RE: CMS Digest, Vol 4, Issue 13

........Mick - also worthy of note (as you seem to be UK based) is the fact that if you wish to sell into the central government - you will find that a lot of them conform to either so-called GSI or XGSI standards - both of which prohibit the use of ActiveX components...when we were pitching for the Lord Chancellors Dept bid this was one of the factors that removed several competitors from the field - as they were either using their own ActiveX components - or relying on a third party tools such as text editors that used ActiveX components....so best to make sure that the intended customer is not bound by the above standards.......at least in the UK...not sure about the US - is there a similar standard over there ?
Regards
Steve

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Mick Sear [mailto:[email protected]] 
	Sent: 21 May 2004 11:25 
	To: [email protected] 
	Subject: [CMS] 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 
	_______________________________________________ 
	CMS mailing list 
	[email protected] 
	Subscription controls: 
	http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms 
	Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [CMS-Forum], [CMS-Meta], [CMS-PR], [CMS-Develop] 
	http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html