Belus Technology has announced the release of “XStandard”, a commercially available WYSIWYG editor that is designed to meet the XHTML 1.1 specification adopted by W3C. XStandard is an ActiveX control that is typically integrated into content management systems and allows business users to author and format rich content.

XStandard permits the authoring of multi-lingual content (including Chinese, Russian, etc.), supports layout and data tables, lists, hyperlinks, floats and drag-and-drop. Files can be uploaded and referenced from libraries using Web Services (SOAP). Xstandard is intended to allow for formatting content without programming as well as ensure that code generated by content authors contains no deprecated (outdated) markup, is well formed, and is XHTML 1.1 compliant. XHTML is an XML vocabulary designed to standardize the Web’s lingua franca (HTML) and to expose data wrapped in HTML code to opportunities for parsing, restructuring and reformatting.

XStandard generates semantic-rich markup that references Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) through the class attribute. This means business users no longer apply semantically barren information to data, such as “color” or “font”, but select among semantically rich options such as “Heading” or “Product Description” using XStandard’s drop-down menu. Business users can also apply custom tags such as “” to elements of content (words, phrases, or objects such as images). XStandard also supports accessibility initiatives by requiring authors to provide alt texts and summaries for images and tables. It differentiates between layout and data tables, which are processed differently by screen readers, and incorporates a Screen Reader Preview that displays content as screen readers process it, in linear fashion.

XStandard is available in two versions: XStandard Lite is freeware, while XStandard Pro offers enhanced Web Services functionality and is sold by license. XStandard is available for downloading and evaluation online.

(http://www.xstandard.com)