Ephox Blog

CMSWire: EditLive! and New WYSIWYG Features for Non-Techies

CMSWire: EditLive! and New WYSIWYG Features for Non-Techies

Everyone loves to make their software easy for the non-technical user. Probably, because the non-technical user is usually the one making the decisions. If we make them think that they could “quickly” and “easily” do anything, they feel more empowered.

Some good coverage of our new 6.5 release. Making things easy for end users is precisely what we aim for, while still providing system administrators control via our flexible configuration file to make sure they don't get too carried away.

Press Release: Ephox Helps Non-technical Users Create Compelling Web Content With the Latest Release of EditLive!

SAN MATEO, California and Brisbane, Australia—Sept 10, 2008— Ephox, the leading provider of authoring software for web content, announced the latest release of its online rich text editor, EditLive!. The significant new feature in EditLive! 6.5 is the image editing tool that helps non-technical users quickly and easily create compelling web content.

EditLive!’s inline image editing feature crops, resizes and rotates images with the click of a button, in addition to creating special effects like drop shadow, reflection and rounded corners. Images are automatically re-sized and re-sampled to ensure web appropriate file sizes. There is no need to manipulate images in a separate window or use complicated image editing software – a real time-saver for web authors and a money-saver for IT departments.

“EditLive! 6.5 breaks new ground by enabling business users to create the sophisticated, rich and interactive web sites needed to be successful in today’s marketplace,” said Ephox Director of Products Damien Fitzpatrick. “Today’s business users demand seamless text and image editing performance and Ephox recognizes this.”

In addition to usability improvements, some of the new features in EditLive! 6.5 include the ability to customize the color palette for greater consistency, auto-correct for fixing common typing errors, and added dialects for a total of 28 user interface and international language libraries.

All of the features in the latest release are included in the EditLive! Enterprise Edition which adds advanced productivity, multimedia and collaboration tools like the new image editor, track changes, thesaurus, auto correct, and an advanced Java API library.

About Ephox

EditLive! is the leading cross-platform rich text editor. It is built into leading Web Content Management Systems including IBM, Vignette, Oracle, EMC|Documentum, Percussion, RedDot and Ektron. Since 1999, Ephox has developed enterprise-class authoring solutions that improve the success of business web sites. The company’s products are used by more than 300,000 web content authors in over 1,500 organizations across 35 countries. Customers include Red Bull, ANZ, Northrop Grumman, Swiss Re, Ahold, Kaiser-Permanente, Groupe Danone, and the Victorian Department of Justice. For more information, please visit www.ephox.com.

Press Contact:

Emily McAuliffe

emily.mcauliffe@ephoxdotcom

Ephox Corporation

Main: 650.292.9659 x721

www.ephox.com

Technorati Tags: ephox,editlive!,editlive,html editor

Quarterly Product Update Recording Available

Below is the recording of the July Quarterly Product Update for those who missed it. This was a recording of the North American time slot, hosted by Michael Fromin our Director of Products.

EditLive! is Now More Stylish

Last month the EditLive! team released version 6.4 after six months of diligent developing and testing. Version 6.4 is an important release that focused on improvements to the cascading style sheet (CSS) rendering and editing engine of EditLive!

Improvements to the 'CSS rendering and editing engine' may sound rather technical and you would be forgiven for wondering what, if anything, this has to do with an average author's life?

The answer is that the web content management world needs to lift the bar when it comes to style. Using the words 'style' and 'web content management' in the same sentence might seem odd but it is a brave new Web 2.0 world. The need for creating visually appealing content is much more important now than it has ever been. Boring, static sites just aren't enough.

Modern web sites make use of many web design tricks to deliver a compelling experience. Take a look through Apple's new iPhone site for inspiration for your next web page. Side bars, floating boxes, tabbed tables, fancy lists and rounded corners are everywhere.

EditLive! 6.4 represents the start of many improvements to enable good looking effects to be created quickly and easily. Improvements such as displaying and editing floating 'div' elements are an example of what might at first seem like arcane developer-only features but will ultimately enable authors to easily create floating sidebars and callout boxes.

In the coming months we will be releasing style sheets that make the most of our new found style. Stay tuned as we put some sizzle back in the web content management world!

-Andrew Roberts, Co-Founder and CEO

EditLive!'s Release with Oracle's Universal Content Management

See the positive remarks on Brian 'Bex' Huff 's Blog regarding EditLive!'s release with Oracle's Universal Content Management.   

Technorati Tags: editlive,oracle,content management,ephox

See us at Lotusphere, 20 - 24 January 2008

Ephox is exhibiting and presenting at Lotusphere, Orlando, which runs from 20 to 24 January. We invite you to visit us  at booth 712 (see diagram below) or book a 10 minute session with our web content experts.

Signup: http://ephoxatlotusphere.eventbrite.com/

Adrian Sutton will also be hosting Birds of a Feather session on mashups of  Web 2.0 capabilities with Web Content Management at 7:00 - 8:00 am on Thursday 24 January in the Swan Hotel, Peacock 1.

Technorati tags: lotusphere2008, wcm, web content management, ephox, html editor, editLive!, ibm, lotus, software, event

 

See also:

Conference link

Session directory

Conference agenda

See us at Gilbane Boston, Nov 27 - 29

Ephox is exhibiting and presenting at Gilbane Boston, which runs from 27 to 29 November at the Westin Copley Place. We invite you to visit our booth (RR) or book a 15 minute session with our web content experts.

Andrew Roberts, our CEO will be presenting at a session on Best-of-Breed Building Blocks for Constructing Ideal User Experiences at 3:30 pm Thursday November 29.

Speakers:
Dan Carmel, CEO, SpringCM
Phil Costa, Director of Product Management, Adobe
Andrew Roberts, CEO, Ephox
Bill Roth, Vice President, Tools, BEA

See also:
Conference agenda

 

CMPros on November 26

Rob Dawson will deliver a presentation at the CM Pros event on Monday 26 November at the same venue.

 

Technorati tags: gilbane, gilbaneboston, event, ephox, editLive!, user adoption, collaboration, web content management, cmpros, cms, wcm

See us at WebSphere Orlando, Oct 8 - 10

Ephox is exhibiting and presenting at the IBM Websphere Portal Technical Conference, Orlando, which runs from 8 to 10 October. We invite you to visit our booth (110) or book a 15 minute session with our web content experts.

Antony Awaida will be delivering a presentation on increasing collaboration and end user adoption of Portal with Ephox EditLive!. The session, A15, will be delivered in Bonair 1 from 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM on Tuesday 9 October.

See also:

Conference link

Session directory

Conference agenda

 

Technorati tags: event, IBM, websphere portal, portal, ephox, editLive!, user adoption, collaboration, web content management

Ephox debuts AJAX-based editing mode

Ephox has come up with another market first with "Express Edit". Express Edit is a lightweight AJAX editing mode for quick text editing that we have added to EditLive!. This follows our other firsts including cross browser and cross platform support, inline spell checking, accessibility checking and track changes. 

Express Edit is available in beta as a part of the Productivity Pack with EditLive! version 6.3. With the release of version 6.3 content authors now have the best of both worlds: the power of Java that users have come to love in EditLive! and the simplicity of AJAX with the new Express Edit mode. The new Express Edit mode is a fully supported integration of the leading open source DHTML editor FCKEditor.

EditLive! has always led the pack in supporting the broadest range of operating environments. Thanks to its architecture EditLive has delivered a robust and full featured authoring interface on all the major browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera) and operating systems (Mac, Windows, Linux, Unix) as early as 2001 (years before other editors).   

Express Edit is ideal for quickly editing small amounts of basic text. For richer editing capabilities such as tables, spell checking and image management the native features of EditLive! are available at the click of a button. Both modes continue to output standards compliant XHTML. 

Some key benefits of Express Edit: 

• Deploy to the widest possible range of users including those that don’t have a JRE installed on the desktop. 
• Fast switching between editing modes thanks to background downloading and initialization. 
• Streamlined user interface for basic "quick and dirty" edits. 
• System administrators no longer need to maintain separate AJAX editor integrations. EditLive! is now two editors in one - so you only have to maintain the editor integration with a single code base. 
• Express Edit is fully supported by Ephox.

EditLive! 6.3 can be downloaded from the Early Access area of our web site. Please contact us if you have any questions or feedback.

 

UPDATE: Also see Andy Herron, lead engineer on Express Edit, discuss the integration of Express Edit with EditLive!

Technorati tags: editLive!, javascript, ajax, express edit, ephox, html editor, web content management

How does Track Changes fit a WCM system workflow?

Deane Barker of gadgetopia got me thinking with his post about how content makes it from an idea to an html document on a website:

"Someone thinks up some content, they bring it up in a meeting, people talk about it, they discuss it with other people, they may write something in Word and send it around, etc. After all of this, they then crack open the CMS, enter the content, perhaps leave it in draft to be reviewed, etc."

WCM system vendors pay a lot of attention to version control, publishing approvals and content creation workflows. The intended result is high quality content and an audit trail. The unfortunate trade-off is an interface that involves many dialogs, keystrokes and sometimes confusing steps for content authors to get their job done. Collaboration requires a simple interface with the minimum of steps. This requirement does not easily fit with CMS workflows and version control. I call this the collaboration versus control conflict. Wiki's are great for collaboration, WCM systems are great for fine grained control over content creation and delivery.

Collaboration options in a WCM environment are limited to document version comparison.  Authors can see the differences between versions and may select one version in its entirety.

Alternatively, as in Deane's earlier description, authors can collaborate on a document outside the WCM and copy a draft into the WCM.  Some of the ways to do this include:

1. Live screensharing, around a desk or via the internet - great for live interaction, but costly and difficult to achieve, especially for globally spread teams; no version control; changes accepted/rejected during screensharing. 
2. Zoho, Google Docs and similar web based document editors - great for live and asynchronous interaction with automatic version control and version comparison; not so great for sensitive documents that belong behind the firewall; no ability to accept/reject discrete changes within a document. 
3. MS Word + email, phone calls or face to face meetings - Track Changes gives the ability to accept/reject discrete changes to the document, ok for asynchronous interaction; no version control.

Track Changes delivers the ability to immediately see what changes have been made to a document and to accept or reject each change individually. This is the best way to collaborate on a document and replicates the way people have always collaborated on documents using pen and paper.

But how does Track Changes affect your WCM system workflow, in particular version control and approvals? To answer this we spoke to the experts: our customers. In summary we found two distinct approaches, both of which can fit into a traditional WCM workflow:

1. Keep the Track Changes markup in the document through the approval workflow. Certain people have authority to accept/reject changes while others can only make content changes. Before the document reaches the final workflow step all changes have been accepted/rejected; OR 
2. Have all change markup accepted/rejected before entering the workflow. Collaboration only occurs on the draft version, once the final changes have been accepted/rejected the document goes to the next step in the WCM workflow.

WCM version control can still function as usual with Track Changes. A new version of the document can still be created every time there is a change (including an accept/reject action) because the document is already inside the WCM.

In summary, adding Track Changes to a WCM system gives you the best of both worlds: WCM version control and workflow with the best document collaboration tool all within a single application.

 

Technorati tags: track changes, workflow, cms, wcm, html editor, web content