Hand-coding is my preferred method
I've always preferred to write my code with a simple text editor. I actually started writing HTML with a text editor on my Amiga 500 computer. Interestingly enough, I had no graphical web browser in which to view the pages. I would ask friends on IRC to look at a page, then I would make adjustements. I would look at my pages using Lynx to make sure they were navigable.
Later, in '96, when working for a small web design company, I had the experience of "fixing" a site that someone had designed using a WYSIWYG eidtor. I'm not sure if it was an early version of FrontPage, or something on a Mac. Whatever it was, the output was horrendous and bloated. Took me forever to get it to work properly in IE and Netscape and AOL at the same time. All those tiny little table cells, and space-holding graphics... aaarrrgghhh!
These days I look at sites and check the soure and see the same problems. The worst problem I see is that the code never ever validates. These programs still use proprietary and deprecated HTML tags. I strive to have valid HTML and CSS all the time.
People often use the argument that 92 percent of their visitors are using IE5 or IE6, so if it looks good there, they don't care. If you had a brick-and-mortar storefront, would you turn away 8 percent of the people coming to your door because they weren't wearing what you deemed the proper shoes to walk in your store?
Narasinha
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