Adobe Contribute 4 gains blogging tools
updated 08:55 am EDT, Thu October 5, 2006
Adobe Contribute 4 ships
Adobe Systems today released Adobe Contribute 4 software, a new version of the web publishing solution designed for business, education and government workers to easily and safely contribute content to the Web without having to learn HTML. Version 4 offers new blog publishing capabilities, unified web publishing, enhanced Microsoft Office integration for Windows users, and Adobe Flash video support. The new unified web publishing feature enables users to post and publish content to multiple Web sites and blogs using its visually intuitive authoring tools (and can work offline). 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. It is available for Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later for $150. Upgrades from earlier versions are $80.
"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."
In addition, Windows users using 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.
"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."
Contribute supports the most popular blog servers -- Blogger, Typepad, and Wordpress as well as offers the the option of connecting to in-house blog servers, straight out of the box. Contribute 4 also improves rich media support, 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.
