WYSIWYG vs WYSIWYM

Question

Which one is better and ideal in a web based application?

Edit:

Actually I am developing a community site. So the level of users may vary. Heard about XSS security issues with WYSIWYG editors. Also I am not familiar with WYSIWYM editors and its features. As far as I know the features in WYSIWYM editor is less compared to the other one. I figured one named as "WMD: The Wysiwym Markdown Editor". Its quite easy to use.

So security and ease of usability should be there. In such a situation which editor will be better.

Answer 1

If your users can handle WYSIWYM, I'd go with that.

I'm considering your system will be visual, that is, if you say something is a title it'll look like a title (otherwise the WYS part wouldn't apply). If the user has to manually type markup, then only the most savvy or technical users will be able to handle it.

What I've seen with most users is that they have trouble giving meaning to what they want in a document. They don't think "this is a title", they think "this should be bigger and bold". People that cannot think "this is a title" can't handle a WYSIWYM or they'll find it hard.

Who is going to be your user base? If it's people writing academic papers I'd go with WYSIWYM because they'll have no trouble handling it. If it's for house wives writing recipes, they may not be able to handle it or they'll find it so hard that they'll decide it's not worth the effort.

For me the ideal is WYSIWYM, but do it only if you think your target users will be able to handle it, otherwise you'll have to go with WYSIWYG.

Answer 2

If your users a tech savy and understand how the basics of markup go and you think they will feel more empowered using WYSIWYM, then use that. If your application is going to be used to people who have little technical knowledge, use WYSIWYG.

Answer 3

Could you be a bit more specific? What kind of web application? How many users? Who will the users be?

In general though I've had quite of bit of experience implementing WYSIWYG editors for various CMSs and found them to be quite problematic because clients often like to go wild with formatting their content repeatedly over and over again and often end up having the editor generate HTML of poor quality. This causes all sorts of layout issues or simply pages that look really messy because everyone likes to fancy themselves as graphic designers.

If done properly WYSIWYG can work very well, but it is more work to really get it right, especially when taking into consideration CSS. Most of the good editors are nicely configurable and allow to specify just how much control to give the client over visual formatting.

As for the quality of the code they generate, tools such as FCKEditor and TinyMCE are very mature and do a good job of editing out the irrelevant crud in the source code, but be prepared to provide support for clients using a WYSIWYG when their content doesn't look the way they would like it to.

Since WYSIWYM editors are much like WYSIWYG with structural formatting instead of visual formatting, philosophically I think they are better and less problem prone. So if the client doesn't have a need to visually format the content I think WYSIWYM is bound to cause less headaches down the road.

The editor used here in Stack Overflow is a good example of restrained WYSIWYG. You can format the content visually but only to a certain extent.

Answer 4

Unless you are doing a tool for print layout (i.e. Indesign or maybe a mailing list printing tool) you are probably better to stick with WYSIWYM.

• It is likely to be easier to implement

• Web browsers are highly configurable and you may not have fine grained control over items like font size.

• The structure is explicit so rendering to different media is comparatively easy.

• It avoids the temptation on the part of users to over-design the document or whatever they are entering.

• Document structure facilitates indexing, table-of-contents generation and cross-referencing where this is relevant. Compare (for example) maintianing a large index in Word with doing in LaTeX or Framemaker.

• Anecdotal experience from LaTeX users (in particular) suggests that organising a document by structure is likely to produce a better document.

Answer 5

I personally love the WYSIWYM mechanism. I use it for my own work as much as possible. I like it so much that I try to get others to try it too.

Boy, that goes over like a fart in a space-suit.

My cynical self assumes this to mean that most folks are ruined by tools like Word. Everyone knows to make a meaningful document. They also know what a meaningful document looks like. If it doesn't look like that, the tool is wrong! What's actually happening is these document producers don't actually know what they mean, and are used to hiding that fact with pretty borders and adjusting tab-stops.

What I really think is happening, though, is that these folks who are resistant to WYSIWYM are that way because it's a harder way of thinking about something they already invested in learning. This is a level of abstraction above WYSIWYG, though not quite as far removed as composing documents in markup like LaTeX or HTML. And since they can already create any sort of document in a tool that requires no abstraction, it's just a hard sell.

That being said, I think you should force WYSIWYM on your users if that is feasable. There are some good reasons for this

• All of the benefits that naturally come with two stage composition. Formatting is not decidable until the document is composed, so any time spent before the document is finished on formatting is time wasted. Get it composed quickly.
• The document is marked up with semantic information. This can be used in searches, or for other tasks that strictly visual markup cannot. This is especially useful for accessibility.
• By depriving your users of arbitrary formatting decisions, all of your documents will follow company branding. Everything will be in a standard font and color. All text will use the same spacing and height. It will look to readers like it came from a single entity.

Answer 6

Check this

http://www.wymeditor.org/

Answer 7

From my experience with MYSIWYM, I was very seduced by the idea and the looks, but I was then deceived to know that the editor didn't give me a simple and efficient way to restrict the user, for example the user can insert images inside paragraphs... and I don't want that... I want more control over what the user can do.