Thread

I am wondering how important everyone thinks it is for a client to need a WYSIWYG in order to update content on their site. 

I have done two sites in EE and love it!  I would not want to have to go back to Wordpress only for that one feature.  Is having the auto
feature along with the bold and italics features enough for a client to get by with?

Thanks!

You can add just about all the popular WYSIWYG editors to EE, it just isn’t there out of the box for a lot of reasons discussed elsewhere on these forums. For example WP uses TinyMCE, which works with EE as well.

In over two dozen client sites I’ve only installed a WYSIWYG editor once.

In over two dozen client sites I’ve only installed a WYSIWYG editor once.

I guess that maybe a WYSIWYG wouldn’t be as necessary as I had thought.  I am curious, though, what were the instances when you did use them?

You can add just about all the popular WYSIWYG editors to EE

Well, knowing this, I can’t think of any reason why someone wouldn’t use EE!

I installed one when they insisted on it.

I use Markdown for my last project but only because the TinyMCE module interfered with the control panel.

I’ve never had a request for one. I do try to structure the content in a way that they don’t really need one and keep content and presentation separate.I really don’t want to see any formatting beyond a <b> or an <i> in the content.

And ofcourse ‘WHAT YOU SEE IS WAT YOU GET’ that is what they love

This is debatable though… do you really ‘get’ what is intended with these things?  My experience has been that these things make it too easy for the client to make a mess.  Nested tags, tons of nbsp; etc…  If you are anal about the formatting of the text among other things, I believe EE’s limited controls are best.  They make the client pay attention to what they are doing.

I think we all would agree that it would be nice to have this toolset if they were actually helpful.  In theory, there is no doubt they are, but in practice, they end up creating a lot of extra clean-up work.

Hopefully, browser manufacturers will soon fill that niche, as it’s really rather silly to rely on sites to implement their own editors, on run-time interpreted code no less.  WebKit is making strides, which will affect a number of browsers.  If IE and FF follow suit, then this issue which is currently a lose-lose for both web developers and end users, will be settled.

My experience has been that these things make it too easy for the client to make a mess.

Bingo. I’ve seen some sites where the client has gone nuts.

My experience has been that these things make it too easy for the client to make a mess.

Bingo. I’ve seen some sites where the client has gone nuts.

So true - I’m definitely going to try to stay away from using WYSIWYG if at all possible in the future.  Letting the client style as little as possible is the way to go.

I do try to structure the content in a way that they don’t really need one

I think that I like this approach.

How often would a client want to make a list, though, something that most clients wouldn’t know how to do.

Ya, lists can be an issue. Most of my clients (generally) just need a bulleted list so they just type a bullet (Opt-8 on Mac), a space, and the text and it works out for them. But, if they needed something different I’d probably have to look into a way to let them do that.

This is where Textile is beautiful.  http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/

For a bulleted list, your client would simply type:

* list item 1
* list item 2
* list item 3
* list item 4
* etc…

and it renders like:

<ul>
<li>list item 1</li>
<li>list item 2</li>
<li>list item 3</li>
<li>list item 4</li>
<li>etc…</li>
</ul>

And it renders how? Same as if they just typed Opt-8? If so, what’s the advantage? Does it really have to be a <ul>? Just curious. Does the fact that it’s a <ul> buy the client anything semantically?