Entry-level and code-challenged webmasters now have a whole new set of tools to play with in the latest release of Adobe’s web publishing product. Contribute 4 now boasts improved blog publishing capability and unified web publishing along with support for Flash video.
Site administrators now have much more control of author permissions, so that multiple users of the new software can make simultaneous updates throughout the site without endangering the site’s continuity. Contribute is intended to make it easy for webmasters without any knowledge in coding to add content to existing websites without needing to manipulate any source code.
Contribute 4 is a powerful WSYIWYG editor that supports dragging and dropping of many file formats, now including Flash video. Upon publishing, Contribute 4 will upload and organize all necessary files to the server. It also allows users to save drafts of unfinished pages and complete them from anywhere.
Support for even more popular blog services has been added, plus support for in-house blogs as well. In addition, Contribute 4 also supports publishing content to multiple servers simultaneously. Contribute is capable of determining and preserving original document formatting.
Contribute 4 also offers Microsoft Office integration, supporting single-click publishing capabilities within Word, Excel, and Outlook. The Excel support will prove to be very valuable to content editors that must deal with laying out many tables of data.
The inclusion of drag-and-drop support for Flash movies alone is worth the US $149 pricetag for bloggers. Fairly soon, any blogger with Rocketboom aspirations and a copy of Contribute 4 will be able to serve up their very own video content with ease.
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Jim is a designer and a staff writer for Murdok. He is also the editor of the FlashNewz newsletter.
