We are now installing Version 2.3 of our Sitemaker publishing and content management system. In addition to addressing some issues of convenience and performance, it adds some desirable new features.

Paramount is the addition of new horizontal navigation options, the Top Menu and the Footer Menu. The top menu allows the editor to place links to content in a row acros the top of the site. The footer menu places centered text links at the bottom of the page content section of each page. Each item that might be in the traditional vertical table of contents can now also appear in the top menu and/or the footer menu. Depending on the nature of the site any combination of the three is possible.

Thumbnail graphics are now optional almost anywhere in the system. Exceptions are theme graphics like the mast, backgrounds and header-footer graphics in the Table of Contents. In addition the graphic upload functions have been further integrated into the controls for the various types of components, so the editor can specify the graphic and then upload it along with the other control values instead of saving the settings and then uploading the graphic.

The Web Log has been through another round of improvement, too. Most of the changes are behind the scenes. And we've added a new type of component, the "View." A view is intended as an abbreviated peek into content. In the case of the blog view, the editor can specify a number of items to be previewed and how many characters each preview should contain. The title of the item is a link that takes the reader to the respective item in the blog, which may in turn contain a link to additional information on the site or elsewhere. This lets the editor provide a guide to usage and content based on whatever is most recently added. Similar components will soon let the editor place views of the gallery, guestbook and news pages anywhere.

Cascading Styles (CSS) are more fully accessible. In addition to the text and color settings in the general forms, the editor can view the source of any page, determine the ID or class of any feature and assign unique values to it by access in the optional Style Sheet section of the layout editing sools. This section functions exactly like any ordinary CSS file. The Style Sheet section is subdivided into a general section and sections for the various tools. The combination of built-in settings and access to Style Sheets now lets an editor have almost total control over layout, fonts, etc., while allowing new users the same preconfigured layouts and themes as before. Because the proportion of layout that has been accomplished by CSS has been so greatly increased, sites will be much more congruent with emerging W3C practices regarding layout and appearance.

Some of the Help files do not yet fully reflect the new editing forms. We will be working on that in the next few days. However, the more natural work flow should not cause problems for experienced users, and new users will learn the system faster, as there is greater consistency across all forms.

Enjoy!