User interfaces for lightweight in-line editing of Web pages

In 1990, the earliest Web browser allowed the person reading a Web page to edit and save that page-the early Web provided fully collaborative pages. Mosaic, the browser that popularized the Web in 1993, allowed pages to be viewed and not changed. It took several more years before fully collaborative Web pages were available once more using specialized page sharing pages and servers. However, the user interfaces for these shared editing Web page systems are complex. When several users share the creation and editing of a Web page it is rare that each user requires full editing control over the whole page. Rather, the page originator usually sets the basic structure for the page, and collaborating authors fill in the detail to the structure. Synchronization and user interface design to support such a 'fill-in' process are much simpler to implement. The paper refers to such collaborative page construction as lightweight in-line editing. Examples of some existing user interface designs for the lightweight in-line editing are shown and discussed. The paper concludes with the author's own lightweight in-line editing system, Pardalote, which is under development. The Pardalote user interface design that employs new Web page components is presented.