RE: CMS Digest, Vol 4, Issue 13

I've tried both Ektron's eWebEditPro and KTML.  I'm working on KTML at the
moment because cross-browser & platform is more important to me, but
Ektron's product is very good (ActiveX).  It's customisable and quite easy
to integrate, but you'll have problems enforcing accessibility standards
with any of the editors I've come across.  I suspect you'll have your work
cut out for you, replacing those parts that don't conform to WAI standards
(forms and tables, notably).  However, it's not impossible.  You can
easily add buttons that open your own popups, generate the correct HTML
string to paste into the editor, and then that code will (mostly) persist
as you continue to edit it.  Taking your points:


a) works in IE6/PC (though other browsers are bonus)
   on the front end, .net server model on the back
   end.
- eWebEditPro is IE 4.something upwards.  Windows only.


b) allows for admin-defined tags/CSS classes
- Not bad support for this in eWebEditPro

c) allows admin's to block certain styling
   (namely in-line styles and presentational markup)
- Suggest that you do this server-side.  i.e. You can feed your own CSS to
eWebEditPro, which will then expose the CSS classes for use in editing the
snippet.  You'll have to take out classes and inline styles after the
content is submitted, using something like regular expressions.

d) ability to clean pasted text from Word/Other
   HTML pages. Ideally, this could be a default/
   automated behavior.
- It's not bad at this, but you'd do well to test this out fairly carefully.

e) ability to create a link within the text that
   links to a file on the server that can be browsed
   to. (ie, select text >> click MAKE LINK >> select
   BROWSE >> browse to PDF on SERVER >> Click INSERT
   LINK to make link)
- I replaced the link and image browsers with my own popups, and I
generate correct XHMTL code.  Certain attributes need to be converted
server-side afterwards if you want XHTML 1.1, such as 'border' attributes.
 I think 'align' attributes need to be converted as well.

f) Support for accessibility tags via the interface
   (alt tags in images, title attributes in objects,
   TH tags, ACCRONYM tags, etc.)
- You could add buttons to open popups where the user supplies the title
attribute, then you can paste the correct code into the editor.  It's not
difficult.

At the end of the day, most editors I've come across will produce OK XHTML
1.0, but really struggle with XHTML 1.1.  You need to enforce compliance
very carefully server-side.  You'll have trouble with forms (forcing
framesets, labels, tabindexes, etc.) and tables (column header scope, row
header scope, title, summary etc.) for accessibility compliance.  If you
decide to go with eWebEditPro, I might be able to help you out.

Regards,
Mick

--------------------
Mick Sear
eCreate Web Services
T: 0845  241 2406
M: 07743 852 328
F: 08700 941 084
W: www.ecreate.co.uk