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Contribute 2.0
Macromedia Contribute 2.0
pros and cons
- Easy to use and flexible better security, thanks to SFTP support and encryption basic CSS support good user-management tools.
- Working with dynamic pages requires tweaks limited editing features some features are Windows-only sluggish performance.
- Editors' review
- Specs
In recent years, many blogging tools such as Nucleus and scripting languages such as Frontier have allowed diverse groups of users to collaborate on Web site content. But most of those tools require a working knowledge of at least HTML and often of PHP or more arcane languages. Macromedia’s Contribute 2.0 helps non-coders, well, contribute to a common site. Contribute certainly does what it promises: it makes editing simple Web content point-and-click easy. But although Contribute 2.0 can neatly solve basic content needs, it has limited capability to work with dynamically created and scripted sites. It also requires someone on the server side to set it up; you can't just load Contribute at home and expect to start working on your company's site. If you're looking for a more powerful, and possibly faster, solution, consider Vignette and its ilk, or custom tools.
Setup & interface
Unlike most professional graphics applications, Contribute 2.0 runs in a single-window interface; this works because Contribute is designed for editing a single Web page at a time. The screen includes three panes that list pages being viewed or edited and a persistent help section (labelled How Do I).
The primary editing pane mimics a Web browser; in fact, you can use Contribute to navigate to any Web site, which the application renders fairly well. When you click the Edit Page button, however, a toolbar similar to those of early visual Web editors appears. You can click any static content and change it as long as you have made a connection to the site.
The connections system is the key to Contribute. Users can access (Make Connections To) only sites that have been configured through Contribute to be administered. That means someone with server access must run Contribute, set user permissions and distribute encrypted keys to allowed users. As a result, random visitors can't edit the UN’s home page, for example. This doesn't mean the site is locked to other appropriate users; Contribute integrates well with Dreamweaver, for instance.
Features
Contribute 2.0 offers few new features compared to its debut version. As in version 1.0, there's support for Dreamweaver templates. Administrators can ‘lock out’ sections of pages against changes, manage groups as well as individuals, and protect scripts and folders from certain users. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are supported. Text, links and images can be dragged and dropped into page drafts; the generated HTML is fairly clean. The biggest news is that Contribute 2.0 now supports Mac OS X -- Macromedia sells a lot of copies of Dreamweaver to Mac users.
Two new items should make server administrators happy: support for Secure FTP (SFTP) and encryption of Contribute user passwords. CFOs from boardroom to home office should like the new integration with PayPal Merchant Tools; an assistant helps set up credit-card payment tools easily.
Two interesting features are, for the moment, only for Windows 2000 and XP versions of Contribute 2.0. The first is FlashPaper, which renders any printable document into a pixel-perfect Flash version of itself -- yes, like PDF. Some have said that this is Macromedia's first salvo at the Adobe standard. It's not clear why this isn't available for Mac OS X, which has basic support for printing documents to PDF in the Finder.
Also Windows-only is the ability to insert Microsoft Office documents into Contribute-edited pages. In the Mac version, you can drag and drop Word text, if not Excel spreadsheets, although re-creating formatting will be up to you.
Sites that run dynamically generated pages will have to do a bit of template yoga, including locking pages, moving server folders, and placing templates to accommodate Contribute; however, Macromedia provides scripts and examples to ease this transition.
Performance
Contribute bogs down on mid-range Macs. In our tests, clicks in the How Do I section or on page elements, even Toolbar items, resulted in a noticeable lag that sometimes ran inexcusably long. After extended work or work with large files, we noticed significant hard disk grinding as Contribute used up all available RAM. This alone can ruin even the best-designed interface.
Service & support
After two phone or email support contacts, which must be used within 90 days of the first incident, users are forced to purchase a service program. That plan may work for business-minded and expensive programs such as Flash or Fireworks, but it's overkill for this £69 application. The service programs can cost up to £1,930 a year. Fortunately, the Macromedia forums and other online resources are fairly extensive. Macromedia also seems to deliver good-quality service; our posted question yielded a swift email response from a support rep. Contribute's built-in help feature, however, has some bugs that compound problems with the weak, built-in Mac OS X help system.