3.1.1 Separating content and presentation 

Table of contents Next Previous

Separating content and presentation

In Lotus Web Content Management, the creation of content is separated from the presentation of content. This concept is a very important concept and is implemented consistently. Thus, you can create content once and then display that content with different presentations. For example, the presentation can depend on:

• The area of the Web site through which the user is navigating
• The user's personalization settings (for example, preferred color)
• Predefined presentation settings (for example, print layout)
• The online device which accesses the content

This approach also guarantees that a Web site has a consistent look and feel. If the design changes, the content parts are unaffected. Additionally, content creators do not need to worry about the presentation of content, which can be beneficial when the content creators do not have specific HTML knowledge. Content can be displayed using different presentations.
For example, the River Bend Web site contains a Promotions list section and a Promotion section. All content documents in this section are displayed as a list showing only the titles and a link (see Figure 2).

Figure 2 Promotions list (31_2)

The link opens the document so that the user can read the entire text. In this case, the title, summary, and body are displayed (see Figure 3). These are two different presentations of the same content document and illustrate the separation of content and design.

Figure 3 Promotions document open for reading (31_3)

Content editing considerations

Content authors frequently demand a one-click option to edit a published content page. Additionally, they request an in-place-editing and WYSIWYG editing solution. Each of these requirements are based on the same desire -- the ability to edit text and content for a Web page while retaining the display format of the page as the edits are being made.

Challenge of editing separate content and presentation

Keep in mind that only some fields of a content document might be displayed on a Web site while others are not displayed. How does this impact the request for in-place WYSIWYG editing solution? Only the fields displayed on that particular Web page are available for in-place or WSIWYG editing. The other fields stay unchanged.
For example, if we apply this approach to the River Bend site, the following are true:

• A page displays the title and summary. When an author edits these fields with an in-place or WSIWYG editor, only these fields are available for editing.
• With the body field, no change is made unless the editor moves to a page where the contents of body field are also displayed. At this point, the editor has access to the body field. This approach requires editing the same content twice from two different access points.

You can imagine how this approach leads to inconsistency in content. Therefore, when content has to be changed, the ability to open the whole content document in an editor allows you to change fields consistently. In this way, you can achieve the separation of content and presentation.

In-place editing with the Customizable Template Portlet

Lotus Web Content Management follows strictly the concept of separation between content and presentation and provides functions to add an edit-link in a Web page to open the displayed document in the Authoring Portlet or the Customizable Template Portlet . See Figure 4 illustrates the edit link.

Figure 4 Edit link for one of the promotions in the Promotion page (31_4)

Clicking Edit opens the document in the Authoring Porlet, as shown in Figure 5


Figure 5 Document opened in the Authoring Portlet (31_5)

Future releases of Lotus Web Content Management are expected to provide enhanced editing functionality for this feature.