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Re: Evaluation of HTML editors/generators

for

From: Jill Lenz
Date: Nov 15, 2002 11:11AM

Thanks for your thoughts. You are right that defining the workflow will take
some time. It was nice to hear from someone who has been through this before.

Joel Ward wrote:

> > My college is considering a switch from Dreamweaver, which is supported
> > campus wide, to a form based program written in Cold Fusion by some
> > folks at MSU...
>
> Hi Jill,
>
> I think it could be a more accessible site by using the home-grown "content
> management system" instead of an editor like Dreamweaver or FrontPage. If
> they write the backend program well, it can check for accessibility issues
> and ensure that the rules are applied correctly. And it allows
> non-technical users to more easily add and edit content. Plus, it might be
> easier for all users to add content as they no longer need a proprietary
> application to install on their local systems.
>
> However, you are right to be concerned about a non-supported and
> non-standardized product. Your questions are good. There is a lot that
> needs to go on in the backend. Alternately, they could buy an off-the-shelf
> content management system, which would then be supported and standardized.
> There are some free or low cost solutions out there.
>
> In any case, they'd need to make sure that the system validates code like
> you mentioned (question is, to what standard), and maybe have a workflow
> system that builds-in a manual accessibility check, as some issues cannot be
> confirmed by a computer. Workflow in general may require a lot of work to
> define properly.
>
> Also, they may need to disable the ability for end-users to insert HTML, to
> prevent rogue code from infiltrating the site. That could cause problems,
> as formatting needs to be added in some way (e.g. by a rich-text web form,
> like Ektron eWebEditPro; simple proprietary tags; DHTML, etc.).
>
> The end-users would need to be trained on the system and how to properly
> enable accessibility, and good contextual help or some sort of documentation
> could supplement that training.
>
> Just some thoughts...you probably thought of most of this already.
>
> We moved one of our client's site from 1) FrontPage to a 2) database-driven
> ASP system to 3) Microsoft Content Management Server over the past two
> years, and I feel that it has helped make the site more consistent, the code
> cleaner, and accessibility in better shape.
>
> Joel
>
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--
Jill Lenz
CVMBS Dean's Office
Instructional Technology
Anatomy/Zoology W3
Colorado State University
970-491-6585
<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/intech/lab/



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