What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) is fine when you’re given all the functionality and control you need or want. It’s when you have additional needs and desires than the tools allow that WYSIWYG becomes a problem.
Social media WYSIWYG platforms like SnapChat, Twitter, Facebook/Instagram, et al. have become a problem as they’re not allowing us the control, flexibility, and privacy we would all like to have while they pursue their own agendas.
In these terms, the general mission of the IndieWeb movement is to be the proverbial simple text editor meant to give everyone increasingly easier, direct control over their own identity and communication on the open internet.
hat tip: Greg McVerry
Teaching ’em early to avoid the Wysiwyg pic.twitter.com/DPY3LNZHPh
— Greg McVerry (@jgmac1106) May 13, 2018
I have found #IndieWeb has challenged my use of markdown, especially in regards to comments. Unless I put in all the tags and code, the links do not flow through. My qualm with HTML is typing everything from scratch. Lately, I have been writing in Markdown and then pasting it into a convertor. Wondering if you use anything different Chris or Greg to make things easier?
Aaron, I’ve tried to get into markdown a few times, but generally find it more intrusive, and occasionally I find as you do that some links don’t always form properly. I’ve been writing into text editors for so long that adding raw html has never felt too onerous or any more onerous than html anyway. If I’m replying to something short, I’ll typically add it as I go, otherwise, I’ll write longer pieces and add markup after-the-fact. One day someone will create and editor that just does all of this directly through brain waves and we won’t need to worry. Until then I just choose to deal.