WebJaxe is a system to create websites with a web-based user interface, using XML technologies to ease and accelerate sites creation and updates. Several authors can participate at the same time to create a website, each one bringing his own contributions.

So, WebJaxe is a CMS, but as opposed to a CMS that lets you edit HTML code or pseudo-code close to HTML, WebJaxe works in two separate steps :

• Edition of the XML files with Jaxe. When editing files with an XML language like XPAGE (included with WebJaxe), it is easy to focus on the content (the meaning of the text), without worrying about the way it will be displayed. This can be disconcerting at the beginning, but a lot of time can be saved eventually.
• Transformation into a website. This transformation is done in one click, and automatically generates a website ready to be used, with navigation, a summary, links, etc... It is possible with XPAGES to choose a "skin" for the website, which makes it very easy to change the presentation without touching the original texts.

Many CMS provide two ways to edit contents :

• as simple ASCII text (rather painful to use)
• with a "WYSIWYG" editor, which often generates an invalid code, and prevents a uniform presentation in a collaborative website (each author having his own presentation habits)

WebJaxe offers an alternative solution : the use of an editor with a user-friendly graphical interface, but that doesn't display right away the HTML result. In the end, this enables the creation of a website with a consistent user interface even when many authors contribute.

Since authors provide content with semantic markup without specifying the presentation, it becomes suddenly possible to change all the graphical interface at once, without having to edit the authors contributions.

WebJaxe is a free software (in French, libre as opposed to gratuit). It is distributed under the GPL license.

WebJaxe can be used to edit XML files from any XML language, provided a Jaxe configuration was created for the language. To transform XML files into a website, a specific PHP script is also necessary. WebJaxe is distributed with configurations for the XPAGES and XHTML strict XML languages.

The XML editor, based on Jaxe, inherits the following features from Jaxe :

• automatic validation at element insertion
• multi-plateform (Java 1.5+)
• contextual menu
• multiple undos
• display of source code
• equation editor
• online help based on the XML schema
• XPath search

WebJaxe provides on top of that :

• The edition in a web browser
• Management of a set of XML contributions
• User management, including their authorizations to edit contributions
• Generated websites can be used right away, because they are created on a web server
• Automatic sending email to administrator if a new user is registred