Adobe,Web Content,Application Review
I never thought I would be looking at content editing applications for blogs and websites, especially from Adobe, but here I am, creating a blog post about contribute in contribute.
What got me here
A friend mentioned that a friend of his was looking at Contribute and asked if I had worked with it. Since I hadnt, I thougth going through the trial would be a great way to see what the application is all about. That was over the summer… here it is the last of December and the trial is getting underway for me.
So far, I am not sure what to think. It is a content editor, like the best parts of what was once Microsoft Front Page, with a better web feel, but most content management systems available today (think WordPress, Blogger, etc) have WYSIWYG editors right on the website. The way Contribute handles themes from WordPress is the best I have seen for an application.
Figure A
The Interface
As you can see, the interface for a blog post seems to place an edit box right in the middle of what you would see if the post is published. For me this allows me to think about placement and visibility and what the post will look like without having to save as draft, then preview, then edit some more.
I’ve also noticed that the action buttons or toolbars are moved outside of the editor window and out of the way more like a typical desktop application like Word or Excel. I didn’t really think that was something I would care about because I’m used to using the web editor but it is kind and nice. I have to give credit to a duly for having a clean interface contribute certainly has a clean interface and I can see it being very useful for blogging sites or blog editors who manage multiple blogging sites because you can connect to multiple sites from within contribute.
Figure B
Adding Sites
I’m not sure if it would be super useful for standard website content management because most of the individuals that I interact with that do standard websites or web design use tools like Dreamweaver and build their content within that environment having a content environment aside from that seems a bit excessive to me.
Website content management
Managing websites, which seems to be going away in favor of blogs and other content managment methods, can also be done in Contribute. Remember, this is only for edting content and displayed items. You can use it to place images in a directory via FTP or WebDAV and then manage the web pages within the tool.
Website Design and structure would be best done in a tool like Dreamweaver as it allows both content and coding to happen.
Where contribute might be a great addition to your toolkit is as part of a team where there are those who develop web sites and others who create content for those sites. This way, the content creators can get by without knowing the difference between <Div> and <Span> the editor (and the webdesigners) take care of that for them.
Is the product worth it?
This is where I am a bit on the fence. when I first looked at the software I was quite convinced that it was a bit unnecessary when managing content for sites or blogs, however I have been playing with it some in writing this post in and starting to see where it could be very useful. At first my plan was to play with the software and create some content or blog posts and then write a review through the normal process that I use, but since I’m publishing this to my blog I thought the best way to play with the tools to create the review right in it.
That being said, I haven’t scratched the surface on all of the features that contribute brings to the table and if I choose to continue using it once my 30 day trial runs out I will likely dig further into those features. For now I wanted to stick to the right of blog posting contribute side of the house and provide some overview information and thoughts.
The cost of the software if you own a previous version or the cost to upgrade a previous version of one of Adobe’s creative suite products is $99, which could be very worth it if you plan to do a lot of editing a lot of blogging and things like that.
The cost to buy the application new is $199 which to me seems a little bit high for content publication. I plan to use the rest of the 30 day trial to better decide if this product it works for me in terms of some of the blogs that I manage but the odds that I actually purchased the software are slim based on an extremely high cost and limited feature set. I hate to call a limited feature set because I understand what the feature set is but for that price seems little state a little steep if the product were $99 new and $59 to update or better yet a $40 update it might be worth it. The price point is the biggest thing in Contribute makes me run away from this product at this time. I tend to have this position with a lot of Adobe products because they are very expensive but if this product will save that much time and effort in a specific situation where a lot of editing is being done in our new publishing is being done, then the price could be worth it.
The best recommendation I can give at this point would be to download the software and run it for 30 days and see if it fits what you’re trying to accomplish if it does any really use it every day and maybe the price is okay for you if you don’t use it every day then I would imagine the price is too high.
Good luck and happy blogging.
