Why not WYSIWYG: Style and Markup for Content Management System web sites

The below is the why that goes with this how: Style content in Drupal using standard HTML tags (and have it match your custom site perfectly and meet your styling needs!)

Gus:
any ideas for adding text size and color to the BUE editor = my current mission
ask them what styles they want to add
just font size
and font color

benjamin:
explain to them the extreme importance of consistency and not letting people randomly change font size and color
so *specific* font sizes and colors

and then do it with <span class="big red"></span> or, semantically, <span class="important"></span>
in BUE editor

Gus:
h1, h2...

benjamin:
yeah, <h1> and <h2> is even better if that's what they really want to look special, headlines
and then do it in CSS of course

then everything can be changed at once if the look of the site is changed later

you can also give them the <big></big> tag

but the value of semantic markup is the future compatibility, the consistency and control right away

We could give them TinyMCE or FCKeditor or whatever they had. There might be a better rich text editor done with jquery now. But ugh.

Gus:
ohhhh... jquery
my favorite

benjamin:
no one's wrapped a Drupal solution around it yet

Gus:
shucks

benjamin:
it would be better if we could convince our client of the fact that for a highly professional public-facing site, it should provide a consistent and unified look to the world, so specific tags and CSS is simply the way to go. Size and font tags are not standards-compliant and are deprecated and to be discouraged.

We wanted to mention also that we can make all headers and titles, bold text, and other text match your specifications -- including custom displays -- but that these elements of style should be handled as part of the overall theming of the site, in the style sheets.

Dan:

I'd go with BUEditor http://drupal.org/project/bueditor

I always question what wysiwyg editors actually do to your content behind the scenes... will there be crazy inline styles added? will adding such a module be reversible? etc

There is also value to keeping the consistency of your site and not letting people randomly change font size and color and make it look 90s, and also the whole semantic markup thing for future times, blah blah

Resolution

Reasons for using semantic tags, with style defined by Cascading Style Sheets, rather than inline as many web rich text editors tend to do their markup:

• Importance of consistency and not letting people randomly change font size and color.
• Storing non-semantic mark-up in the database with the content makes it hard to work with this content in the future, and locks you in to a specific rich text editor solution that may well not be optimal or well maintained going forward.
• The most important value of semantic markup is the future compatibility, as well as the consistency and control right away.
• any public-facing site should provide a consistent and unified look to the world. For this to persist across the site and over time, specific tags, ideally standard HTML tags, customized with CSS is the way to go. Size and font tags are not standards-compliant, are deprecated, and are to be discouraged.