TypeRoom Lite
The way it works is that you logon the TypeRoom site and then type in
the URL of the page you want to edit. TypeRoom Lite then downloads the
pure HTML code of the page you are editing and lets you edit it. You
can then edit the text, insert images etc. without actually making any
changes to the original site. You can then proceed to publish your changes by using one of three different methods.
- 1. The first option is a FTP based solution where your edited content gets uploaded to the TypeRoom servers where it gets stored, the original page is downloaded for backup purposes and your changes published on the original site.
I was unable to test this feature, as the account I was given didn't have access to use this option. My suspicion is that you will have to provide the FTP logon information to your own site as well, for TypeRoom to be able to publish it for you.
I don't know about everyone else, but I generally don't trust my logon information to third parties. - 2. The second option is to email your changes to an email address of your choice. The email consists of a link to the edits the user has made and the same publishing opions are presented again
- 3. The third option is to download the changes. This lets you download a .zip file of the edits that has been made. The zip file contains a html file you then have to transfer to your own website manually.
I'm sorry TypeRoom, but I think you have missed your mark with this one. With the influx of web content management systems, I don't think that many users are still hand editing their updates nor doing static file based web pages. If so, they should be looking at the various content management solutions that are available to them, rather than to use TypeRoom Lite as a web based editor for static files. As impressive as the TypeRoom Lite interface might be, it's not much more than a web based editor (In fact the editor it uses is WYMeditor). I also find it peculiar that the TypeRoom Blog is powered by Wordpress, a system TypeRoom light can't really be used in conjuction with due to it's dynamic database driven nature.
The people behind TypeRoom are also working on a TypeRoom Pro version, which might very well be a great product. Sadly I don't know enough about what it is supposed to do, so I can't comment on that yet.
As far as I'm concerned, TypeRoom doesn't provide much more than a glorified web based HTML editor and don't offer much in terms of ingenuity nor innovatation. In fact I am pretty disappointed with what it offers, based on the pre-beta impressions I had from reading on their site.
8 Comments so far
miklb, on January 25, 2008 at 5:45am, said:
Ironic indeed!
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Brad, on January 27, 2008 at 3:17am, said:
There is nothing wrong with WordPress. It is a fine blog client!
Typeroom works great with a 1 to 10 paged site, or something like a small biz site. I've test drove it too.
Care to post some pics, like I did?
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Christian Mohn, on January 27, 2008 at 10:52am, said:
@Brad: Yes, it'll work fine for a small site. I just don't think that market is big enough, and frankly setting up a CMS isn't that hard and gives you much more features.
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Reilly Sweetland, on January 28, 2008 at 8:15am, said:
Thx for the product review (this is Reilly from TypeRoom). You bring up some interesting points.
I did a blog post (partially inspired by this review) covering some of the points you bring up here: http://www.typeroom.com/blog/?p=6 But to respond here as well:
Being involved in a development project, I am sure you are familiar with the "release early, release often" motto.
One of TypeRoom Lite's primary purposes was to give an preview and demonstration of this concept of a "remote CMS". We specifically left out features so that people (like yourself) could let us know what they would like to see most in the next iterations.
As far as the market position of this product, I can tell you (having operated a custom web services company for the past 5 years) that the number of static sites out there that still require maintenance is well...enough ;) Note also that Dreamweaver and Contribute, the top web production tools out there, publish everything to static files by default.
Lastly, regarding the editor we are rolling out -- yes it is based on the WYM, but we have effectively rewritten 80% of it to accommodate the existing and future functionality of TypeRoom. This is the main component we are beta testing.
I would be interested in your take on TypeRoom Professional. You are one of the few negative reviews we received, but provided excellent food for thought for what we can improve.
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Christian Mohn, on January 28, 2008 at 8:55am, said:
Reilly: I think TypeRoom Lite works great for what it does, what I'm having problems with is how the system works. You might very well have a niche market here, but I don't really see it. The process of doing edits, then downloading/emailing them for later upload is just as complicated as using a locally installed html editor. In some cases, perhaps even more so since most proper html editors allows you to directly edit files over FTP (eg. no need for email/download etc). Also, while I think it's a good idea that you don't store FTP passwords, for your clients, on your servers there is basically nothing that stops you from doing so if you wish.
I don't want to discourage you though, you probably have a much better take on your potential market that I do. I will give you this, the system works great, looks good and is pretty easy to use. If it's easy enough for Joe Schmoe remains to be seen though.
I understand that you aren't positioning this product to compete with existing publishing systems, but in many cases thats what you will come up against.
I am looking forward to testing TypeRoom Pro though and I'll be happy to review that too given I get a chance to do so. Also, your blog post clears up a few of the questions I had. Too bad I never got a pingback from you. ;-)
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Reilly Sweetland, on January 29, 2008 at 9:36am, said:
We'll be keeping our blog updated as to how things are working out with TypeRoom Lite and the Joe Schmoe factor as you mentioned above. Only time will tell.
In the meantime, we'll keep you updated on TypeRoom Professional.
And I'll make sure to give you a pingback next time :P
This article prompted some pretty good conversations on the system.
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Christian Mohn, on January 29, 2008 at 1:40pm, said:
Thats great Reilly. Looking forward to having a look at TypeRoom Pro at a later date.
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Justin, on May 23, 2009 at 12:12am, said:
I can understand your reluctance to provide passwords to 3rd parties, but I don't see this being a big issue for Joe Schmoe. I work for an FTP hosting company and most clients are more concerned with ease of use. And TypeRoom does seem to have a good niche there. I can think of many people with static websites that have difficulty updating their sites because they have little affinity for HTML or FTP. In fact, they're usually asking me for help, so maybe I'll refer them to TypeRoom from now on.
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