You are partly right. Windows shops will probably not install Mozilla. But they already have a fine solution with the IE MS DHTML control. Ektron's over 800 CMS customers (from Vignette down) are managing fine when they are on Windows.
We are talking here about the 10% of users on Mac and Linux. And they now have three choices - Java applets, Macromedia Flash, and Mozilla.
The best Java solution has long been RealObjects edit-onŽ Pro <http://www.realobjects.de/> . (The one-site, unlimited users license is $6000.) There is an open-source Java WYSIWYG widget at Hexidec <http://www.hexidec.com/ekit.php>, but it's not yet ready for prime time. Open-source Java developers out there should pitch in to help them.
Ektron has just released a Flash-based editor, eWebWP <http://www.ektron.com/ewebwp.cfm>. It has a $99 license for unlimited users. A CMS system would need one license for each of its clients.
The newest option is the Mozilla XUL application. You may not care for Mozilla, but a lot of open-source people do, and it is their last great hope for Macs and Linux systems.
Even more important, Netscape in due course will roll it into the latest Netscape, which will be acceptable to many of your Windows shops.
We at skyBuilders <http://www.skybuilders.com>have drafted the first full-featured HTML WYSIWYG editor for Mozilla. It's not perfect, but it's open source, and we charge no license fees. This is not our main business. We just needed it (like almost everyone on this list) to strengthen our small enterprise information system, called timeLines <http://www.skybuilders.com/thesky>.
We don't call timeLines a CMS because we don't yet have templates and content elements to separate presentation from content, but we do have some neat web publishing tools integrated with many other tools. (We wrote the first-to-market desktop publishing system, MacPublisher, in 1984.) We hope to add an XML WYSIWYG editor (either bitflux or Xopus) when we add templates and content elements into our data model.
So we put up the open-source code for what we call *skyWriter for Mozilla*, and a second *skyWriter for IE* (a pretty full-featured version of the MS DEC editing compnent). You can demo both of these online, and you can download the code for both WYSIWYG editors today. Go to http://wysiwyg.skybuilders.com and check it out.
Those of you building your own CMS should find it a piece of cake to integrate these tools into your UI front ends. And you will make that extra 10% of CMS users very happy. If others improve the open-source code, we can meet objections like round tripping your good HTML without losing anything.
Matt Liotta wrote:
I still don't really see a good solution. A Mozilla-based editor
requires Mozilla to be installed on the client's OS, which is a no go at
many organizations. And all the Flash editors are based on the same text
control that supports a limited amount of HTML and tends to strip out
the HTML it doesn't support.
Matt Liotta
President & CEO
Montara Software, Inc.
http://www.montarasoftware.com/
888-408-0900 x901
-----Original Message-----them
From: Bob Doyle [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 11:49 AM
To: Matt Liotta
Subject: Cross-platform WYSIWYG editors
Matt,
There are two new OS-independent cross-platform editing solutions,
announced in just the past month.
One is Flash-based ($99 license from Ektron) and the other is
Mozilla-based (free open source).
The whole problem is reviewed, with demonstrations, at
http://wysiwyg.skybuilders.com
If you have criticisms or comments, please send them to me and post
to the cms-list.
Thanks.
--
Bob Doyle
http://www.skyBuilders.com
77 Huron Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-876-5678
--
Bob Doyle
http://www.skyBuilders.com
77 Huron Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-876-5678
--
http://cms-list.org/
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