However, what still seems to be out of place here is this: with all your technical experience, why don’t you do what every other geek does in such situations and develop it yourself? I think then you’d have to rethink your seemingly demanding “it’s 2009” statement.

Sure, you note the promising ventures that have come about and I’m sure will one day will bear the perfect fruit you’re looking for. However, you return to the “it’s 2009” statement which says that it’s apparently absurd that it hasn’t happened. And THAT is what should be taken as insulting to WYSIWYG developers. You pat them on the back one second saying “nice job thus far guys” then two heartbeats later say “why isn’t it here yet?!”. THAT is what makes no sense.

Some may be bad developers, but your stance should viewed as slightly arrogant and insult anyone who has worked on such projects because it assumes that all who have attempted thus far are just plain bad developers.

I don’t understand this statement at all and I don’t understand why you would think that my opinion means that I think all WYSIWYG editor developers are bad developers. Where did I say that? I think you may need to re-read my entry… particularly the last paragraph or two.

I didn’t mean to insult you about the “nontechnical” comment. However, just because you’re a developer doesn’t necessarily make you a full time WEB developer.

I invented sIFR. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. I invented Newsvine. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. I coded the first major media site in the world to ever adhere to modern web standards, ESPN.com. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

Additionally, last I checked, WYSIWYG developers do not have the goal of creating the “annoyingly inaccurate” editor. They ALL have the goal of making it perfect. Some may be bad developers, but your stance should viewed as slightly arrogant and insult anyone who has worked on such projects because it assumes that all who have attempted thus far are just plain bad developers.

And I do apologize. I didn’t mean to insult you about the “nontechnical” comment. However, just because you’re a developer doesn’t necessarily make you a full time WEB developer. I’m sure there are many successful video game and embedded systems devs that aren’t familiar with all the quirks of HTML in general, let alone browser specific problems. However, as a developer of any kind (whatever that may be) I would think that you would understand what a first year CS or SE major knows: a problem that seems straight forward on the surface can get very hairy very fast when you get down to the details. “What’s the big deal about computer facial recognition? I see the face. it’s right there!”

NOTE: Before you say “But facial recognition software exists today!!” Yes, I do realize. I worked with it and the crazy algorithms for a time in college. But it is FAR less functional that today’s WYSIWIGS.

What I want is an editor that doesn’t put goofy stuff in, like multiple levels of nested spans. And, I want an editor that doesn’t change MY coding when I have to manually edit the code because the editor does goofy stuff to the code to begin with. That has nothing to do with browsers’ capabilities.

Bottom line, if you (and all the nontechnical clients I deal with on a daily basis) want stability, you’re asking for every funky, upside down, right side up road not to be an issue. In other words, you’re asking for a flying car.

Perfect WYSIWYGS don’t because perfect browsers don’t exist. Er…rather because MS Internet Explorer still exists.

The problem here is that some nice developer came along and though “Gee golly. I bet those people in marketing and/or the clients would really would really like it if I made it a little simpler for them to edit stuff here n’ there”. Unfortunately, said people took that nice dev’s idea and basically decided that they are web designers.

I’m sorry people, but we still have YEARS of people complaining and moaning about WYSIWYGs not being perfect because in the current state of the web, it’s damn near impossible and/or crazy expensive to implement.