What Is WYSIWYG?

Date First Published: 13th July 2022

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: Web Applications

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 5/10

CONTENTS

WYSIWYG Applications
Advantages and Disadvantages Of WYSIWYG Applications
History

Learn more about what WYSIWYG is in this article.

Stands for What You See Is What You Get. WYSIWYG, pronounced 'wizee-wig', describes an application that allows users to build and edit webpages and see what the end result will look like inside the builder in exactly the same way as it would appear in a web browser. WYSIWYG does not require any knowledge of markup languages. Instead, a WYSIWYG interface writes the HTML and CSS for the user and they can drag and drop elements with an accurate display of what the webpage would look like if it was published.

Note:

Even though a webpage may not look the same in different web browsers, since they may interpret the code in different ways, a WYSIWYG editor can still give an estimation of what the page would look like if it was published on the Web.

Note:

WYSIWYG editors can also refer to non-web-related programs, such as word processing programs and desktop publishing programs. Microsoft Word uses a WYSIWYG interface because the page layout mode accurately shows what the document would look like if it was printed. WYSIWYG can refer to any software that accurately displays the end result whilst editing.

WYSIWYG Programs

WYSIWYG editors are different to traditional editors, such as Notepad which require the developer to enter HTML or CSS before they can see the end results and they are not seen immediately. Adobe Dreamweaver has a WYSIWYG interface. It has three separate views that can be used to create a webpage: Code, split, and design. The design view is the WYSIWYG portion of Dreamweaver.

Services, such as Wix, WordPress, and Weebly allow users to create a website without knowing how to code. These allow website elements to be edited, resized, and removed by clicking a button, representing what they would look like if they were published online.

Advantages and Disadvantages Of WYSIWYG Applications

The advantages of WYSIWYG applications are:

They are much easier for end-users who are unfamiliar with markup and stylesheet languages, such as HTML and CSS and want to quickly create a webpage.
It is quicker to make changes to content in a WYSIWYG interface as end-users do not need to search for individual HTML tags.
WYSIWYG interfaces are compatible with a wide range of operating systems and web browsers.

The advantages of WYSIWYG applications are:

With complex designs, WYSIWYG editors can create a lot of excessive code that leads to webpages being large in size.
Some WYSIWYG editors on content management systems do not allow users to directly edit the HTML of their design, giving them limited design options and control over how their website looks and functions.
Web developers wanting to learn and become familiar with the markup languages of the web do not learn anything by using a WYSIWYG interface. All they learn is how to use the program.

History

The phrase 'what you see is what you get' appeared before the internet was around. This term eventually became common in the computing form. Originally, computers did not have any form of WYSIWYG, meaning that end-users had to create documents using custom coding languages and tags, which was much harder.

Bravo is considered to be the first program to use a WYSIWYG interface. It was a word processing program that was developed at Xerox PARC at Butler Lampson, Charles Simonyi along with colleagues in 1974 and displayed text with formatting.

WebMagic was the first WYSIWYG HTML editor that was released by Silicon Graphics in 1995.