Openpages, which makes enterprise content production systems, has released a new version of ContentWare, the company’s flagship product. ContentWare is a content production system that recently began offering integration with Macromedia’s FreeHand.
ContentWare creates a “digital asset repository” where content, regardless of whether it’s text, graphics, multimedia, applications, or any other format, can easily be accessed and repurposed as needed. Michael Duffy, president and CEO of Openpages, said that ContentWare’s benefit over “first generation” content management software is its ability to integrate with desktop applications, like FreeHand.
Version 2.6 provides users with additional tools for managing digital assets, importing content from other systems and for administering and implementing the application. The extended capabilities of the update, which is available now, include:
Full integration with FreeHand for Mac, offering content creators and Web developers the ability to create, save, search and retrieve content from the ContentWare database without leaving either application. AutoImport Enhancements. AutoImport can now run in parallel on several servers, enabling users to isolate critical wire feeds on individual boxes and improve the performance of processing incoming information, according to Duffy. Customizable Metadata Capture. Users can further customize the metadata that they capture for any content element based on the purpose of that element. Expanded integration with QuarkXPress. Companies using ContentWare to create general print materials, such as marketing collateral or magazines, can use Openpages’ industry neutral Quark Xtension (INXT) while customers wanting to create structured documents can use the newspaper Quark Xtension. HTML Links Spider. ContentWare 2.6 WebView ships with an HTML links analyzer that lets users find all internal and external link references and then tests them to ensure that they are valid. Formatting capabilities. ContentWare enables users to save content in different file formats to streamline distribution and repurposing content for a variety of delivery channels. Installation Wizards. Version 2.6 simplifies the implementation requirements through additional installment and system configuration capabilities, complete with wizards. Custom forms creation tools. Users now have a greater ability to customize the forms they use to capture specific metadata to meet the needs of workflow processes and individual groups within an organization, Duffy said. ContentWare is comprised of a variety of different modules, depending on the client’s needs. The central mechanism is ContentWare Server, where the content itself is stored. WebView provides Web-based access to content; AutoDeploy enables ContentWare Server to automatically distribute managed content to Web servers via XML and HTML; Composer provides a user interface for ContentWare; WebBuilder enables users to merge content into Web templates; and Palette bridges the gap between ContentWare and desktop applications.