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This is a much underappreciated point, one I first came to realize when trying to train reasonably intelligent lay users working with some of the 1st and 2nd generation WYSIWYG web tools (Fusion, Dreamweaver, and heaven help us all Frontpage). Point-and-click interfaces really only provide some degree of friction-reduction. A user who can be effective still has to think in terms of layout tools and behavior and different properties of block and inline elements that can be set, even if they don't have the language to describe these things and don't map it to syntax. That last part is the effort saved -- they don't have to map it linguistically/formally and for some people or some limited design/display problem set, that's big savings. I suspect, however, that's a significantly smaller set of people and problems than the common wisdom might indicate (and definitely smaller than "universal") and one of the reasons many web publishing tools end up providing templates + limited display options inside content and still end up being more popular than Dreamweaver.



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