Adobe - Minutes from the Meeting
From Uweb
Justin Flynn
- Contribute 4
- Please fill out surveys
- Email will come to you at the end of the week for overall impressions
Tom Dent, Adobe - Texas Representative
- out of Ft. worth, TX
- sales
- trial versions of Contribute/Acrobat Professional available
- working on student licensing program, CUT PRICES IN HALF, early May
- Creative Suite, Web bundle, Acrobat, Acrobat 3-D
COST: Minimal, quotes for upgrade protection
- $50/license
- $100/license
- Studio 8, through March 15 $157/license (w/protection)
- Contract ends in Dec of this year, we're restarting the 2 year contract again
- Upgrade protection (2/years at a time), only pay 1/3 cost for next two years
Robert McDaniels - Systems Engineer
- top, out of the country / all US
- intranet vs. internet
- show off Dreamweaver and how it helps publishing
.pdf / flash
- reaches out to so many devices
- create common platforms, that are reliable and easy to work on multiple devices, formats of machines
- Yahoo maps uses flash, Jaguar GIS systems
- action-script 3 model used for Mozilla
Web Publishing & Adobe
- 10 or more people (most raised hands)
- few designers w/ knowledge -> many people who are experts on the information or "content" that needs to be communicated to the masses through website
Webmaster Bottleneck VS Workflow
- to be expeditious, everyone becomes an "author"
- give access to everyone - information becomes disjointed
1. whatever they have, they throw out on the internet
- differing formats, styles, programs, etc
2. End-user has accessibility, cross-browser compatibility, search engine optimization issues
3. Doesn't really decrease the bottleneck, because all PROBLEMS still come back to the same person (training for end-user is increased because no common tools used)
Content Management System vs. Publishing Solution
Traditional Approach:
- Content management tries to CONTROL the access or activities
- Some in JAVA, ASP, etc
- May or may not run on the operating system currently using
- Databases that have to support CENTRALLY
- All platforms, servers usually have to work together
- Taking the contributors away from common software and RETRAINING them to use that system
- Most static content, text chunks and bits arranged nicely, but not very dynamic
Adobe Approach:
- Same engine for Dreamweaver is basis of Contribute.
- Runs on window, runs on MAC
- Runs connected or offline
- Sits on desktop
- Authors HTML
- Basis is templates with "editable regions" that allow users to edit or not edit various parts of the website template
- Contributors don't have to learn much more than their familiar applications (Word, Excel, Acrobat, etc)
- Also adds level of "reviewers" and "editors" for workflow and quality control
- WINDOWS, UNIX, SOLARIS, ETC.
- Installs in about 2.5 minutes, on desktop
- Tie to LDAP, Active Directory
- CSS, Accessibilty Guides
- ColdFusion, ASP, JSP, PHP
About Contribute
- Simplified user interface for the less technical people
- Boils down to using Word and browser
- Intergration with Microsoft Word (drag and drop content)
- Consistent well-formed HTML, without knowledge
Publishing Services
- Easy to deploy
- Simple to manage
- Administer sites right within the authoring tool
- Leverage what you ALREADY HAVE (don't have to change what you are currently using)
- Scalable - add people and drop people as time goes on
Demo / Examples of Templates
- Check in & Check out
- Design Notes?
- Click on Enable to be compatible with Contribute
- Intergrates w/ Blogs, etc
NOTE: do not have to have Dreamweaver in order to use Contribute
Why Templates?
- Globally updatable
- Editable regions - This means you don't have to "design" or program to contribute information
- Library items? (header/footer)
- Repeating Region?
- Optional Regions - allows you to include OR not certain sections written with conditional statements
- notifies you of which pages are affected by any changes you make
Contributor view
- How Do I? Section for training new users / Tutorials available as well
- Task list / What do I need to do?
- Standard "Word" processing OR HTML-style processing (can be setup individually for each user)
- Setup "ROLES" that define what activities they can and cannot do
- Create access levels for folders, files, etc
Editing: Damage Control
- Only upload/edit stuff on my drives or allow them to add stuff from their drives
- set rollbacks
- allow third-party objects
- force alt tags for all images (accessibility requirements)
- only allow the CSS set in a master file
- permissions/settings are all set through simple forms - easy to administer, no programming required
User Keys
- Sends simple email to the through a "connection key"
- Set them a password, set a role, DONE!
- When they click - it brings them to their homepage, browse through (WISYWIG)
- Click on editable regions, make changes
- Spell-check (just like Word)
Images
- Fireworks is running in the background, users can actually crop, resize, brighten images within Contribute before sending for approval or publishing
- Image options (which/where they can get images) are set by administrator
Q&A
?: Can you set for individual pages
- You can set permissions by folders
?: How does Word work with Contribute
- You can Open straight through WORD - then there are options to publish straight from Word -> server
- copy and paste straight from WORD into the page (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, etc)
- minimal training, but allows room for the user to make some weird pages
?: Tables, is there a way to lock-down users from over-using tables
- you can configure people from not using tables in a certain area, but you can't stop them from making errors if they are determined to make ugly pages
- you can, however not APPROVE those pages
- no accessible table dialogue on the Contribute side
?: Images, can you restrict users from improperly resizing (stretching) images
- look into it
?: what major universities are using your product
- adobe.com/education
?: How does this scale / Quality Control across large decentralized university
- does the responsibility to publish fall on the administrator or the individual
- allows for administrator to control
?: Cross-browser friendly
- Yes, all browsers are available for this desktop product
?: Does Adobe use this for their site
- They use the product, but not actually across the whole company (decentralized)
?: Can you make custom scripts within the page
- Can they make changes in PHP, ASP, etc
- Allow in other applications
- Build out library items to scripts
- More likely, if they are programming at this level, they would probably be an administrator
?: Rollback/Checkout
- saves full html files
- global updates require that you "check files back in" so you'd have to notify users to let go of files and then do global update!!!
- Usage requirements, pinging at the same-time
- large content time
