Adobe Contribute CS4 / InContext Editing review

With Dreamweaver CS4's focus on CSS-based design and JavaScript-based interactivity it's easy to forget that what end users are really interested in is content. Here Dreamweaver's hand-crafted approach to web page production has a fundamental flaw - it just isn't scalable to funnel all web content through a single central designer.

Macromedia appreciated the problem and came up with Contribute to solve the problem, and this has now been updated to Contribute CS4. Contribute is effectively a browser-cum-editor designed to work hand-in-hand with Dreamweaver-created sites, enabling users to make approved edits and additions. Unfortunately, expecting every contributor to pay for and get to grips with a proprietary application, and keep it up-to-date, just isn't scalable either.

Adobe has appreciated as much and, rather than trying to add significant new features to Contribute itself, it has settled for a cosmetic, interface-based upgrade. It has focused its attention, instead, on an alternative approach: the new server-based InContext Editing capability. The idea is simple: sign up to the service and, using Dreamweaver CS4, you can mark-out areas in the page where your clients can edit content directly and for free in their browsers.

It certainly offers advantages over the Contribute approach - but limiting approved users to editing existing pages doesn't go nearly far enough. Moreover, while the InContext Editing service is free during its start-up beta period, before committing themselves designers will want to know how much the service will cost when it goes live.

The real danger for Adobe is that designers can already turn to far more powerful server-hosted content management systems that enable browser-based editing and content creation and much more besides.

Moreover these are completely free and simpler to set up than most users realise. As more and more designers turn to Web 2.0 style content management systems such as Drupal and Joomla, it's not just Contribute and InContext Editing that look redundant - Dreamweaver is beginning to too.

Author: Tom Arah