eWebEditPro vs. ActivEdit

I recently interviewed Rob Yelle of Ektron about how their web-based editor, eWebEditPro, compares to the less expensive ActivEdit.

MS:

How do eWebEditPro and ActivEdit differ (apart from the price)?

RY:

eWebEditPro and ActivEdit are two products going after a similar, yet somewhat different market. The eWebEditPro toolbar is totally configurable and completely extensible. Developers who require these advanced features are willing to pay the additional cost for eWebEditPro. ActiveEdit offers finite functionality at a lower cost, which makes it an attactive alternative for some developers.

MS:

Any other differences in use?

RY:

A primary difference between ActivEdit and eWebEditPro is platform. eWebEditPro can be used in many environments beyond ColdFusion. Ektron has built a business that reaches far and wide by serving the needs of ColdFusion developers as well as those working with JSP, ASP, PHP, etc. ActivEdit's creators have chosen to limit their platform to ColdFusion. Each company has made its own decision with regard to platform(s), and at Ektron, we feel that we have improved our product for the ColdFusion community by continuing to develop the product using input from a wide variety of Web developers.

MS:

I am guessing that there must be more features in eWebEditPro, but what exactly are they?

RY:

Beyond this basic "platform" difference, Ektron feels that eWebEditPro goes far beyond what's available from ActivEdit. With ActivEdit, there is very limited ability to customize the tool bar. The developer can only "take away" from the toolbar. There are a limited number of buttons and the configuring options are to turn them off or on. eWebEditPro, on the other hand, has more features. Developers can easily add custom buttons, change existing buttons, and reconfigure the editor's layout on the fly. In fact, the eWebEditPro toolbar is totally configurable and completely extensible. It is capable of adding in any required functionality for unique and customized applications. This, added to the fact that Ektron offers more buttons by default, is a substantial difference between the editors.

MS:

What about the spellchecker - I know both products have that. Right?

RY:

ActivEdit uses a Java-based spell checker, while eWebEditPro uses the one already existing on the client side system. This allows eWebEditPro to more natively support spell checking in foreign languages, because the spell checker for operating systems provided in foreign lands comes with the foreign version of the spell checker, which in turn is used by the editor.

MS:

Any other neat features in eWebEditPro?

RY:

ActivEdit only allows the setting of a baseline URL so images can only be associated to that path. eWebEditPro allows this to be set up dynamically, as well as allowing for four native settings (Local, Host, Full or Given.) This provides a much more varied arena for implementation of image uploading.

ActivEdit has hyperlink functionality, but its not as extensible or configurable as Ektron's. With eWebEditPro, the developer can actually build their own HTML page to handle insertion of hyperlinks if desired.

MS:

I have heard you now have built in stylesheet support. Can you tell us more about it?

RY:

With version 2.1.0.4 version of eWebEditPro, Ektron offers a new button which (to our knowledge) is offered by no other editor (browser-based or not.) This button allows a developer to specify a default stylesheet and dynamically pole its class attributes and present classes to the user in a drop down button. This enables the users to take full advantage of all the power stylesheets have to offer, while eliminating the need to edit raw HTML code.

MS:

Any final things we should know?

RY:

Additionally, Ektron offers many language locales for eWebEditPro 2.0's Menus and Dialogs, including Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish to name a few. Locales are frequently added, with Arabic and simplified being the newest.

Ektron offers specialized function to minimize or maximize Word 2000-generated HTML. Also, Ektron offers three cleaning methods Minimal, Clean HTML, and XHTML(results in XML compliant code) -- all configurable to strip out certain characteristics of the HTML, if desired. Ektron devotes six pages to this topic in the product manual.

As you can see, Ektron offers a number of high-level features which are unique to our eWebEditPro product. Perhaps this is why it's now used by nearly 1/2 million end-users across 35+ countries.

If you have further technical questions, please contact Rob Yelle.

• Subscribe
• RSS

• Editorial
• Specials
• Community
• News
• Tech and Tags
• Views
• Reviews
• Techniques
• Security
• Best of ColdFusion Talk
• Knowledge Base
• Blog Watch

• Tipical Charlie