eWebEditPro from Ektron is a browser-based WYSIWYG editor that lets your Web site users create HTML content even if they don't know HTML.

In this review we discuss why you'd need eWebEditPro, and point out some of its features and limitations.
How many times have you brought up a newly created Web page in a browser window and spotted some content you'd like to change? If you're a developer, you can go to your HTML editor or ColdFusion Studio, make the change, save it, go back to your browser and reload. Still not quite right? Another round-trip to the editor is required. For users it's even more complex. They have to contact the person who maintains the page, communicate the change and hope they get it right. Often users will put up with "good enough" to avoid the added time and bother of another edit cycle.

To prevent your whole life from turning into an endless stream of content change requests, you write your content into a database using memo fields and display it using ColdFusion. You even write a simple admin interface with an edit window using <TEXTAREA> tags so your company's content managers can edit the HTML themselves. Problem solved? Not quite. Not only do your users still have to do the edit-save-view cycle to test their HTML, they must also know HTML and be perfect at matching opening and closing tags. Not too likely. <TEXTAREA> on Steroids

There's a better solution – eWebEditPro – a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor for the Web. With eWebEditPro your page content appears in an editor window that has controls similar to those in Microsoft's WordPad. Plus your users can perform spell checks; insert bookmarks, hyperlinks and pictures; and insert and format tables (see Figure 1). This tool also allows your content contributors to cut and paste text from Microsoft Word or Excel. Now users can edit Web pages directly!

On its most basic level, eWebEditPro is a friendly replacement for the <TEXTAREA> tag. In reality, it's more than that. For example, eWebEditPro provides a familiar, Microsoft Office-like interface for editing and adding text and graphics. It'll even import and clean up Word and Excel files, leaving out those annoying extra HTML tags so common in Word's HTML export.

Although we only tested it with ColdFusion, the documentation states that eWebEditPro can be used with ASP or even some of the popular content-management packages such as Vignette. Unfortunately, the process of using the software with other platforms appears to be more difficult – although Ektron indicates it's working toward enhancing this. We found the software to be stable and the features worked as stated. We pasted in an entire Word 2000 document. Except for a few minor problems, the formatting was true to the original – even the images came in. If you don't like using the WYSIWYG interface, a simple right-click allows you to reveal and edit the actual HTML code.

The following is all you need to use the editor in your application in place of TEXTAREA fields.

<CF_WebEditorPro FormName="frmDocMaint" ReturnField="TextHTML1" License="www.mycompany.com?123456"
Buttonshyperlink="False"
HTML="#my_query.press_release_body#">

Customization
In ColdFusion you can control such code elements as fonts, sizes and colors on your Web site. It even lets you turn off features you don't want your users to have access to, such as HTML "reveal codes." You can either customize permanently via an XML document or specify options on the fly. For instance, adding the Buttonshyperlink="False" directive in the example above turns off the hyperlink button on eWebEditPro's interface. You have similar control over every button. Images can be stored in a library, and the administrator can limit users to display only pictures that are already there. Or you can allow users to upload their own images.

Installation
Installation of version 1.8 was a snap – a big improvement over earlier versions, which had to be installed manually. ColdFusion and ASP server-side installations are available for Windows. InstallShield prompts you for the install location, which should be a path on your Web site. It'll also ask you for the location of your ColdFusion custom tag folder. Note that we tested eWebEditPro with both IIS and Apache, but only the former is mentioned in the documentation.

The big change for version 1.8 is that Netscape 4.7 on Windows is now supported (Internet Explorer 4.01 or later must be installed).

A client-side install is included in the download package and copied to the install location. In the Netscape version this installs the Esker ActiveX Plug-in into Netscape on the client computer. This is necessary because eWebEditPro is an ActiveX component that must be downloaded and installed on the end user's machine. It's not a problem since the download is an automatic process and the file is only 150K. On our test computer this download took less than a minute and was done only once. To use the software, the user must have Windows with Internet Explorer 4.0. If a user attempts to edit your site with an unsupported browser, it simply degrades itself to a regular textbox. There are no server-side requirements.

The Ektron code indicates that eWebEditPro limits text fields to 65,000 characters, though in practice browser and ODBC limits may be smaller.

Tech Support
We contacted tech support for a problem encountered when cutting and pasting a Word 2000 document into an empty page. It produced what appeared to be a double-spaced page. Then, when performing a cut-and-paste of a Word 2000 document into an existing Web page and choosing the Clean HTML Code option, the font size of the headings was considerably reduced and the first paragraph was missing.

The response from Ektron's support staff was exceptional. A knowledgeable support person answered the phone on the first ring. He explained that the word processing CR/LF commands are converted into <p> tags instead of <BR> tags, so some cleanup of cut-and-pasted text may be necessary. The font size changed because all font information is retained in a stylesheet, which can't be copied from Word. If no font information is available, the content defaults to the browser default font type and size. FrontPage also has this "feature."

Although no solution could be immediately given for the lost paragraph, tech support requested the Word document be forwarded to him. We obtained a response a few hours later with a request to reproduce the situation. Fortunately it couldn't be reproduced.

Tech support is available by e-mail at support@ektron.com.

Licensing
To work on your ColdFusion Web site, you need a license key issued by Ektron. These are issued manually, but an automated process is in the works. The license key is in the form of *.mywebsite.com?1234567890. The license parameter of the <CF_WebEditorPro> tag must contain this value each time it's used. This key is good for any sub URL of the main URL such as www.mywebsite.com/news. If an IP address is used in place of your domain name, it won't work unless you have a license key for the IP address. A quick call to Ektron revealed that you don't have to purchase the extra license for an IP as long as that IP address is associated with the domain name. And the purchase price for the production server generously includes free licenses for development, testing and staging servers! For $299 you get a copy of eWebEditPro for use within one domain for 10 discrete named users. Each additional 10 users costs another $299. These are admin users – you can have as many viewers of your site as you like.

We highly recommend you download the free demo from their site. The demo is fully functional and is provided with a 30-day evaluation license key. That way you can try out eWebEditPro on your own site. Once you've tried it I predict you'll never go back to an old-fashioned <TEXTAREA> tag!

Conclusion
eWebEditPro saves content as HTML that can be displayed in ColdFusion Web pages without the editor being present. The WYSIWYG Web editor is a great tool for any content management team or individual user who requires easy editing of formatted text but has little or no knowledge of HTML.

Acknowledgment
I'd like to thank fellow MDCFUG member Eron Cohen and Roy De-Jarnette, a senior developer for TeraTech, for their help in testing eWebEditpro.

• Figure 1
• Figure 2