Nuno Lopes attempted to start a discussion on the future of WYSIWYG editing for CMSs, and I am responding. Another poster (name lost, sorry), suggested that there are now so many Through-The-Web (TTW) solutions now available, that they had reached critical mass and would become standard (or words to that effect).
My view is that Word will begin to displace so-called 'WYSIWYG' TTW editors next year. Even without waiting for Word 11 (see [2] and [3] below), MS-CMS 2002 supports editing in Word XP via an Authoring Connector ([1]), and saving as XML. If you don't want to pay $42K for MS-CMS, solutions like Metaverses' Word to XML converter ([4]) can offer the same function without buying a CMS. For me, Word has some major advantages over TTW approaches: - Allows offline editing. You can edit at leisure, and update when you have a connection. - No format restrictions. You can mix text, tables and images any way you want without being limited by the interface. - Document integration. Most web content starts life in a Word document, so integrating Word makes sense. TTW interfaces assume that the content starts out on the web only, which is seldom the case. - Built-in structure. Don't laugh, but Word has built-in support for headings, lists, tables, paragraphs, etc. - Ease of editing. It is much easier and faster to edit in Word, with all its built-in shortcuts, than a TTW form, no matter how 'Word-like' they claim to be. I should declare an interest, in that we recommend our clients to use Word as their main website editing tool, and have developed stand-alone and integrated solutions to enable them to do so. Until now, I have felt we were ploughing a lone furrow, but it is great to see this approach validated by large industry players like Microsoft, and adopted by others like Metaverse too. References: 1. Publish Web Updates from Within Word http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0,3048,a=33965,00.asp 2. Microsoft Office embraces XML (Eric van der Vlist) http://www.xmlhack.com/read.php?item=1839 3. XML for the rest of us (Jon Udell) http://www.infoworld.com/articles/pl/xml/02/11/18/021118plmsxml.xml 4. Metaverse XForm Web Service http://www.metaverse.cc/main.asp?nav=WEBSERVICES&group=XFORMWS&page=XForm%20Web%20Service At 12:58 10/12/2002, Nuno Lopes wrote:
I'm just posting this to let you know that soon part of our problems regarding content editing may be solved, at least in a market of potentially millions of user's irrespective of technical expertise and job prescription. What's New for "Office 11" Developers? http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnoffta lk/html/office12092002.asp "Office 11" for Developers http://www.microsoft.com/office/developer/preview/ It seams that Microsoft is on the right track on this one, but I'm not holding my breath still.
-- Eoin Campbell, Technical Director, XML Workshop Ltd, 10 Greenmount Industrial Estate, Harolds Cross, Dublin 12, IRELAND. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +353 1 4547811; Fax: +353 1 4731626 Web: http://www.xmlw.ie/ -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
