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Reinventing In-Context Editing

In-Context Editing or "ICE" is the ability to update content from the preview of a web page. ICE is a great way to quickly update content. It enables users to focus on not only the content but also the presentation of the information on the web page.

For Ingeniux ICE has always been a glass slipper. It is something that we wanted but could never find a solution that fit. We are committed to content reuse via XML, open standard mark-up, cross-browser web clients, and true ease of use. The status quo of ICE solutions did not deliver on any of these fronts, thus has not been a feature we would support.

With version 7 I am glad to say we have finally found the glass slipper - and have reinvented ICE to support structured content and complete content reuse.

The Historical Problem with ICE

Historically ICE has always represented a problem in Web CMS. Good Web CMS applications are developed for content reuse and separate content from presentation. The challenge for many Web CMS solutions using ICE has been - what context? The page a user is writing may need to support a web page, a mobile device, an index page consuming the content, a co-brand of the page. Multi-channel publishing inherently requires structure that is not easy to support in preview mode. Moreover, the CMS may not have editing capability of the preview, which is dynamically rendered.

The other challenge with ICE is that it many systems require propriety mark-up in published web pages to support their ICE system. Or worse it is faked. One fairly popular CMS app I have seen actually takes a screenshot of the web page preview and super-imposes an edit control on top. Almost all In-Context editing systems only support WYSIWYG content and neglect meta data, content structure, components (widgets, snippets, etc) and other facets of modern web publishing.

To make ICE work in real-world CMS situations vendors have added layers of complexity. This has resulted in the appearance of simplicity with the reality of pop-up windows within pop-up window. Solutions are neither truly in-context nor easy to use.  

The Ingeniux ICE Solution

Ingeniux ICE is a truly elegant and a productive implementation of In-Context Editing that combines the power of structured content with the friendliness of the best in-context solutions. Content retains its structure. You can apply images and components to a page using simple select-pallets and the layout of the page adapts to changes. To create templates you can use standards-based XHTML.

We have also tied In-Context Editing with the live website using an "Edit This Page" feature. A user can surf the live website, find a page to edit, click one-link in the footer and edit the page using ICE. 

How we have delivered ICE as structured content using open standard web technologies is a bit of a Wonka-like-trade-secret. It came out of years of work from our development team perfecting the technology. In short, the CMS is able to wrap each piece of content on a page with editing controls using AJAX and then map those fields back to the underlying XML structure of the content. The amazing thing for me is that it works flawlessly.

ICE Examples

XHTML Editing

The screenshot below shows an example of ICE editing the main body copy of an article. Although this is powerful, it is only part of what makes Ingeniux ICE special.

Date Picker

In this example, you can see the ICE understanding that the content is a date and providing the date picker elements to select a new value. Ingeniux understands the structure of the information and is able to apply the right editing element in the right place in the layout. It delivers semantic content in-context.

Right Column Component

Here is an example of adding a component to the right column of a layout. Components can be anything from a chunk of content to a Twitter Feed, Form, Advertisement, or a Call-To-Action. Here is where you get real content reuse within the in-context experience. Simply clicking the editable region of the page opens the Component Pallet and lets you select a new item. Similarly, images can be added, uploaded, and edited right from the in-context view.

Conclusion

We are very excited about releasing ICE with version 7. It is a solution that meets our high standards for web management and adherence to structure and delivers a useful solution for end-users to update information on the web. Moreover, it bridges two schools in the Web CMS industry, one that approaches the market like Desktop or "Web-top" publishing and other focused on multi-channel delivery and reuse. With version 7 we have connected these worlds  and created an ICE solution that I believe is greater then the sum of its parts.

My favorite benefit of Ingeniux ICE, however, is quite simple.  It makes editing web content fun again. Hopefully this will result in not only in better CMS experiences, but also better content on websites, which is where the real ROI for the web is delivered.

Posted by David Hillis