[Imc-alternatives] User Stories: Wikis or Wysiwygs?

[Josef Davies-Coates]

Dave makes some good points.

But I'd personally say we should still go for WYSIWYG (although it can be a
pain, it is generally better for the average user).

Limiting what it can do probably makes sense. And not offering any support
;)

Josef.

On 08/08/2007, Dave Fregon <dave at netaxxs.com.au> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 2007-08-07 at 17:52 -0400, Aaron Kreider wrote:
> > The user stories refer to "wikis".  I think we should use WYSIWYG (What
> > you see is what you get) editors instead.  For an example of WYSIWYG you
> > can see our openplans site and how you have the ability to change text
> > format by clicking on "B" and selecting text to make it bold.
> >
> > Drupal has a module that does this: TinyMCE
> > (http://drupal.org/project/tinymce).
> >
> > Drupal lets you choose multiple modes.  So you could have text, html and
> > wysiwyg and let users choose which one is their default.  I'd suggest
> > starting off regular users using wysiwyg as default.
> >
> > Both wiki format and html codes are a little bit too complex and
> > unfamiliar for the average user. Whereas WYSIWYG imitates the most
> > familiar conventions that are used by word processing programs and other
> > software.
> >
> > Do people agree with me on this? It'd be particularly useful to hear
> > from people who have experience in this area (mine is limited).  What do
> > regular (non-techie) users prefer?
>
> ok I have to chime in here :)
>
> WYSIWYG can be good and bad, it's finding the middle-ground.
>
> Having handed out a lot of WYSIWYG sites, only to have 20 title colours
> on one page, 3 font sizes and no consistency to a template provided, I
> have to say that some things are good, others are EVIL :) making
> something bold can be good, giving users the ability to make all the
> text underlined and pink is not :) (nothing against pink, just not as
> text;)
>
> HTML is a medium that has limits, and when you get into this area, I
> have found from a techie perspective you can spend a huge amount of
> support time helping a user align tables and images in a wysiwyg editor,
> because 'I can do it in word, why can't I cut and paste that in
> here?' .. it adds to the work, and detracts from the work to be done as
> well.
>
> Depending on what it's being used for I guess .. and what the users have
> exposure to actually do with it.
>
> I have tended to fall back lately on larger projects I am doing to
> defining a template, and have the user fill out plain text fields to
> populate it. OR, limiting the WYSIWYG editor to only allowing certain
> markup, and having the 'style' predefined in css (eg: headings) so they
> don't 'break out' of the sites style.
>
> my 2 cents, couldn't help it as WYSIWYG support gives us a lot of pain
> at werk :)
>
> Dave
>
>
> >
> > Aaron
> >
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