Emerging Technologies and Trends

Inline editing, Edit in Place or "Wiki style" content editing

Inline editing (edit in place or wiki style editing) are popular buzzwords for features that is now available to website editors using web content management systems.  But what does it mean for your website?  I thought I'd take a few moments to explain.

Except for a few traditionally high end enterprise content management systems, most systems for editing website content have involved an online form which you fill in (in the industry it is often referred to as a data template) to create the content for a page.

There are a number of problems with this approach:

• Convenience - sometimes you just want to edit one line of text, not whole pages, so you may not want to go through of loading your website's admin system in a new page or screen to do small changes.
• Visualisation - One of the biggest issues with this type of approach is that for content editors and end users, it isn't really WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get).  In other words, they have real problems visualising what the page is going to look like. 
  
• Ease of Use - Even the most basic content management systems have an ever increasing range of fields for all sorts of special content such as metadata.  This can require specialised training and introduces a conceptual barrier for new editors.
  

In response to these problems, inline editing has been adopted by some.  The idea is that you can edit a title or text exactly where you see it on the screen.  This usually involves logging into the website and then a single click on a little icon placed next to the content that you can edit and even dragging and dropping elements around the screen to modify basic layouts.  This makes it convenient, easiest to visualise and should make the system intuitive enough for just about anyone to use with minimal training.

With emerging trends such as Web2.0 and specifically technologies such as AJAX that don't require the screen to be reloaded, the concept of inline content editing is becoming very popular.  But there are advantages and disadvantages to this approach.

However there are also some disadvantages of inline editing:

• Security - inline editing can effectively expose the administration of the website to hackers so it is critical that such a system is robust and secure.
• Power Users - some administrators will want to continue to access the benefits of full data template style editing (such as publishing rules - scheduled publishing, expiry etc).  Fully inline editing systems can seem basic and limited to these types of users and they may feel that they are not able to get the most out of the system.
• Structure - in some websites, it isn't always possible to visualise structure from the front-end of the website including content heirarchy and taxonomy.  With editors focusing on inline editing this type of editing can suffer similar problems to full wikis.
  
• Content Duplication - editing in place can potentially create duplicated content because editors may not be aware of content that can be re-used and the system may not be capable of re-using content in-place
  

Any system that tries to do inline editing should take these into account.  From our experience the best systems are a hybrid of inline editing (mainly for text) and traditional data template style editing.  They should also enable a learning transition for users between the two and the website designers or developers should provide sufficient training and support to facilitate this.

Datalink are currently working on introducing inline content editing to Freestyler CMS.  One of the strengths of the system is its separation of content from presentation.  This won't change because we've considered the best solution and decided on a hybrid system taking into consideration both first time and power editors.  We also take the time to show our customers how to use the CMS to its full potential.
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WolframAlpha - no Google killer

There's been a bit of buzz about WolframAlpha lately, but I checked it out and moved on.  Will it have a bearing on e-business.  Probably not.  Here's why ...

To ramp up the old hype machine, WolframAlpha by Wolfram Research bills itself as the computational knowledge engine.  Its supposed to have the answer to all your questions.

Well being a Douglas Adams fan, the concept reminded me of the supercomputer Deep Thought the first thing I tried is "Life, The Universe and Everything" and got a bit of an unexpected chuckle that it returned the answer "42".

But after poking around for a few minutes, I couldn't really find much to separate it from whats been tried before with other search engines.  It reminds me of what "Ask Jeeves" tried to do way back in 1996.  It also follows the same formula of Google and Wikipedia which have now spread to so many different facets of knowledge.  Google does do the sorts of things that WolframAlpha does (such as calculations, currency conversion etc), but the new search engine incorporates a Web 2.0 AJAX style interface which just presents a little slicker.

Sure, the concept is simple, but the execution needs to be right.  About 9/10 of the questions I put to WolframAlpha frustratingly returned absolutely nothing.

So, I quickly moved on.

But while I'd expect the concept will be refined, I don't expect it to challenge Google in the forseeable future.  The main reason is that for Google to do the same would really take very little effort at all.  And there is so much more to Google in terms of online marketing for business that businesses now depend upon and WolframAlpha, like Wikipedia, doesn't seem to have in its business plans.

I couldn't see myself using it on a day to day basis and once you've gotten used to finding information the Google or Wikipedia way, you can do it just as quickly and efficiently anyway.

There are so many brief fascinations on the Internet that come and go, I feel that this may be one of them and it certainly isn't a catch name.

But I'm happy to be proven wrong and interested to hear other people's experiences of WolframAlpha.
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Every councillor to have a blog by 2012 ?

I read a quote by Municipal Association of Victoria president and local candidate Dick Gross¹ with interest in the local paper recently.  Many candidates for this upcoming council elections already have blogs.  While he didn't say every councillor, he did imply that those who didn't blog would be at a disadvantage in the elections.

There is some fantastic growth happening in this area, along with web community consultation, which for local communities is great to see. 

However most political bloggers fall into the trap of unreliable or inadequate blogging software or amateur looking templates to get their message across.  Many don't have the nouse or technical expertise to do it properly.  In fact in the article Gross admitted that his public Facebook page was set up by his children.  While his initiative is great to see, I've seen a number of these sites which look embarassing.  Then there are those who just really don't know what to say or how to say it.

Personally I think the smarter councillors will be investing in blogs that really work, and I predict they will be doing this almost immediately after this years elections when they realise that those already with blogs have the advantage. 

Over the years we have come to specialise in the local government market, having deployed a range of strategic and practical solutions from websites to online planning systems, voting systems, volunteer databases, lost animal registers, youth services portals, events management systems, best value systems and emergency portals.  Blogging is an area that we have also worked in quite extensively, deploying the sort of technologies and expertise used by CEOs of large organisations to blog, connect with their staff and shareholders to get their messages and opinions out, gather personal momentum and crucial feedback.  Our experience has helped us to advise clients on how to write in a persuasive, politically correct and Google friendly blogging style.

1 Pg 7. Emerald Hill Weekly.  October 22-28, 2008

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