Adobe Announces Contribute 4: Now with Blogging Capabilities

WebKnowHow
Thursday, October 5, 2006; 05:07 AM

Adobe announced immediate availability of Adobe Contribute 4 software, a new version of the award-winning web publishing solution designed for business, education and government workers to easily and safely contribute content to the Web without having to learn HTML. Key features in Adobe Contribute 4 include new blog publishing capabilities, unified web publishing, enhanced Microsoft Office integration for Windows users, and Adobe Flash video support.

“We're living in an era where rapid information flow is expected," said Don Walker, senior director of product marketing at Adobe. “With Adobe Contribute 4 anyone with basic computer skills can easily publish updated information to the Web, offloading Web site administrators from tedious routines and enabling professional Web site designers and developers to spend more time on creative design.”

The new unified web publishing feature of Adobe Contribute 4 enables users to post and publish content to multiple Web sites and blogs, all from a single application. Because of its visually intuitive authoring capabilities content authors and contributors can edit or update Web sites and blogs quickly and easily. Users can also work offline without losing content changes due to a dropped connection or browser ‘Back’ button.

Because Adobe Contribute 4 works seamlessly with Macromedia Dreamweaver from Adobe, site administrators give authoring permission and can maintain Web site integrity, and look-and-feel even when multiple authors update content across the site. Windows users using Adobe Contribute 4 also have a new ability to post and publish content to their Web sites and blogs directly from within Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel and Outlook, further eliminating extra steps and reducing editing time.

“Contribute 4 continues to improve upon an already highly functional and easy-to-use content management tool,” said Tim Hickernell, content management expert. “Extending its low complexity interface to support blogging services removes stone age barriers for business users needing to keep up with evolving online content metaphors.”

Adobe Contribute 4 makes it easy for web designers and developers, as well as web administrators to help their users get started with blogs using the same familiar environment they use to update Web site content. Contribute also supports the most popular blog servers -- Blogger, Typepad, and Wordpress -- and gives the option of connecting to in-house blog servers, straight out of the box. Rich media support has been enhanced in Adobe Contribute 4 enabling users to drag and drop images, movies, and now Adobe Flash video files into their Web pages or blog entries. In addition, users can publish content from a browser to their Web site and blog. Contribute maintains the original formatting and automatically posts the source for the content as well as a link.

Contribute 4 runs Windows 2000, Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later. Estimated street price is US$149 and registered users of qualifying earlier versions can upgrade for an estimated street price of US$79. More information about Adobe Contribute 4 is available at www.adobe.com/products/contribute.