[Zope-CMF] CMF Usabiltiy

[Shane Hathaway]

P Kirk wrote:
> [snip]
> 
>> Why?  ExternalEditor lets you use *your* favorite tools (GoLive,
>> FrontPage, gvim, Word, whatever) to edit content *as a local file*;
>> it handles the messy bits of putting it back into Zope for you, *as
>> you change it* (you do need to refresh the page in your browser manually
>> at this point).  CMF + ExternalEditor is da bomb!
>>
>> Tres.
>>
> I guess it a question of usabliity for whom.  I've reached Chapter 6 of 
> the Zope book last night so any comments I may should be filtered 
> through my knowing very litle about Zope.  But from the point of view of 
> non-techies, the in-built editor coupled with a template that managed 
> images, formatting, etc is good.  A tree structure that drives menu 
> creation is also good because most people don't understand how to create 
> a menu while everyone knows how to create a folder within a folder.  I 
> work selling a commercial CMS from a small UK company www.ocula.com and 
> our clients tend to be people who want this to be easy for a temp to 
> pick up in 30 minutes.  They pay us so it obviously matters to them.
> 
> It would seem to me that you are addressing usability for the webmaster. 
> This is also very important.  But I don't believe tis what was being 
> addressed in the original question.

No, there's so much more that a strategy like ExternalEditor opens up:

- Launching Word or OpenOffice when you click on a .DOC, and when you 
save, the changes are automatically stored on the server.

- Editing UML or workflow diagrams.

- Recording a sound file to go with a Wiki page.

There are numerous possibilities.  The trick is to make it easy and 
quick to install the client-side application and at the same time not 
limit your user base.  Python is a big step in the right direction.

Shane