It is hard to believe that in 2012 we still we have problems of mixing html and code. Those problems are supposed to have been solved since many years, but unfortunately they are still around.
In an ideal world, a web designer is also able to code. In a world even better, a web designer is also able to write jsp templates and knows fatwire tags.
In the real world, web designers, while often knowledgeable of javascript, have usually no clue of JSP nor of specific Fatwire coding, so they produce only a mockup made of client-side HTML, CSS and Javascript. They leave to "server side" developers the task of using that HTML/CSS/Javascript to create a content manageable website.
The problem with Fatwire/WCS is that to render the mockup code, you have to add Fatwire coding to it. So , because WCS is still a JSP based system, you have to add logic to extract the content model and put it in place in the HTML mockup. That would be fine if... it were to be done only once.
But in reality, HTML code undergoes a number of iterations. Web designer will update the mockup and return it to server side developers. Those developers will have to use the new HTML to update their templates code, that is now an heavily modified version, with added a lot logic in Java and JSP tags.
This is a big problem, because it is not easy. The usual process is figuring out what changed in the mockup from the latest version used to build templates, then go through the code to apply those modifications. Hoping that nothing will break.
When the HTML is heavily modified, starting from scratch is not unusual. In short, the process of updating templates when the HTML mockup changes is a real pain in the ass.
The principle of separating presentation code (HTML) from logic is almost as old as the web itself. There are millions of solutions arounds for this, yet those solutions did not yet reach WCS in his core. We strongly need to implement for real this separations.
Furthermore, since HTML mockups are going to change ofter, we should be able to leave the mockup in his original form, in order to be easily updatable. Rendering logic should be applicable directly to HTML in his original form, without modifications.
