MySource Matrix Evaluations

User Friendly

MySource Matrix provides a powerful authoring environment and includes a simple, intuitive user interface which is designed to allow non-technical authors to easily enter content, without any knowledge of HTML.

There are two interfaces provided for editing content:

• The first interface is known as the Simple Edit Interface or sometimes "front-end editing". This interface allows general non-technical Web CMS users to author and edit content via the WYSIWYG editor in a simple web page interface, with little or no training.
• The second, known as the Administration Interface, allows full access to all of the functionality of MySource Matrix. This interface is suitable for a web administrator – in other words someone with some understanding of HTML code and a little experience designing templates for websites and have attended the MySource Matrix Content Author and CMS Administrator training courses.

MySource Matrix also allows administrators to restrict the amount of functionality a content author can access in WYSIWYG editor, so authors only need to learn the elements that are relevant to their job.

Customising the User Interface

MySource Matrix allows an administrator to customise many aspects of both the Administration and Simple Edit Interfaces:

• You can configure the tools available in the WYSIWYG editor for each user group. For example, you could remove the Bold, Italics and Underline icons for basic authors so that they are only able to select from your preset styles.
• You can configure the Administration Interface to define which of the editing screens a user group has access to. For example, you may wish basic authors to be able to edit content, but not metadata.
• You can configure the Simple Edit interface to define the layout of the editing interface, and which of the editing screens are available in addition to the WYSIWYG editor for updating content. For example, you could allow users to edit metadata, or change the status of a page from Under Construction to Live.

No programming is required to configure the interfaces, which is all performed using a point-and-click interface.

Design Templates

MySource Matrix separates content from its presentation through the use of "design" templates, which are used to define the layout and look-and-feel of pages. The design controls such things as the:

• General "look and feel" of a page (including style sheets

• Common page elements (e.g. the header and footer)

• The navigation structure (e.g. menus and bread crumb trails)

The authoring environment (WYSIWYG editor) ensures style-based editing, by forcing editors to select a preferred style from a pull-down menu of formatting options, the contents of which is driven by the design style sheet.

Designs can be applied to a page, group of pages or an entire site, and each system may have many designs installed, so it is possible to have a different look and feel for policy documents and media releases, for example.  Content may also have different designs applied to it depending on how the content is requested, through a public website or through an intranet.

MySource Matrix includes the powerful feature of allowing you to use the same design throughout your site, but customise certain features for particular areas.  For example you may have several sites that use the same basic design which includes a logo image at the top of the screen.  You may wish to customise the logo image, depending on the particular site.   You can even customise the associated stylesheet.

Content Templates

MySource Matrix allows you define a Paint Layout, which is similar to a Design for the body of your content, allowing you to customise how individual types of assets should look. For example, for a News asset by default the news item name, summary, body and contact details are printed. If required, a Paint Layout can be created to include other attributes such as the Created By and Created Date fields, or specific metadata fields you require.

Similarly as with Designs, you can apply different Paint Layouts to different areas of your site, so that re-used content items are layed out differently depending on the site they are viewed in.

Re-Purposing Content

MySource Matrix allows site users to define their experience by choosing between multiple designs when visiting your site. For example, if appropriately configured, a page may be viewed as any of the following:

• As an HTML/XHTML page using the standard website design;

• In a printer friendly format (also an HTML/XHTML page but with alternate formatting suitable for printing);

• As a low-bandwidth version;

• Or in a highly web-accessible format;

• As a text only version;

• or In a PDA suitable format.

This functionality is available out of the box, however the client must allow for the time to create the appropriate design templates for each of these formats.

Clean (X)HTML

Web content created in the WYSIWYG editor is filtered through the open source tool HTML Tidy to clean (X)HTML code.

Importing From Microsoft Word

MySource Matrix allows you to easily cut-and-paste content from Microsoft Office applications (such as MS Word) or HTML generated by other applications (such as Dreamweaver).  The structure of tables, bullet text and numbered text is retained, while the styles from your associated stylesheet are applied.

Content copied from other sources may not comply with web publishing standards or may include unwanted application specific hidden information. MySource Matrix includes two tools to automatically "clean" content copied from other sources:

• The first is a tool available in the WYSIWYG editor that allows the content author to selectively strip formatting information such as Microsoft stylesheet information and unwanted XML tags.

• The second is a facility where content authored in the WYSIWYG editor may be automatically cleaned by HTML Tidy.
  

Accessibility - Automatic Validation

MySource Matrix may be used to publish sites that conform to W3C Web Content Accessibility guidelines. Sites published from the CMS may satisfy all accessibility requirements up to WAI Conformance Level "Triple-A" - Priority 1, 2 and 3 checkpoints.  Content may be cleaned by HTML tidy before being stored by the CMS and HTML Tidy includes its own accessibility checks.  Some editing tools include automatic-prompts and checks for authors to help them ensure content is web accessible, for example the WYSIWYG editor will not allow an editor to add an image without adding an alternate description.  Where objects in the content management system are by their nature less accessible such as PDF documents, Flash presentations moving and still images, MySource Matrix supports ways of making the content accessible by including its own checks and prompts to ensure appropriate accessibility information are entered at the time of authoring.

Support for Multi-Language Content

MySource Matrix and its modules (e.g. searching) fully support multi-byte character encoding (UTF-8), thus providing full internationalisation support.  MySource Matrix allows authors to nominate which Unicode character sets should be used on a particular page, or whole section of a site. These pages can then be published in any language from Chinese to Swahili. Enabling this functionality simply requires the editor to select the applicable language character set from the Unicode list.   The asset based structure of MySource Matrix makes it easy to publish content in multiple languages.  It allows you to create separate content hierarchies to cater for your non-English content. You can create appropriate non-English designs, and the site navigation is automatically created from your content structure, which you create using the appropriate language.

Previewing Your Content

MySource Matrix allows you to preview a page as it will appear in the published site, by selecting Preview for the given page.  Previewing the page allows you to see the content with the Design template and styles applied.

Spell Checking

MySource Matrix provides a visual spell checker as part of the WYSIWYG editor and includes automated suggestions and corrections.   The dictionary can be set on the server for different languages, or customised dictionaries.

Search and Replace

MySource Matrix allows you to search and replace content within a single page, a site sub-section or the entire repository.  The Search and Replace tool lists each instance of the located search term, and allows the user select which occurrences to replace.  You can also select which asset types and the status of assets to be included in the search.