Ask HN: Is there still a market for (new) visual HTML/CSS editors? | Hacker News Reader

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

1 pointTheCoreh2 comments

I've been considering this for a while, and would like to know your opinion:

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)

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.

Because of that, graphical tools are now almost completely irrelevant, having been replaced by things like CSS frameworks.

My question is:

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?

Thanks in advance.

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.

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.

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