Old school coders often bemoan how the relative ease of web site construction nowadays allows any Tom, Dick, or Harry to set themselves up as a webmaster. Now, its not a bad thing that modern technology has made the process easier. Back in the early days producing a functioning web page required the coder to master HTML manuals as thick as bibles. You had to be really good the first time, because if a mistake was made anywhere in the document where you put the code, you would have to review the whole thing line by line to identify the error!

The modern and commonly available WYSIWYG (Short for ”What You See IS What You Get”) web site builders have made the whole process a bit more painless. These programs, however, do deprive the web site designer of the tight control that comes from writing every line of code manually.

Most graphical web editors have a ”view source code” feature which allows the web designer to edit the exact code that operates the site. At first glance, it may appear to be an incomprehensible wall of text, and while many web designers may be willing to keep it that way, learning some rudiments of html coding allows a web developer to customize some very useful features.

Take widgets for example. Many apps, graphs, tables, and even videos are often sloppily pasted onto a web site builder, and left in a horribly maligned position. The web developer could easily importer the aesthetics of the site by adding an ”align” tag. In addition to this, text color other aspects of site behavior can also be customized with just a few lines of code.

So, whether a web developer chooses to take advantage of the benefits gained from accessing the raw source code feature or not, the fact that it is there presents those who are willing to do so a clear advantage.