IBM getting into the HTML5 authoring game with open source Maqetta

Pretty much any gui / 'wysiwyg' / dwim tool for developing markup for the web was a trainwreck when it came to production / deployment - the tools created the impression of publishing online being approximately like publishing for print, that layouts can be pixel-perfect, and that the publisher can define every aesthetic and aspect of behaviour. Since then we've come to understand that user agents can render things differently, behave differently, and should often be allowed to. Frameworks that make use of active scripting to bypass platform differences are generally heavy, and end up punishing users with their weight to save some lifting by developers.

Nowadays, although more browsers fall behind the support curve and the 'newer' browsers approach greater consistency (at least, while comparing the older features), greater variance is beginning to creep into the field in other ways - tablets, netbooks, mobile broadband. It's a constantly evolving arena. An arena which requires agility, skill and grace to succeed in mastering - slow moving toolchains will find it hard to hit the moving targets. Philosophically, wysiwy(m)g tools annoy me, as they're intoxicating to the general market - drunk with new found 'expertise', actual knowledge is maligned, and art is lost. All of a sudden, every guy with a 3d printer thinks he's a sculptor.

Sadly, this has happened before, and will again - and despite my resentment, I have to admit it's just nature - these things will find their own niche. Wysiwyg is not web development. Word is not a DTP tool. They have their place.

We're just a few years into serious codegeneration tools. Most people still have the bad taste of MSVS code generators in their mouth. When it evolves, code generators will be unbeatable to manual coding, area by area, language by language, slowly. Some langs/frameworks/toolkits will never have decent codegeneration.

A paper document generates code also, like OO.org (LibreOffice) or OOXML. They're pretty good at that, I have yet to meet the first guy manually writing a doc by hand. Html5 will replace those document formats, simply because they're based on paper.

The camp saying current code generation tools suck, are right. The camp saying future code generators will fit your needs, are right also.

I haven't used this but coding up an HTML/CSS layout is already pretty quick if you're experienced and have macros and templates defined already. Nonetheless tools like this might fit into your workflow if your CSS-fu isn't as strong or you want to prototype several visual designs at once.

The Dreamweaver and Maqetta approach seems dated. CMS templates (Wordpress, Tumblr, Weebly, Cargo) are the new dreamweaver and they're put together with lower level code.

One middle ground for now would be taking a good CMS template and editing that.

Here's an interesting article from back in 2004 on the issue:

http://osteele.com/archives/2004/11/ides