Macromedia unveils Web content editor

SAN FRANCISCO - Macromedia is expected to roll out a Web publishing tool next month that makes it easier for developers to offload the refreshing and editing of Web pages to nontechnical professionals across a corporation.

Called Macromedia Contribute, the new software package includes administrative controls that Web site developers can use to delegate authority to make changes to specific types of Web content. Authorized end users get a desktop application that lets them update and publish content on the Web pages via an interface that looks like a Web browser.

"Our end goal is to make Web sites more efficient to update," says Erik Larson, senior product manager for Contribute. "We're trying to make Web content live and fresh, more valuable and more up-to-date."

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SAN FRANCISCO - Macromedia is expected to roll out a Web publishing tool next month that makes it easier for developers to offload the refreshing and editing of Web pages to nontechnical professionals across a corporation.

Called Macromedia Contribute, the new software package includes administrative controls that Web site developers can use to delegate authority to make changes to specific types of Web content. Authorized end users get a desktop application that lets them update and publish content on the Web pages via an interface that looks like a Web browser.

"Our end goal is to make Web sites more efficient to update," says Erik Larson, senior product manager for Contribute. "We're trying to make Web content live and fresh, more valuable and more up-to-date."

For U.S. government Web sites, Contribute lets Web developers enforce accessibility requirements of the federal Section 508 rules through its administrative console. These rules require Web site developers to provide alternate text for images and tables so screen readers can explain the content to visually impaired end users.

With Contribute, Macromedia is attempting to attract a new audience - general business users - to its customer base of professional Web designers and developers. Currently, Macromedia has 2.5 million customers who spend more than 20 hours per week building Web pages. Macromedia's research finds that its customers spend between 15% and 55% of their time making simple Web content changes that can be offloaded with Contribute.

That's the experience of Mary Norbury-Glaser, a LAN administrator and Web designer for the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. Norbury-Glaser says she spends about 25% of her time making simple edits to the center's Web site. The site has more than 500 pages of content for the center's patients and their families, and it gets more than 3,000 hits per month.

"My time is split between software and hardware support and managing the Web site," Norbury-Glaser says. "Every time somebody has to change one page, one word or one sentence, I have to be involved."

Norbury-Glaser has tested Contribute since August and found it self-explanatory.

"This product will really facilitate [the clinical staff's] ability to edit Web pages without needing too much administrative help from me," she says. "As the administrator, I can prevent users from mucking with too much of the content but they can edit pages or parts of pages as needed."

A Dreamweaver user, Norbury-Glaser plans to purchase a half-dozen copies of Contribute this fall and start testing the product among the center's department heads. She didn't consider a full-fledged content management product because "it's too expensive and we didn't want to spend that much time training people," she says.

With introductory pricing of $100, Contribute is a low-cost alternative to Web content management tools such as those from Vignette or Interwoven, which offer significantly more features including workflow and personalization but at much higher prices.