Browser-based 'right now' web editing

THE NET is an indispensable business tool. In the modern world, no organisation worth its name can be without a web site. But an attractive website alone will not give an edge to the organisation. The multiple environments of business continuously change and in such a dynamic situation, the organisation has to update the contents of its site almost on a daily basis.

The contents of an organisation's site originate from multiple sources, namely, its various departments, suppliers, customers and financial institutions. Information flows from these sources converge to a point where skilled persons with necessary rights convert them into a web page and post it to the Net. As the web contents arrive from divergent sources, this multi-stage web creation/updating process becomes a major bottleneck in a firm's attempt to host an up-to-date web site.

The best natural solution to this problem is to find a mechanism to directly move the contents from the information sources towards the site as soon as they get generated. For example, if the marketing department has a new product promotion scheme to be published in the Net, instead of sending the scheme details to the web publishing wing, the department itself should be able to post it in the Net. But web page creation involves some technical skill and ordinary persons from marketing (or any other information source) may not be able to do this. So, what one needs here is some tools/services that enable even persons without any knowledge of HTML and FTP to update the web pages related to their activity instantaneously. Some of the products that comfortably fit in to satisfy this need are discussed here.

LiveEdit

LiveEdit is a plug-in that works along with the popular browsers such as Internet Explorer and Netscape, which enable one to author/edit/publish a web page on the fly. For publishing a web page, the author does not need any skill other than the knowledge to operate a normal word processor. To deploy the service of this web page editing component that follows the WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) paradigm, he has to download and install the LiveEdit software. Once installed, the program gets attached to the browser and becomes a programmable object. A web developer can make the necessary alterations with the aid of a few scripts to integrate the LiveEdit object into the web page and enable others to edit it. After the LiveEdit component is integrated into the web page, it presents the user (content author) a word-processing type environment where he can type the contents freely, spell check and insert hyper links/pictures.

Once the page is designed properly, the web technician can be released and the web page can be updated by the 'content creators' themselves. The site provides all the necessary technical information to help the website designer integrate the LiveEdit object (access the 'Support' section for more details). If you are interested, a trial version of the program (3.4 MB) can be downloaded from http://www.editlive.com. The author has created a demo page that can be edited by any one willing to try out. He can add/alter the content and if he wants to save the updated version he has to click the 'Save' button - the altered page will be saved in the author's site and next time when others view the page they will see the new altered page. Please note that this is an open page (created for demonstration purpose only), which will be seen by others and one has to be careful while altering the page's content. If interested, check the link

http://netmeadow.com/ftpn.htm. One should also note that he has to download and install the LiveEdit before accessing this link.

Manila

Manila is a free service that lets you create websites that can be edited through your browser. To create an editable site of this kind, access the Manila site at http://manilasites.com/. When you visit the site, you will be presented with a form to be filled up with the necessary details. Once the form is submitted, the service will take you to your personal site (of the form

http://yourname.manilasites.com). The site will have all the necessary tools to edit any of its components. To get the editor tools, you need to log-in to the site. Once you log-in, you will see many buttons such as Edit, Stories and Prefs. All these buttons help you manipulate the site in various ways. For example, the button 'Stories' can be used to add new stories (content) to your site. You can do all the manipulations/additions and post the updated contents without moving from your browser - of course you can do all these things without any technical knowledge.

Amaya: browser-cum-editor

The browsers - IE and Netscape - help one access and view the web pages in a user friendly navigation window. But these will not allow you to add anything to the contents being displayed. Here is an exciting open source product sponsored by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that helps you browse the Net and edit/create web pages. Using Amaya, a fullfledged browser, you can browse web pages as wiht any other browser. Apart from functioning as a web browser, it lets you edit the displayed page just like editing a word document. In fact, this program makes web page creation a child's play - within a few minutes you can come out with highly attractive web pages. If you are interested in this feature-rich product (5 MB), download the software available at:

http://www.w3.org/Amaya/.

Misleading web addresses

Is it possible for you to make out the site, which this web address

http://K74K68K65K2DK68K69K6EK64K75.com points to? This is not a site lying in an unknown dark area of the Net. It is the address of The Hindu's site (http://the-hindu.com) in a different format. Now, try this one:

http://muraliKK67K6FK6FK67K6CK65.K63K6K6D.

Of course, the author has nothing to do with this site. Just type the above address in your browser and see the site that pops up. You will realise that it is actually the great search engine http: //google.com. If you are interested to know the details on how we are able to rename sites this way access the link at: http://www.pc-help.org/obscure.htm where you will find an excellent article that deals with many tricks of this kind.

J. Murali

(The author can be contacted at: murali27@satyam.net.in)

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