

Ask HN: Is there still a market for (new) visual HTML/CSS editors? - TheCoreh

I've been considering this for a while, and would like to know your opinion:<p>The existing graphical/WYSIWYG HTML+CSS editors are either targeted at amateurs/absolute beginners (iWeb-like apps, that offer very little flexibility) or are too expensive for semi-professional use, if you disregard piracy. (Dreamweaver-like apps)<p>Furthermore, pretty much every single visual tool I've tried generates terrible, messy, unreadable and unmantainable code, making them unsuitable for professional use. (Dreamweaver has made some improvements recently, but it's still far from good) Most tools also have limited or no HTML5+CSS3 support.<p>Because of that, graphical tools are now almost completely irrelevant, having been replaced by things like CSS frameworks.<p>My question is:<p>If a tool were designed that addressed these issues (flexibility, price, code quality) would you use it? Furthermore, would you pay for it? If so, how much? What features would you consider essential?<p>Thanks in advance.
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mskierkowski
Would you be targeting experts, semi-experts, or beginners? If beginners, are
you looking at people who just want to get a website up and running, or want
to eventually do web development regularly (i.e. they actually want to learn
to build websites)?

I ask because it sounds like you are casting a very large net with a tool like
this.

My theory is that much of these tools are obsolete not just because they
produce bad code, but because the market has been eaten up by better
alternatives. Experts are more likely to use a good text editor and CSS
frameworks and great new features of HTML5; thus they don't need tools like
dreamweaver to produce things that they now can do more easily. New users who
just want to build a website but don't want to learn to develop websites
regularly are more likely to be drawn to a service like wix.com or
wordpress.com. The only segment I'm not sure has been touched (perhaps because
I'm uniformed), are new web designers who want to learn web design, not just
to create a one-time project. In that case you might be better off
interviewing college/university students who just finished their first few web
design courses.

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jordo37
I'm not sure there's a way to get around the fundamental issue that even the
best visual editors product shoddy code. If this were to work, I can think of
scores of non-technical entrepreneurs and back-end developers who would be
interested. I think at that point the question is who would you be targeting -
the slightly above amateur market or the guy who knows code, but not css per
se.

