Adobe InContext Editing…
I will use Adobe’s definition in order to tell you what Adobe InContext Editing is. Adobe InContext Editing is an online hosted service that lets users make simple content changes within a web browser. To change a web page, users simply browse to the page, log in to the InContext Editing service, and edit the page. The editing options are simple and elegant, and using them requires no previous knowledge of HTML code or web editing.
The definition means that you can pretty much have a management system on a static site, without any back-end. With this service Adobe is going towards the inexperienced user or site owner. Now, with InContext Editing, with the right permissions, your visitors can maintain your site. A very good news for some and bad for other. It is good for the inexperienced ones as I said and bad for the maintenance services. Now a web development or web design company can’t ask for higher payment for updating the site when InContext Editing is one click away.
The approach is OK, but I think a better solution is to store the InContext Editing on the customers website server. In this way, the customer is not related to Adobe, and he can manage his content without worrying about rules or terms of use. Also the fact that InContext Editing engine is in Flex and is not supported by all browsers is a big drawback.
I think that in the next versions, the service will be improved and we will really use InContext Editing. The way I see it is that InContext Editing will become a good content management system and maybe a competitor against almighty WordPress.
Cheers!
Andy Gongea is a passionate UI/UX designer with a great appetite for technology and trends. Currently he owns, a future wife, a loan that comes with a monthly fee and some strange ideas about user interface and user interaction. Cheers!
Follow Andy on Twitter: @andygongea6 Responses to “Adobe InContext Editing…”
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Actually the customer website is located on his own server or some other web hosting provider. InContext Editing then uses (S)FTP to manage the files on the web server.
If you have Flash player installed, you also have Flex… Flex is more a development platform, a framework, see http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/
See http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/getting_started_with_ice_eu.html for some details.
I agree with you. I said that I would like it to be on the customer’s server – the InContext Editing backend.
And I know what Flex is, my concern was that early I used Firefox 2 and I couldn’t use InContext Editing.
I’m guessing that InContext without the required registration would make it easy to hack and use with any Webpage design program. Understandably, Adobe wouldn’t want that. Besides, if it turns out to be a huge success, Adobe may start charging for it.
No, it is OK with some kind of registration, but with the possibility of hosted instances on customer’s site.
Don’t know for sure. I mean they already charge the user for Dreamweaver – what’s the point of charging them again.
Adobe hasn’t said–to my knowledge–that they plan to charge for it. And hopefully they won’t. But in the long wrong, everthing is about money. They’ve moved their customer service off shore…. What’s to stop them from making InContext a “service” and collect for it.
Adobe’s products are great. But, as a technology writer, I have been reviewing and writing about their products for several years. They are anal about licensing and making sure nobody uses their stuff without paying for it. Not that that is a bad thing, but sometimes it gets in the way of providing good, sensible service.
I agree with you that the solution would be better if it worked directly from the server where the site is hosted, instead of trough adobe.com