Is there any WYSIWYG editor that creates 100% XHTML 1 Strict compliant code?

I am evalluating dreamweaver 8 and it fails this test horribly.

I created a new XHTML 1 Strict page and wrote two lines. I used Shift+Enter to get to the second line (to the the <br> vs <br /> tag). I then made some text bold and change the color of other text.

I copied the code it created and it had 12 errors on the W3c XHTML validator.

It used the <strong> tag, it used the <font> tag and the color attribute, it did not put the text in a paragraph, it did not put the / in the <br> and <meta> tags.

Is there any other WYSIWYG editor that would create proper code? Or can dreamweaver be configured to make proper code?

Thanks.

You should be able to tell Dreamweaver and most other editors to use xhtml instead of html for it's code. It's most likely in one of the options or preferences. I think I remember setting that up way back when I last used Dreamweaver. The <font> attribute has been deprecated so I'm not sure it will work with xhtml strict. I could be wrong about that though.

I don't use WYSIWYG editors myself anymore, but since most usually write poor html I would tend to doubt they could write 100% xhtml strict compliant code. Many developers still have trouble with it.

Is there a reason you need to use strict. You could try transitional instead of strict and maybe have a better chance of finding the editor you're looking for. Of all the WYSIWYG editors I've seen Dreamweaver was one of the better ones.

Like I said I really don't use WYSIWYG's, but I think it you want to have 100% standards compliant code you'll probably need to edit some of it by hand. You can easily use the WYSIWYG to generate your basic code and then use the validator to find the errors and fix them by hand.

vangogh is right, you have to set up your Dreamweaver document to be XHTML Strict otherwise it will default to HTML Transistional. Dreamweaver is actually quite good at creating XHTML documents if set up correctly. If you are still looking for another editor then you might check out NVU or Style Master which both have XHTML support built in.

Kaiman

Storm King Design

Whoops duplicate post, Sorry...

Kaiman and VanGogh, I'm afraid you are mistaken.

DreamWeaver will let you set the document type when you initially create the document, and it does have some settings for how certain of its WYSIWYG tools should behave, but generally speaking, this does not make DreamWeaver into a compliant WYSIWYG tool.

Almost universally, DreamWeavers WYSIWYG tools just produce the code they are set to produce, whether valid or invalid for the current DOCTYPE.

Generally, using almost any of DreamWeavers standard WYSIWYG tools will create invalid markup almost immediately. Macromedia really leaves it up to the user to write or maintain the validity of all markup. They do provide DreamWeaver with a basic validation ability, but it's not very reliable - it misses a lot of invalid markup.

I don't know of many valid WYSIWYG tools. There is XStandard (http://xstandard.com) which I've never used, it produces XHTML 1.1 valid markup. But I believe it's an IE plug-in. Also, though it is more of a conversion tool and not a full featured editor, the SiteGrinder Photoshop plug-in produces sites that are always XHTML 1.1 valid http://www.medialab.com/sitegrinder. (Disclosure: I wrote SiteGrinder)

Chris Perkins
Media Lab, Inc.

You're right of course Chris. I don't think there is any WYSIWYG editor that will make your code completely compliant. Far too many developers can't even do that.

I guess I was just thinking about the DreamWeaver setting the right doctype and at least using lowercase tags and ensuring closing tags. A little more compliant, but like you said WYSIWYG editors are going to leave non-compliant code in there.

I think the only way to write completely compliant code is to know what that code is and tweak the code you get from your WYSIWYG. A good place to find your errors is http://validator.w3.org/ Once you know what's non-compliant it becomes much easier to make it compliant.

SiteGrinder looks like a pretty nice tool. I can imagine a lot of people finding it useful.