while multiple linebreaks indicate a new paragraph. You can get slightly more advanced by implementing sections or chapters using divs. An editor could allow a user to create custom buttons as well, implemented with DIV or SPAN.

Layout is really where things start to get problematic. The best program I've seen for it is WestCiv's Layout Master, which got its start on Mac OS 9 but appears to be Windows-only now (having never gotten a port to OSX).

I mean, the stuff isn't easy, and so you need some expertise. Sometimes, plain text is the easier solution.

For complicated stuff, yes. But a GUI for basic semantics should at least be possible.

[loren s]

Originally posted by Millennium:
I'm not so sure about that. Basic semantics, at least, aren't so bad; it's a matter of clicking on an "Emphasize" or "Cite" button instead of an "Italic" button. You can handle paragraphs in a manner similar to LaTeX: single linebreaks are simple linebreaks, while multiple linebreaks indicate a new paragraph. You can get slightly more advanced by implementing sections or chapters using divs. An editor could allow a user to create custom buttons as well, implemented with DIV or SPAN.

Layout is really where things start to get problematic. The best program I've seen for it is WestCiv's Layout Master, which got its start on Mac OS 9 but appears to be Windows-only now (having never gotten a port to OSX).

For complicated stuff, yes. But a GUI for basic semantics should at least be possible.

Sing the truth! Sing it load!

I do not want an app for cheating work, I just want an instant feedback tool for tweeking. CAn someone help me create a presetaion for it? I really want to find a coder to make such a tool. As The other tools on the market are just to bloated for this.

I my self jump from several different programs, but my best tool is the very clean and streamlined Taco http://www.tacosw.com/ and a new one I am beta testing. It is very clean and fast as it should be. But I can not get the developer to try out the idea. And Macrabbit checks this board now and then. But he to will not try such a thing.

sigh...

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by Millennium:
I'm not so sure about that. Basic semantics, at least, aren't so bad; it's a matter of clicking on an "Emphasize" or "Cite" button instead of an "Italic" button. You can handle paragraphs in a manner similar to LaTeX: single linebreaks are simple linebreaks, while multiple linebreaks indicate a new paragraph. You can get slightly more advanced by implementing sections or chapters using divs. An editor could allow a user to create custom buttons as well, implemented with DIV or SPAN.

Layout is really where things start to get problematic. The best program I've seen for it is WestCiv's Layout Master, which got its start on Mac OS 9 but appears to be Windows-only now (having never gotten a port to OSX).

For complicated stuff, yes. But a GUI for basic semantics should at least be possible.

Well, you nailed it with your comparison to LaTeX.
Needless to say that I use LaTeX with TeXShop -- so you still edit source code (I was thinking about switching to TeXShop + vim, though.

For LaTeX, there is LyX, but still, LyX is mainly concerned with content creation and not changing the template.

I use div and so on on my website, so apart from my CSS file, there is hardly any html code (except for links, headers and the occasional <i> ...). A GUI for content creation might be useful, but on the other hand, not necessary. But I think, the majority of the work is to create a css file and to structure your site accordingly.

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by loren s:
It just buggs me to much staring into code for to long.... Makes swooshyyy brain all woozzzzzyyyy...

What ikes me is that these kind of programs DO! exsit! But they are on the windows front. I have tried a few they are not that hot still as they do not have Safari's live render and they are not smooth, and font alissing is not even there so it is a poain to look at. But they do have them. So why do we not ?

It is just another tool in a coders belt, but a tool full of color and instant feedback... sigh ...

Yes, but that's why you get paid

[Lucidwray]

Im not sure exactly what you are asking for as far as a visual editor, but have you ever used Dreamweaver MX 7.1? It handles CSS creation visually and still gives you the ability to preview everything live and edit code all at the same time. The CSS tools in MX 7.1 are pretty incredible. Infact now all basic text formatting uses CSS in dreamweaver. Select some text, change its size and color and its creates a style for you as you do it.

Ive found that alot of people bash DW before they truly learn to use it. I use it now as my main text editor for PHP sites because its preview and syntax highliting fucntions. I can connect to a MySQL database, edit PHP and preview live data in realtime, all in dreamweaver. Excellent table layout tools, SFTP sync ability and tons of other tools make it invaluable for a PHP web designer.

but, thats just my 2 cents....

[loren s]

Originally posted by Lucidwray:
Im not sure exactly what you are asking for as far as a visual editor, but have you ever used Dreamweaver MX 7.1? It handles CSS creation visually and still gives you the ability to preview everything live and edit code all at the same time. The CSS tools in MX 7.1 are pretty incredible. Infact now all basic text formatting uses CSS in dreamweaver. Select some text, change its size and color and its creates a style for you as you do it.

Ive found that alot of people bash DW before they truly learn to use it. I use it now as my main text editor for PHP sites because its preview and syntax highliting fucntions. I can connect to a MySQL database, edit PHP and preview live data in realtime, all in dreamweaver. Excellent table layout tools, SFTP sync ability and tons of other tools make it invaluable for a PHP web designer.

but, thats just my 2 cents....

True I have not become super proficent with it yet. But I find it to be a bit bloatted and I like getting straight into the code. But at times I wish I could just rearange a few little bits sometimes with just a click and drag of the element in the rendered Interface. As in like a FULL screen interface and simple quick.

Hmm. true DW has all of this, it just takes a screen space and money and it is not an easy learn quickly.

Still I am not convinsed that my argument is storg enough...
I just like small little stream lined apps, with as little inteface and start up time as possible.

Oh well...

The same agument I have had for PDF makers and editors. We have makers but no Edditor sans Adobe acrobat pro. But that app is so slow and pokey.

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by Lucidwray:
Im not sure exactly what you are asking for as far as a visual editor, but have you ever used Dreamweaver MX 7.1? It handles CSS creation visually and still gives you the ability to preview everything live and edit code all at the same time. The CSS tools in MX 7.1 are pretty incredible. Infact now all basic text formatting uses CSS in dreamweaver. Select some text, change its size and color and its creates a style for you as you do it.

Ive found that alot of people bash DW before they truly learn to use it. I use it now as my main text editor for PHP sites because its preview and syntax highliting fucntions. I can connect to a MySQL database, edit PHP and preview live data in realtime, all in dreamweaver. Excellent table layout tools, SFTP sync ability and tons of other tools make it invaluable for a PHP web designer.

but, thats just my 2 cents....

Well, then you're exploring the tiniest share of CSS. I've seen frontpage-based CSS designs -- horrible. CSS shouldn't be used to replace the good old fontsize tag or so. CSS can be so nifty, but to explore its strengths, I'm afraid that you'll probably have to down the road of raw coding (at least to some degree).

[Lucidwray]

Dont get me wrong. i do about 80% of my editing in the code. I write PHP for a living and most things are faster in raw code editing..

I think DW handles CSS very nicely. It has the option to use CSS as the default or to return to pre MX behavior and use font tags as default. And dont get me wring you can still use font tags anytime, even while having CSS. Thats what makes it so nice is the true flexability.

As far as using CSS for font manipulations, now days, using CSS for fonts should almost be standard. The problem with a fontsize tag is that its completely arbitrary. CSS isint. If you are worried about how your site looks at all CSS should be the way to go. I used to hate CSS with a passion. But after using it for a few sites. Its very nice. It is definaly the future.

Launch time isint an issue with me on DW. I leave it open about 90% of the time so it dosent bother me. Once you get it setup the way you want and all windows arranged. DW is by far the fastest tool for all around site creation/programming/management. The learning curve is steep but once youve got it, its very powerful. Just like Photoshop for image editing, or Final Cut Pro for video and so on...

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by Lucidwray:
Dont get me wrong. i do about 80% of my editing in the code. I write PHP for a living and most things are faster in raw code editing..

I think DW handles CSS very nicely. It has the option to use CSS as the default or to return to pre MX behavior and use font tags as default. And dont get me wring you can still use font tags anytime, even while having CSS. Thats what makes it so nice is the true flexability.

As far as using CSS for font manipulations, now days, using CSS for fonts should almost be standard. The problem with a fontsize tag is that its completely arbitrary. CSS isint. If you are worried about how your site looks at all CSS should be the way to go. I used to hate CSS with a passion. But after using it for a few sites. Its very nice. It is definaly the future.

Launch time isint an issue with me on DW. I leave it open about 90% of the time so it dosent bother me. Once you get it setup the way you want and all windows arranged. DW is by far the fastest tool for all around site creation/programming/management. The learning curve is steep but once youve got it, its very powerful. Just like Photoshop for image editing, or Final Cut Pro for video and so on...

You shouldn't mix old-style html with css code.