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Defining authoring tools

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Hidde de Vries edited this page Nov 12, 2019 · 11 revisions

Definitions

From normative ATAG glossary:

Any web-based or non-web-based application(s) that can be used by authors (alone or collaboratively) to create or modify web content for use by other people (other authors or end users).

Mike Gifford:

Web accessibility is complicated. Building a CMS that supports solid accessibility defaults is more complicated. Creating an authoring environment that makes it easier to create accessible content for authors is even more difficult still. This is the challenge that ATAG presents to those who are making web authoring environments.

Examples, according to normative glossary:

Other ways to phrase it

  • a tool that multiplies the effect of accessibility

Other examples we could consider:

  • components in frameworks
  • static site generators
  • AMP (?)

Examples

Websites that make websites

WYSIWYG

  • Draft.js from Facebook (used both by Twitter and Facebook for content creation)

Social Media

  • Twitter
  • Buffer

Education: course builders / e-learning

Other

Beyond ATAG 2

Pattern libraries

Pattern libraries (often seen in design systems, also called front-end style guides) are collections of reusable patterns (bits of HTML, CSS and JS). Organisations large and small use them so that their team(s) can quickly put together websites without reinventing the wheel.

If a CMS has a multiplier effect, maybe pattern libraries do too.

Examples of pattern libraries that mention accessibility or having it “built-in”:

Websites that aren't authored: the “templates + data” paradigm

An increasing amount of websites have their full markup generated in JavaScript. Markup is defined in templates, combined with data and generated into a page either on the fly or on the server.

This means the page does not get authored in the traditional sense, the content and markup are separated differently. Content comes from APIs and/or static files, markup comes from templates.

Some CMSes, like Netlify CMS and Contentful let users edit this data by supplying content fields for exactly the data that is required, rather than a WYSIWYG editor.

Block editors

Block editors don't just let content editors write a long blurb of text, they let them create blocks that go into specific templates, and that can often be reordered with drag and drop.

It's templates that can be reused by content editors without HTML knowledge.

Note, Gutenberg blocks are CMS agnostic and Gutenberg for Drupal also exists.

A bit about why

[content authors] can be sure that once they have entered the price, description, and uploaded an image of the item, it will look good to the end user and similar to all other gift baskets on the site

(in Why Drupal's Layout Builder is so powerful and unique | Dries Buytaert)

AMP

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