Hallo BEdita

After two years of hard work we are really pleased to announce the first public beta release of BEdita 3 (pronounced [bi'εdita]): a framework for Web2.0 applications that aims to be a standard tool in the next Web3.0 and in the future Semantic Web.

As you may already know, the beta is here http://www.bedita.com/be-download

Framework or CMS?

BEdita shares many aspects with a  CMS (Content Management Systems), often we call it that way for simplicity, in fact it follows its definition (at least in part): a tool that enables technical and non technical staff to create, edit, manage and finally publish a variety of content (such as text, graphics, video, documents etc). But on the publishing side it doens't have, on purpose, a default unique and finished/ready solution.

A good definition of software framework may help us understand things better: a framework is incomplete, though concrete, driving solution to recurring high-value problem. BEdita actually is:

1. incomplete– it's not a software that can solve needs/problems of a standard user; instead it's a powerful tool for [web]designers/[web]developers to build frontend applications;
2. driving solution to recurring high-value problem – it's useful in every situation where you may want to create applications (frontend) that handle complex multimedia contents and their semantic relations; for a designer/developer it prevents to challenge and solve typical annoying related issues.

Architecture

Two are the main elements of the semantic framework:

1. a backend Web application to manage contents and their semantic relations, with an innovative ergonomic user interface, providing an original chromatic association between object types, extensive use of drag'n'drop and other AJAX techniques;
2. a frontend API, services and specifications to build frontend applications; mainly Web apps, but also desktop/mobile apps taking advantage of its native REST/XML interface.

The backend application is unique and the same for every setup or instance, instead more frontend applications can be built using an API and inheriting from the core system Model classes and business logic layer: they can be made of few lines of PHP code, or they can be much more complex. This separation is a choice made for security reasons, efficiency, scalability and to let maximum freedom to the designer/developer.