An Ode to the Return of WYSIWYG

When I was around 10 in the late 90s, I vividly remember one specific sleepover. We had sat down at my friend’s computer and he turned to me and said, “Want to see something cool?” With a couple of clicks, we were looking at the source code for a website. He then saved the page to his computer, made some edits, and suddenly the background of the website was a blinding pink.

This moment burned into my mind because it was the first time I realized that the world around me wasn’t static; that anyone could change it.

Around that time, tools like FrontPage and Macromedia Flash gave rise to a really important concept: What You See Is What You Get. WYSIWYG. These editors contributed to an explosion in accessible creativity on the internet and fostered an era of optimism about the human creative spirit at the intersection of technology and the arts.

And like a trend, I feel this might be happening again right now because of tools like Claude Code.

A New Era of WYSIWYG

It’s WYSIWYG all over again, but this time it’s what you say is what you get. Anyone can now describe a website to their computer, and it materializes. No code written. Just words.

This future is a past I’ve been waiting for, bringing back something we collectively gave away in the 2010s when the algorithmic feed psycho-optimized its way into our lives: being weird.

The First WYSIWYG Era

The 90s and 2000s web was undeniably weird. We had personal homepages on GeoCities, shrines to obscure bands, collections of animated flame GIFs, and under construction signs galore, because, of course, your site was always under construction. Hit counters and guestbooks decorated our creations, while tiled backgrounds made our eyes hurt.

The beauty of this chaotic web was that it wasn’t only coders building all of it. Flash allowed creators to create animations and interactive experiences without writing a single line of ActionScript. FrontPage and Dreamweaver provided visual editors that enabled users to just… make things.

You didn’t need to understand HTML. You didn’t need to know what a DOM was. You just needed an idea and the right tool to express it. The barrier to entry was low—really low. My first website was terrible, but it was mine. I built it over many months using a WYSIWYG editor I barely understood.

The Participatory Web

Everyone was experimenting. The “view source” option was a gateway to learning. You’d find a cool effect on someone’s site, peek at their HTML, copy it, modify it, break it, fix it, and make it yours. The web was participatory; it was a space where people could create something uniquely theirs.

Newgrounds was brimming with Flash games and animations made by teenagers. Homestar Runner became a cultural phenomenon, and people constructed shrines for their favorite TV shows, guides for their hobbies, and photo galleries of their cats.

MySpace: The Last Hurrah

MySpace might have been the peak of this creative energy. While you had a profile on a social platform, you could customize it using CSS. Friends could add music that autoplayed upon visiting, creating a unique experience for everyone. Your Top 8 became a vibrant expression of social dynamics.

Each MySpace page was a canvas showcasing individuality. The colors, the music, the layout—all told a story. For a brief moment, we had social platforms and personal expression coexisting harmoniously.

The End of WYSIWYG

Then, Facebook came along. Clean. Uniform. Blue.

Everyone’s profile looked the same: a blue and white layout with a profile picture in a specific corner and posts in a specific format. Customization evaporated into a sea of sameness. There was no personality in design beyond what you wrote and the photos you chose.

With this shift, Facebook rapidly optimized engagement. The world’s most powerful psychological experimentation platform was born, maximizing user retention. For the last 15 to 20 years, we’ve been collectively optimized for maximum time spent on-site.

Creativity on the Decline

As these platforms took over, real web development became exponentially more challenging. React, TypeScript, build tools, deployment pipelines, CI/CD, webpack configurations, Node modules—everything became complex. The barrier to entry for creating personal websites rose sharply while platforms made consuming content easier.

That 15-year-old who made a Flash game in 2004 would find building a personal site daunting by 2020, needing to learn modern JavaScript, component architecture, and hosting setups, or simply opt for Instagram instead.

The Weird Internet Returns

But something is changing now. AI tools are reintroducing WYSIWYG in a new, familiar manner. Anyone can open Claude Code and say, “I want to make a website for my photography portfolio. Here’s the photos.” And just like that, it gets built.

“Put the photos in a grid.” “Make it mobile-friendly.” The resulting code might not be perfect, but that’s not the point. What matters is that anyone can do this now.

Similar to the WYSIWYG era of FrontPage and Flash, the focus is shifting from “how do I build this?” to “what do I want to make?” This shift unlocks potential for diverse individuals to create various things.

And I’m extremely excited to see what we will all create in this new, reimagined landscape of digital creativity!