Slashdot Mirror
NYTimes.com Hand-Codes HTML & CSS
eldavojohn writes "The design director of NYTimes.com, Khoi Vinh, recently answered readers' questions in the Times's occasional feature 'Ask the Times.' He was asked how the Web site looks so consistently nice and polished no matter which browser or resolution is used to access it. His answer begins: '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.'"
Stupid comment by Vinh about Dreamweaver.
1. DW lets you code at the source code level if you choose.
2. DW is much faster--in Design View--at creating tables.
3. DW allows for flipping back and forth or split view.
4. DW does not rewrite your code (for the most part).
I use DW every day. I am not even conscious of flipping between the 2 views. Some things are done better in Design View and some in Code View.
CSS support is very good in DW.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
While the purists are going to argue that valid markup defines the quality of the code on a given website the reality of the real world always tends to rear it's ugly head and debunk that fantasy.
/rant >.>
In the real world us web developers have to deal with interoperability on many different levels. We have to make sure the layout looks the same on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari with Windows XP & Vista, OSX, and Linux using the same code base. Most of this however has a lot to do with how talented your CSS developer is. And unfortunately for you kiddies, any less isn't perfect.
So to spell it out for those that don't know, here's the real difference between WYSIWYG and pure text:
In a WYSIWYG editor you tend to do everything the same way every time you do it. That means that all your links, images, and code snippets come from the same code base and therefore have all the same pitfalls and good points. Unfortunatly the wonderful world of DOM doesn't work that way. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and objects like Flash, Quicktime, and Java have very specific ways that they interact with each other and the browser and so what you generally find is that the reason you code by hand is not for the specific reason of coding by hand but simply put you really can not build good, quality websites with WYSIWYG editors. At some point you will most assuredly find yourself digging in the HTML.
Finally, on the topic of validating your markup. The Markup validaters that are out there are only good as tools of the trade and shouldn't be used as the end-all be-all certification of quality markup. They are tools that should be used by a web developer to run through and make sure they can be as close to valid as possible but I am willing to bet that out of the top 100 sites on the internet, the front page of all of them will produce Markup validation errors. The reason is simple: The validation rules are so restrictive that there is no point even worrying about them. It would be impossible to make a working website by being totally loyal to the markup rules.
Especially with the validator's stupidity in treating & signs in the href attribute of my a elements as the beginning of an entity which it's not!
Just what I was wondering: "Maybe, because they hand-code everything, they will pass the validation that all the fancy tools fail at so badly." Anyway, they are not alone. Here are the error couns for the Fortume top 20 companies (top of the Fortune 1000 list) manage on the w3c validator:
53 walmart.com
36 exxon.com
26 chevron.com
33 gm.com
76 conocophillips.com
0 ge.com
29 ford.com
52 citigroup.com
105 bankofamerica.com
26 att.com
28 www.berkshirehathaway.com
8 jpmorganchase.com
148 aig.com
55 hp.com
0 ibm.com
144 valero.com
2 verizon.com
180 mckesson.com
5 cardinalhealth.com
1082 www.goldmansachs.com