While WebStorm and other JetBrain IDEs are great, the RAD/WYSIWYG part is missing. We had already Frontage/Dreamweaver for HTML3-4. If JetBrains would add a HTML5 WYSIWYG editor based on webkit/blink to their IDEs, it would be awesome.
These days the target market for WYSIWYG HTML editors would be probably be using an online CMS like WP - which actually has a WYSIWYG HTML editor. Failing that, Microsoft Word actually had nice HTML output last time I checked.
> HTML WYSIWYG wouldn't have a developer as a main target, most developers would prefer editing the html directly
WYSIWYG always had a split-screen view which allows one to work in design and code mode at the same time (and see the changes in the other mode). It's very efficient.
> Microsoft Word actually had nice HTML output
MS Word 2000-2013 web page export is based on the old Frontpage engine, and generates invalid HTML4 and converts vector graphics and word art to VML, the proprietary predecessor of SVG, that IE10+ don't even support anymore (except with legacy quirks mode mode).
> online CMS like WP
The contentEditiable HTML4 API that CMS use is sadly completely broken in every browser in a different way - the experience and the code output quality is far worse than Frontpage ever was - and Dreamweaver is better in every aspect.
There is a reason why we have BBCode and Markdown, because contentEditiable isn't that great at the moment. And as several browser vendors have a competitive advantage with their web based Office services (Office365 Web Word, iCloud.com Pages, Google Docs), they will never fix the various bugs of contentEditiable in IE/Safari/Chrome.
Also I have no idea where you got the idea that WYSIWYG always had a split-screen view unless there is some product that is named WYSIYG, for me it has always meant What You See Is What You Get and the entire idea was that you have to mess with how it worked under the hood. As implemented in e.g word (or open office) you don't even have the option of doing that. Are you arguing that Word is not WYSIWYG?
Finally take a look at the the output from the WP HTML editor, I have no idea why you bring up the contentEditable API, but either you are misinformed or wordpress use something else because the output is pretty clean and it can convert between that and free HTML entry.
Wordpress uses the TinyMCE rich text editor which uses the contentEditable/designMode API, TinyMCE is one of many such editors that try to fix many of the glitches: https://en.support.wordpress.com/editors/ , http://www.tinymce.com/ , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_rich-text_editor
And just because some have never have seen a good HTML WYSIWYG editor doesn't mean it's a bad rapid development method and should not be integrated in a modern IDE.
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B654HhgdE0ZTRktjSERNS3pxd00...
Note that the generated HTML5 source code
- contains VML code
- will not render correctly in any modern browser
- If you want to be able to render it in IE11, you have to press F12 (Developer tools)
and change from "Edge" to compatibility to version 7 (or even 5) of the IE engine.
Then it will be drawn "correctly".To clarify the generated code is invalid HTML 4.01 (20 errors according to W3C HTML4 validator https://validator.w3.org/check ) and the first view lines look like this:
<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml"
xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word"
xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
<head>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html;
charset=windows-1252">
<meta name=ProgId content=Word.Document>
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 14">
<meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 14">
It's very efficient and less headache. WebStorm could add webkit and sync the code view like Dreamweaver. JetBrain's IDE is Java based and integrating a C++ based WYSIWYG view might be more complicated. And all the Java based browsers have been discontinued like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotJava .