[Brad]

Originally Posted by filburt1

Perhaps, but Word et all are used for making full-blown documents and amateur desktop publishing. A forum is generally used for conversations where formatting is not used nearly as often.

What about bbcode then? Over the years I've seen more and more complicated bbcode included in bbs software. Most of it is done with a html-like system of mark-up using tags for bold, underline etc.

A newbie is not used to the concept of bbcode, thus they go through a bit of a 'breaking in' peroid where they get used to bbcode.

Compare that to coding html for the web, most of the advanced guys hard-code everything and are used to looking at code. Most people that just want a webpage turn to a WYSIWYG program to build the html for them, the code doesn't matter to them, as long as the end result looks the way they want it to.

Thats what we are seeing with forums now and the WYSIWYG editor. A newbie can use the mouse to select a mark-up option until he finds the one he wants, he then gets to see the results in real time as he types the message. A novice is much more familar with this, then they are at learning mark-up and typing it within the message.