Third Party Authoring Tools No Longer Required for Platformic Web CMS

By David Roe (@druadh20) May 5, 2009

At the end of March, Platformic (news, site) introduced a new Embedded Content Tool (ECT) to its web building platform that facilitated the easy use of assets in an enterprise’s media library. As part of its continuing development of a Web Content Management System for use by even novices, it was a timely release.

What they didn’t say at the time was that only six weeks later they would be releasing an entirely new version of their platform that would remove the need for Adobe Dreamweaver, or other third party web-authoring tools.

That version – v3.0 – was unveiled this morning.

CSS And Video Asset Tools

With a built-in point-and-click visual design tool, this version allows for the production of fully customized websites by novice builders — and very quickly too.

Building on existing features, there are two principal differences with v3.0 over its predecessors.

A new Video Feed Tool, which allows a video to be dropped into any area of the screen
A new CSS template generation tool that visually writes nested CSS Div structures

Platformic has made a name for itself buy building a web content management solution that allows for the development of complex websites in real-time without having to write a line of code.

Designed to keep IT requirements at a minimum, it offers non-techie users the tools needed to design a fully-functioning Web 2.0 framework.

Managing Dynamic Web Content

Using only a web browser, Platformic users can leverage more that 20 modules to easily create and maintain dynamic web content within the framework and standards set by the client enterprise.

Platformic Web CMS

Features already available included:

Easy page creation and incorporation into existing website
Easy content changes with real-time page editing
Scheduled work flows to keep content up to date
Ability to include podcasts, or other video content

Easy Design With v3.0

And now with v3.0, a whole new range of design possibilities has been included in the system.
Using the layout and style console, users can construct their sites based on the image guide that is included in the system.

Automatically building a nested CSS structure as the user builds each page, this image guide can import a Photoshop file of their website, which will then act as a ‘how to …’ guide for each section of their website.

While previous version of Platformic already had this browser–based CSS generation functionality, navigation through the nested structure has been made considerably easier in this version. Users can now move easily through “parent” and “child” levels of the site and by highlighting the entire content of specific layers, enable the user to view all the content within a given container.

Platformic Web CMS

As the page structure is organized, the Tool Tip function shows exactly where the user is in the site and exactly what content is in what container as the user moves from one area of the site to another.

This eliminates the need to use any of the standard web authoring tools — like Dreamweaver — and allows for maximum flexibility in the design process.

Once the structure of the web site has been defined, a drag-and-drop Java tool can place visual content anywhere required on any page. The company says that using this feature, even a novice user can build a customized site in a few hours.