You’ve seen the acronym. You’ve probably used the tools. But honestly, WYSIWYG—or "What You See Is What You Get"—is one of those tech terms that people throw around without really thinking about where it came from or why it changed everything about how we interact with computers.
It sounds simple. The idea is that the thing you see on your screen while you're creating something is exactly what the final product will look like. Whether that's a printed page, a website, or a PDF, there are no surprises. No code. No guessing.
Before this, using a computer was basically an act of faith.
Imagine typing a document in the 1970s. You’d type out words, but if you wanted a word to be bold, you didn’t just click a button and see it turn thick and black. You typed a weird command like ^B or a string of characters that told the printer, "Hey, make this part heavy." You wouldn't know if it actually worked until the paper physically slid out of the machine. If you messed up the code, your whole document was ruined.
The Xerox PARC Revolution
We owe the existence of WYSIWYG to a group of geniuses at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). In 1974, a researcher named Butler Lampson and a team including Charles Simonyi—who later went on to lead the development of Microsoft Word—created a program called Bravo.
Bravo was the world's first WYSIWYG editor. It ran on the Xerox Alto.
The Alto was a machine way ahead of its time. It had a mouse. It had a bitmapped display. Most importantly, it allowed users to see different fonts and sizes on the screen simultaneously. This was radical. At the time, most computers were just green text on a black background, all one size, all one font.
Simonyi’s work at PARC eventually caught the eye of Bill Gates. When Simonyi moved to Microsoft, he brought those WYSIWYG principles with him. That's how we got Word. Around the same time, Steve Jobs visited PARC, saw what they were doing, and famously "borrowed" the concept for the Macintosh.
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The Mac was marketed almost entirely on the promise that "what you see is what you get." It was the desktop publishing revolution. For the first time, a regular person could design a newsletter without a massive printing press or a degree in typesetting.
Why True WYSIWYG is Kinda a Lie
Here is the thing: WYSIWYG is rarely 100% accurate.
In the world of web design, the acronym gets even more complicated. You might be using a tool like Wix, Squarespace, or Elementor. You drag a box to the left. You change a font to Helvetica. It looks great on your monitor.
Then you open it on an iPhone.
Suddenly, your "What You See" isn't what the user "Gets." This is the great struggle of modern web development. Because screens have different resolutions, aspect ratios, and color profiles, the "Getting" part is subjective.
Engineers often talk about "pixel perfection," but in a world of responsive design, pixel perfection is a myth. A true WYSIWYG editor for the web has to account for fluid layouts. It’s why some developers still hate them. They argue that these tools generate "bloated code" because the software is trying to translate a visual "drag-and-drop" action into something a browser can understand.
But for the average business owner? They don't care about the code. They care that they didn't have to learn HTML/CSS to launch their brand.
The Mental Shift in Creativity
WYSIWYG didn't just change the tech; it changed how we think.
When you remove the barrier of syntax, you unlock creativity. It's the difference between writing a song by hand on sheet music versus recording it into a digital audio workstation (DAW) where you can see the waveforms.
When you see the result in real-time, you iterate faster.
- You try a font.
- You hate it.
- You change it instantly.
That feedback loop is what makes modern productivity possible. Think about Canva. It is perhaps the most successful modern evolution of the WYSIWYG philosophy. It took complex graphic design principles and turned them into a visual playground. You aren't "coding" a layout; you're moving shapes.
The Rise of "Headless" and the Death of WYSIWYG?
Interestingly, we're seeing a bit of a pushback lately. In high-level enterprise tech, there’s a move toward "Headless CMS" systems like Contentful or Strapi.
In these systems, you don't see what you get. You just enter the data—the title, the body text, the image—and the system sends that data to a bunch of different places (an app, a website, a smartwatch).
Why would anyone go back to the "blind" way of doing things?
Efficiency. If you're a company like Netflix, you can't design a WYSIWYG page for every single device on earth. You need the data to be flexible. So, while WYSIWYG is king for small-scale creation, the "data-first" approach is winning in big tech.
It's a weird full-circle moment. We spent thirty years trying to make everything visual, and now we’re realizing that sometimes, the "visual" gets in the way of the "functional."
Common Misconceptions
People often confuse WYSIWYG with GUI (Graphical User Interface). They are related but not the same thing.
A GUI is just the fact that you have icons and a mouse. You can have a GUI that isn't WYSIWYG. For example, old versions of Dreamweaver had a "Code View" and a "Design View." The Code View was a GUI, but it definitely wasn't WYSIWYG.
Another misconception is that WYSIWYG editors are "for beginners."
That's a bit elitist. Professional architects use WYSIWYG CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software. High-end video editors use Premiere or DaVinci Resolve, which are fundamentally WYSIWYG tools for time-based media. If you move a clip two seconds to the right, it happens in the final export. That’s the core of the concept.
How to Choose the Right Tool
If you're looking for a tool that honors the WYSIWYG promise, you have to look at your end goal.
If you're writing a book, Scrivener or Microsoft Word are the standards, but even Notion has a beautiful WYSIWYG interface that makes organizing thoughts feel physical.
If you're building a website and you aren't a coder, stick to Webflow if you want high-end control, or Shopify if you’re just trying to sell stuff. These platforms have spent millions of dollars making sure that when you click "Publish," the result doesn't look like a broken 1990s Geocities page.
What to look for in a modern WYSIWYG editor:
- Responsive Preview: Can you toggle between mobile, tablet, and desktop views? If not, it's a bad tool.
- Clean Export: Does the software let you take your data out, or is it trapped in a proprietary format?
- Undo/Redo History: The soul of WYSIWYG is experimentation. If you can't "undo" a visual mistake easily, the tool is failing you.
- Direct Manipulation: You should be able to click the thing you want to change. If you have to go into a sidebar menu to change a color you can see on the screen, that's "Pseudo-WYSIWYG."
Moving Forward With Your Content
Understanding WYSIWYG is basically understanding the history of how we humanized machines. We moved from speaking the computer's language (code) to making the computer speak ours (visuals).
If you’re currently struggling with a clunky interface, remember that the goal of technology should always be to get out of your way. If a tool makes you feel like you're "guessing" what the final version will look like, it's time to find a better one.
Start by auditing your current workflow. Are you using a text editor that distracts you with tags? Try a Markdown editor with a live preview. Are you struggling to design marketing emails? Switch to a drag-and-drop builder like Mailchimp or Flodesk.
The less time you spend wondering "how will this look?" the more time you can spend making it look great. Stop fighting the interface and start using tools that actually show you the truth of your work in real-time.