cmb-web.co.uk

MCMS

Most of this week has been spent reading about Microsoft Content Management Server 2002.

I think it is a rather interesting piece of software. The point of it is to aid development and maintenance of large web sites by separating content from design and development. The design and development is done in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, which means ASP.NET and all the power that brings. The content authoring is done in context through the actual web pages themselves, or through Microsoft Word.

Additional development and authoring is made extremely simple through the use of templates and code-behind that can be used to automatically generate such things as navigation menus and summary pages.

I like it, hopefully soon I’ll get a change to implement it for a live site, then I can make a proper assessment.

AJAX - First Steps

I have just finished reading a book on Ajax from one of my favourite computing publishers, Wrox. The book was entitled ‘Professional AJAX’, but I think the professional was a bit over the top for anybody with any programming experience.

I think it is a useful and interesting idea. Coming from a background of desktop application development, it is interesting to see how web developers are implementing the kinds of things that have been taken for granted with your standard desktop app. It is also interesting to see how the web is moving more towards the presentation of a richer user experience.

I just hope people know when to stop with it, I have seen examples of sites that go that little bit too far and overuse it.