What is The Widget Framework?

The Escenic Content Engine is a template-based publishing system, in which content production is completely separated from layout design. This allows writers and editors to concentrate on the production of content without needing to think about layout, and allows designers to ensure that a publication has a consistent, well-designed appearance. Web pages are generated by combining content items written and edited using Content Studio with templates written in HTML/JSP.

This approach works well, but it has some disadvantages:

  • It requires designers to have HTML and JSP programming skills in addition to design skills

  • It makes publication design a relatively slow and error-prone process, with the result that:

    • Publications cannot easily be redesigned for special occasions

    • The production of ad-hoc extra publications is difficult and in general, too costly

The Widget Framework solves this problem by enabling publication designers to assemble templates from a library of predefined template fragments called widgets. In this way it is possible to build a complete set of templates for a publication in a fraction of the time it would take to write, test and debug templates by hand.