Applying Usability Principles to your CMS

Usability has moved to the forefront in the past few years, especially for corporate Web sites, as marketing managers seek to understand and measure whether their investments in Web communications are really paying off. Now that Web-based applications have proliferated, enterprises are beginning to look more closely at application usability in general and the usability of content management systems in particular.

In this first of two articles, [I'll] offer a general introduction to the problem of CMS usability with a particular focus on contributor interfaces. Part two will look at usability in the context of specific features, including classification, workflow, search, help, and other subsystems. The articles will examine usability through the lens of Web content management systems, but the themes should generally be applicable for managing content of all kinds.

Chris Charlton

Chris CharltonChris, Los Angeles' CSS & ActionScript guru, successfully cannonballed into web development in the late 90's. Always caught up with the latest in Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and XML, Chris authored premium articles for the largest Dreamweaver/Flash community (www.DMXzone.com) and produced WebDevDesign (iTunes featured), a popular Web Design & Development Podcast. Somewhere, Chris finds time to run an authorized Adobe user group focused around open source and Adobe technologies. Being a big community leader, Chris Charlton remains a resident faculty member of the Rich Media Insitute and lends himself to speak at large industry events, like JobStock, NAB, and FITC Hollywood.

Brain cycles from Chris are always Web Standards, Flash Platform, and accessibility.

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