Macromedia Contribute 2 Adds FlashPaper, PayPal Support New Features, Yay! Product Activation, Boo! Eric Grevstad
Mon 7/21/03 -- It must have been the February review on WinPlanet: According to Macromedia, more than 15,000 companies have discovered that its $99 Contribute program lets almost anyone update and manage content on existing Web sites without needing the skills of a Web developer or designer. Next month, Contribute 2 will bring cross-platform Mac OS X compatibility and other enhancements for painless site maintenance.
The Word- and Excel-compatible Contribute lets administrator-authorized users browse to the Web page they wish to modify, make changes in a familiar environment akin to a word processor or simple desktop publisher, then publish the updated page back to the server. In addition to a native Mac OS X version with automatic connection to Apple's .mac personal sites, version 2 -- which has a $10 upgrade price through September 30, 2003 -- adds faster, more secure connections with drag-and-drop integration for PayPal accounts to make it simple to add e-commerce hooks to Web sites.
New FlashPaper technology offers a bandwidth-saving way to display documents online, turning any printed file into a Flash format that becomes an embedded part of a Web page. Contribute 2 also incorporates Microsoft-style product activation, with a license that lets users install the product on two PCs.
