MySource Matrix Section Name

Powerful authoring environment

MySource Matrix provides a powerful authoring environment that is highly visual and intuitive to use. Usability is improved through a combination of several features, including:

• Where possible, the use of standard software conventions to make learning the system easier.  For example, the asset map looks like Windows Explorer and the WYSIWYG editor looks like standard word processing software.

• The provision of a filtered functionality view. MySource Matrix allows administrators to restrict the amount of functionality a content author can see so they only need to learn the elements that are relevant to their job.

• The inclusion of contextual help and training tools.

User-friendly interface

MySource Matrix includes a simple, intuitive user interface which is designed to allow non-technical authors to easily enter content.  There are two interfaces provided for editing content:

• The first, known as the Administration Interface, allows full access to all of the functionality of MySource Matrix.

• The second interface is known as the Simple Edit Interface  or sometimes “front-end editing”.

System administrators may control precisely what functionality and instructions are available through the Simple Edit interface and so ensure content can be updated by users with minimal training. 

MySource Matrix includes a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) browser-based editor in both the Administration and Simple Edit interface.  The WYSIWYG editor allows authoring of content without any HTML or other technical knowledge. 

Contextual online help is available from within MySource Matrix and the WYSIWYG editor, and tool tips are displayed if the user hovers their mouse over any icon in the application.  This is augmented by user documentation which is available online through the MySource Matrix website.  The help is written clearly using simple language, and includes workshops to help authors through the process of creating content.

It should be noted that MySource Matrix allows administrators to restrict the amount of functionality a content author can access in WYSIWYG editor, so authors only need to learn the elements that are relevant to their job.

Usability

MySource Matrix is designed to be meet accepted usability standards in all aspects of its functionality. Navigation is provided via an intuitive asset map, and assets are added and created via a point-and-click interface.  Other useability features include it being quick to learn, efficient for skilled users, error resistant, obvious in its use, without requiring extensive knowledge and has easily identifiable and intuitive labels and icons.  

In addition, MySource Matrix supports the creation of content that support accepted usability standards.  Users can choose to apply multiple designs to suit their preference, you can add multiple navigation tools such as menus, breadcrumbs, site maps, and you can incorporate feedback mechanisms for your users into the page design.

Customisation of User Interface

MySource Matrix allows an administrator to customise many aspects of both the Administration and Simple Edit Interfaces:

• You can configure the tools available in the WYSIWYG editor for each user group.  For example, you could remove the Bold, Italics and Underline icons for basic authors so that they are only able to select from your preset styles.  

• You can configure the Administration Interface to define which of the editing screens a user group has access to. For example, you may wish basic authors to be able to edit content, but not metadata.

• You can configure the Simple Edit interface to define the layout of the editing interface, and which of the editing screens are available in addition to the WYSIWYG editor for updating content.  For example, you could allow users to edit metadata, or change the status of a page from Under Construction to Live.

Controlling Content Editing

Content editing is managed through the combination of:

• Page status (e.g. Under Construction for unpublished content or Safe Edit for live content)

• Asset locking (to ensure authors cannot accidentally overwrite each other’s content)

• Workflow

• Security restrictions

• Design abstraction from content

• Automated QA tools (e.g. link integrity management and standards compliance tools)

Restricting Styles/Fonts

MySource Matrix only allows the user to select from the styles you have defined in the stylesheet associated with your design.  You can also customise the interface for specific user groups, to remove the font selector or other style selector icons from the WYSIWYG editor toolbar.

Separation of Presentation and Content

Design Templates

MySource Matrix separates content from presentation through the use of “design” templates, which are used to define the layout and look-and-feel of pages. The design controls such things as the:

• General “look and feel” of a page (including style sheets

• Common page elements (e.g. the header and footer)

• The navigation structure (e.g. menus and bread crumb trails)

The authoring environment (WYSIWYG editor) ensures style-based editing, by forcing editors to select a preferred style from a pull-down menu of formatting options, the contents of which is driven by the design style sheet.

Designs can be applied to a page, group of pages or an entire site, and each system may have many designs installed, so it is possible to have a different look and feel for policy documents and media releases, for example.  Content may also have different designs applied to it depending on how the content is requested, through a public website or through an intranet for example.

MySource Matrix allows you to use the same design throughout your site, but customise certain features for particular areas.  For example you may have several sites that use the same basic design which includes a logo image at the top of the screen.  You may wish to customise the logo image, depending on the particular site.   You can even customise the associated stylesheet.

Support Creation Of Any Type Of Template With No Limitations

MySource Matrix allows you to create an unlimited number of designs. Since MySource Matrix supports almost any HTML/CSS/JavaScript based template the only limitations on design are standard web-publishing limitations (eg Accessibility, W3C conformance, Usability etc) rather than limitations imposed by the CMS.#

Design Customisations

MySource Matrix includes the powerful feature of allowing you to use the same design throughout your site, but customise certain features for particular areas.  For example you may have several sites that use the same basic design which includes a logo image at the top of the screen.  You may wish to customise the logo image, depending on the particular site.   You can even customise the associated stylesheet.

Ability to Re-Purpose Content

MySource Matrix allows site users to define their experience by choosing between multiple designs when visiting your site. For example, if appropriately configured, a page may be viewed as any of the following:

• As an HTML/XHTML page using the standard website design;

• In a printer friendly format (also an HTML/XHTML page but with alternate formatting suitable for printing);

• As a low-bandwidth version;

• Or in a highly web-accessible format;

• As a text only version;

• or In a PDA suitable format.

This functionality is available out of the box, however the client must allow for the time to create the appropriate design templates for each of these formats.

Printer Friendly Designs

MySource Matrix allows you to create links in your design that will allow the user to select an alternate design.  For example, you could add a link entitled “Print Friendly Version” or an icon image, which changes the design to a print friendly design when the user clicks on it.

Creating and Updating Page Designs

The average author does not need to understand how designs are created or loaded to the CMS. Rather, they will select their desired page design from a point-and-click list of options.

New designs are created using standard web design strategies (i.e. they are HTML pages with associated images and style sheets). Before loading a new design to the system, certain MySource Matrix specific XML tags must be added to the HTML which tells MySource Matrix how to interact with the design. For example these tags will define where the content should be displayed or how the navigation should appear. A full list of tags is available as part of the design documentation which is available for free download from http://matrix.squiz.co.uk/download/documentation.html.

Styles-Based Authoring

MySource Matrix uses CSS style sheets to control the presentation of web content, including paragraph and character styles.  It supports the latest version of CSS (CSS2).

The WYSIWYG editor forces editors to select formatting options from a drop down menu of styles (e.g. heading, sub heading, normal text etc). These styles correlate to elements defined in the CSS style sheet (e.g. <p>, <h1>, <h2>, <span>).  These style sheets may be created and configured by an administrator, and changes are applied to the appropriate content.

Support for Rich Media

MySource Matrix allows authors to embed many multimedia files in your content.  This includes rich media objects such as graphics, sound, video (Windows Media files, Quicktime movies), and Flash within content.  Such objects can be entered into MySource Matrix at the same time as the text content and with appropriate metadata.  Alternatively, you may include a reference to such an object already in the content management system or a URL external to it.

Support for Streaming Audio/Video

MySource Matrix supports the embedding of audio or video files from a streaming server, if the streaming server can present files from at a static URL.

Support for Multi-Language Content

MySource Matrix and its modules (e.g. searching) fully support multi-byte character encoding (UTF-8), thus providing full internationalisation support.  MySource Matrix allows authors to nominate which Unicode character sets should be used on a particular page, or whole section of a site. These pages can then be published in any language from Chinese to Swahili. Enabling this functionality simply requires the editor to select the applicable language character set from the Unicode list.   The asset based structure of MySource Matrix makes it easy to publish content in multiple languages.  It allows you to create separate content hierarchies to cater for your non-English content. You can create appropriate non-English designs, and the site navigation is automatically created from your content structure, which you create using the appropriate language.

Spell Checking

MySource Matrix provides a visual spell checker as part of the WYSIWYG editor and includes automated suggestions and corrections.   The dictionary can be set on the server for different languages, or customised dictionaries.

Search and Replace

MySource Matrix allows you to search and replace content within a single page, a site sub-section or the entire repository.  The Search and Replace tool lists each instance of the located search term, and allows the user select which occurrences to replace.  You can also select which asset types and the status of assets to be included in the search.

Immediate Previews

MySource Matrix allows an author to preview a page as it will appear in the published site, by selecting Preview for the given asset.

Valid HTML

Web content created in the WYSIWYG editor is filtered through the open source tool HTML Tidy to ensure it forms valid HTML (conformant with HTML 4.01), or XHTML if preferred (XHTML 1.0). HTML Tidy includes its own validation tools and reports.

Import From Microsoft Word

MySource Matrix allows you to easily cut-and-paste content from Microsoft Office applications (such as MS Word) or HTML generated by other applications (such as Dreamweaver).  The structure of tables, bullet text and numbered text is retained, while the styles from your associated stylesheet are applied.

Content copied from other sources may not comply with web publishing standards or may include unwanted application specific hidden information. MySource Matrix includes two tools to automatically “clean” content copied from other sources:

• The first is a tool available in the WYSIWYG editor that allows the content author to selectively strip formatting information such as Microsoft stylesheet information and unwanted XML tags.

• The second is a facility where content authored in the WYSIWYG editor may be automatically cleaned by HTML Tidy. This open source application automatically cleans HTML and ensures it conforms with the desired HTML standard (eg XHTML 1.0 Strict).

Accessibility - Automatic Validation

MySource Matrix may be used to publish sites that conform to W3C Web Content Accessibility guidelines. Sites published from the CMS may satisfy all accessibility requirements up to WAI Conformance Level "Triple-A" - Priority 1, 2 and 3 checkpoints.  Content may be cleaned by HTML tidy before being stored by the CMS and HTML Tidy includes its own accessibility checks.  Some editing tools include automatic-prompts and checks for authors to help them ensure content is web accessible, for example the WYSIWYG editor will not allow an editor to add an image without adding an alternate description.  Where objects in the content management system are by their nature less accessible such as PDF documents, Flash presentations moving and still images, MySource Matrix supports ways of making the content accessible by including its own checks and prompts to ensure appropriate accessibility information are entered at the time of authoring.

Orphan Pages

MySource Matrix does not allow pages to become orphaned, since pages can only be created beneath a site or page, and when an asset is deleted, all sub-assets are also deleted.

Tables

Many business documents make extensive use of tables and MySource Matrix provides full table editing support within the WYSIWYG editor. Capabilities include:

• Direct manipulation of tables from within the editor

• Row and column spanning

• Formatting control over tables

The correct options for accessibility markup are also supported for tables, i.e. the use of <th> (table heading) tags. In addition, HTML Tidy ensures that the code is valid.

Images   

MySource Matrix incorporates a Java image editor allowing you to manipulate image assets, including adjusting the quality and size of an image.  It also enables you to create Image Variety assets which allows you automatically create a resized version of an asset based on a preferred width or height.

Inbound Content Syndication

Inbound information can be managed using a tool known as Remote Content - a screen scraper application. Irrelevant information can be stripped and formatting replaced on screen-scraped content. URL information may also be intelligently replaced to allow users to surf through the remote content source without leaving MySource Matrix.

User Feedback

MySource Matrix provides a “Custom Form” page template that allows you to create web forms using a simple point and click interface.  You can use this template to create a user feedback form, and nest this form in the design of your page so that it is included on all pages.  All form submissions are logged within MySource Matrix and can be exported in XML format or CSV format, allowing them to be imported into spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel.  The individual submissions are stored as assets and may therefore be managed like other assets in MySource Matrix.

User Contributed Content

MySource Matrix provides powerful user contributed content functionality with a combination of the Asset Builder page template, and the Simple Edit interface.  The Asset Builder page template and Simple Edit interface allows site users to create new assets such as pages, or other content types such as reviews.  Users are presented with the WYSIWYG editor on a simple web page interface and are able to input new content. MySource Matrix also allows site users to upload files to predetermined areas of a site. 

Using the Asset Builder page template, users can also categorise their uploaded files from a preset list.  At the back end, the Asset Builder can be configured to place the uploaded files in the correct site location so that they are presented to end users via the appropriate pages, such as the news page or ‘white papers’ page.

Custom Forms

MySource Matrix provides a “Custom Form” page template that allows you to create web forms using a simple point and click interface.   You can create basic 'Contact Us' forms that send email to a designated administrator, or create complex forms that allow email to be sent selectively based on the information entered by a user. The form interface is customisable and allows for the creation of a variety of form elements, such as text boxes, selection lists, and email addresses. Additionally, questions can be grouped into form sections and reused throughout the system to minimise form administration.  The “Custom Form” page template also allows rules to be set on information entered into a form to ensure form submissions contain valid responses. For example, you may create a selection box and apply a rule that forces a user to select at least one option.

‘Send To a Friend’

MySource Matrix also allows you include a link to a form containing a "Send To a Friend" field in the design of your page.  MySource Matrix allows you to flexibly define the contents of the "Send To a Friend" email, and allows you to include the URL, the Subject, a message and a "From" email address, and additional "To" email addresses.

Calendar

The MySource Matrix Calendar package is an optional module of MySource Matrix that allows you to include Calendar pages within your site. A Calendar page is similar to an Asset Listing page, and lists the Calendar Event assets that you have created in your system.  Calendar Events can either be individual one-off events, or periodically recurring events, known as Recurring Calendar Events. Calendar Events can be created in the Administration Interface, or more usually using a members area of your site on an Asset Builder page. You can specify different views for your Calendar Page, allowing your events to be viewed by year, month, week, day or by individual event.