MikePadgett.com

Playing CMS catch-up

— One of life's irritations is building a standards-based web resource and then watching WYSIWYG editors destroy it!”

If you’ve spent time designing and building usable, accessible web pages to hand over to developers, you probably have to resist the urge to stand over them while they’re at work.

Assuming you pick up on every little issue, you’re justifiably proud by the time release comes along.

Then, like a house of cards, your delicate, pristine code comes tumbling down when users start editing content.

I would chance to claim that the overwhelming majority of CMS products publish horrific, nay rude, HTML created in those oh-so-friendly WYSIWYG editors.

And when you fix some of the worst offenders in the source view, the Editor goes and validates against you and your well-meaning hard work.

It’s a problem to which today’s BBC News article alludes when discussing accessibility failures on government websites.

So to all those who strive for web standards, I say, be sure your CMS does too!