Products · Pattern or everyday thing
WYSIWYG editors
Raised as a usability problem by 52 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2012–2026), in 46 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Cannot close bold style without copying and pasting textUnreviewed
20122026- Selecting text jumps to whole document; bold button bolds the wrong paragraph2026-03-13
- Deleting the first character of a bold word resets the style unexpectedly2025-06-07
- Can't close bold style without copying and pasting text, so it's error prone2015-04-10
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- WYSIWYG editors misbehave on selection and cut-and-paste, seeming possessed2026-10-26
- Selecting text jumps to whole document; bold button bolds the wrong paragraph2026-03-13
- Editor feature loses all the text the user typed2025-08-06
- Deleting the first character of a bold word resets the style unexpectedly2025-06-07
- Spending much more time fighting UI bugs and inconsistencies in WYSIWYG editors2025-05-06
- GUI simplifications become hindrances for experienced users as their skill grows2024-11-14
- GUI word processors are inefficient for frequent users compared to text-based markup2024-11-14
- Existing WYSIWYG builders have too much friction and their output is hard to edit by hand2024-09-03
- Selecting text inside an h1 selects the wrong range unpredictably2024-08-28
- Can't add content before or after a code block; new code blocks don't autofocus; slash menu ignores typing2024-08-16
- Backspace can delete a whole block and cursor position around formatting is unpredictable2024-08-15
- Direct-manipulation document editing leads to fragile layouts that break when content or fonts change2024-08-14
- Silently replaces typed characters, so users don't notice the change2023-11-03
- Can't find a WYSIWYG LaTeX editor with a good equation-editing experience2023-07-19
- Hides Markdown syntax so users can't see or edit the raw markup like ###2023-06-23
- WYSIWYG editors hide document structure, so users struggle and produce inconsistent, hard-to-change documents2023-06-23
- Users must think about markup syntax when editing formatted text2023-06-23
- Inserts unwanted markup when pasting, hard to remove unprintable characters2023-02-26
- WYSIWYG equation editors are very annoying to work with2022-11-05
- Drag-and-drop responsive container editors are impossible and tedious for the commenter to use2022-10-29
- Hidden formatting and unclear where to click, making edits hard to predict2022-05-24
- Taking hands off keyboard to use mouse formatting controls breaks typing flow and is slow2022-02-22
- WYSIWYG rendering makes normal text editing awkward and unreliable2021-11-27
- Generated code is hard to work with once a feature is missing2021-07-12
- Pasting a URL over selected text to make a link is confusing and overloads the user2021-05-22
- Formatting text in WYSIWYG editors is frustrating compared with older reveal-codes tools2020-09-09
- Pasting markdown or HTML always fails and nested lists break2020-08-09
- Blue progress bar across the top distracts while typing2019-12-05
- Hides underlying structure, making formatting hard to understand and control2019-11-21
- Cannot add bold or color formatting to posts or make clean HTML documents easily2019-04-21
- Visible lag between keypresses and characters appearing makes them impossible to use2017-07-19
- Hard to diff or merge, complex refactorings impossible, and the editor fights the user2017-02-10
- Editing raw files on mobile is next to impossible with escaped markdown2016-12-12
- Editors produce bloated, illogical SVG output that is hard to hand-edit2016-09-27
- Editors are slow and cumbersome, behave differently across libraries, and render inconsistently with the final page2016-08-05
- WYSIWYG math input falls flat because users can't remember all the syntax2016-07-10
- Each editor handles Enter, Backspace and Tab differently, so behaviour is unpredictable2015-10-19
- Pressing delete after return leaves stray paragraph or split elements instead of restoring the prior state2015-08-24
- Editing requires difficult coordination, like a game of precise pointing2015-08-15
- WYSIWYG editors break down when people try to design article layouts2015-04-10
- Can't close bold style without copying and pasting text, so it's error prone2015-04-10
- Content looks fine in the editor but breaks on the live website2015-04-10
- WYSIWYG editors mangle markup, forcing users to edit raw code anyway2015-01-03
- Regular WYSIWYG editors give too much freedom, causing confusion and mistakes, and tables are hard to edit2014-12-08
- WYSIWYG tools get in the way of advanced users and are hard to use2014-05-27
- Switching between multiple WYSIWYG applications is confusing2014-05-27
- Words jump around the page while the user types them2014-04-28
- Saved content picks up junk formatting from Word and web pages, breaking front-end layout2014-03-20
- On-screen underlines, colours and annotations don't appear when printed, so what you see isn't what you get2013-11-21
- Can't tell where applied formatting came from, like themes, toolbar buttons, or templates2013-11-21