Here is an amazing deployment of a new-generation WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor in the newsroom. The editor, called Aloha, capitalizes on the latest version of HTML – the mark-up language used for rendering web pages – to deliver a totally new kind of editing experience. (Correction – added Oct 30, 2011 – Aloha was not used but only provided inspiration for the interface – refer comment below).
How is it different? First, and most important, it turns a modern browser into a WSYIWYG editor. Second, its just not that – it is not like the conventional web editors that come with the usual content management systems. It turns your whole web page into an editable canvas.
So, how does it work. The back-end implementation is on the web-server, once installed and integrated into the CMS it s uses Javascript to make the pages editable on a modern browser. And yes, a modern browser offering support for the required HTML specs is absolutely needed to make it work
Some of its features are experimental and it should be quite difficult to implement it in a newsroom setting. That is why I admire the folks at Talking Points Memo for doing exactly that. And from what they say, the pay-off makes the whole effort worth it.
I haven’t really used Aloha, but I think brings to the web the kind on-page editing and layout flexibility that one associates with modern print CMSs like CCI Newsdesk, which are used in newsrooms.
Aloha, was only part of a larger in-house system at TPM called Baroque. "…, Baroque had to allow editors to edit on the page, not some isomorphic list of numbers of positions. To change a headline, you would click on the headline on the real front page and type. To drop a picture you would drag a picture onto the page where you wanted it to go. To this end, Baroque would have to be mostly formless." Read the TPM post for a detailed description of how it works.
Here’s their video that shows you how it is being used:
