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Less than a year ago, Macromedia introduced Contribute, an application ideally suited to lower the stress levels of intranet and Internet designers. It lets users create pages with any builder they like, then designate sections of those pages as editable by the people providing the content.

Using Contribute, content providers can freshen pages but can't tamper with anything else. Think of the program as a "butterfingers-blocker." So your sales department can update the specials being offered, but they can't monkey with the margins or change the logos unless the designer allows them to.

Contribute obviously fills a need for those who find FrontPage or Dreamweaver too hard or unnecessarily complicated, so we weren't surprised that Macromedia reported strong sales for version 1.0. What did surprise us was that version 2.0 was released so soon after.

Contribute 2.0 offers strong features for small businesses and globe-trotting workers. It even brings the power of Contribute to Mac users, and delivers improved security. But it's still not an enterprise solution, just as the first version wasn't. Its lack of scalability means that Contribute is still better suited for small- to mid-sized offices or teams.

The PayPal wizard to quickly sets up a shopping cart system in Contribute.

Even though this is an editing tool, the editing interface is largely untouched with this update. Perhaps Macromedia didn't want to change what already worked well. Instead, the improvements add broader functionality. The new feature that first caught our eye is the PayPal e-commerce system, which lets any small business owner create a shopping cart system in minutes. After you've built your product pages, you simply use the PayPal wizard to add shopping links and set up an account. It's easy enough for non-techies to understand at once, and there are no transaction or set-up fees. Instead, PayPal takes a small percentage of each sale. To the user, it looks like any other professional, credit-card-enabled shopping cart system.

Contribute 2.0 improves security with support for SFTP (secure FTP), which makes it compatible with some government and educational sites that require strict security. This version also provides stronger connection capabilities, which will be appreciated by road warriors who need to log on from temperamental dial-up ports. Connecting through firewalls and working with various kinds of server and network configurations is easier with this version's high-performance, threaded architecture.

Creating a FlashPaper insert with a formatted document is a drag-and-drop operation.

Also new to Contribute is the inclusion of Macromedia's FlashPaper, a system for placing formatted documents, like brochures, into Web sites. While we still prefer PDF for formatted docs, FlashPaper has a certain charm. You can browse documents within a page, scroll through them, zoom in, and even print. Take a look at the sample on Macromedia's site to see how it works. Creating FlashPaper docs with Contribute is a simple drag-and-drop operation. FlashPaper only works with the Windows 2000 and XP versions of Contribute.

Macromedia is one of the most diligent companies for delivering Macintosh support, and while the first version of Contribute was Windows-only, version 2.0 was Mac-compatible from day one. The Mac interface has an OS X look and feel, and will be easily navigable for Mac users. In a feature that we can't imagine actually being used, the Mac version of Contribute will look for and automatically link to iTools accounts set up on the host computer. But seeing as Contribute is meant for teams (with a designer to set up the pages and contributors to update them) and iTools is suited for modest personal homepages, it seems like an uneasy fit. Certainly even the smallest company would hire a professional Web hosting service.

When first running Contribute, Macintosh users with .Mac accounts will be asked it they'd like to create a connection.

For those who like the idea of Contribute, but would want to deploy it across a large company, version 3.0 is the one to watch for. In a product meeting, Macromedia reps told us that this version of Contribute was meant to shore up the feature set and bring Mac users online, but that version 3.0 will expand into enterprise.

If you already have Contribute 1.0, you can't afford not to upgrade. Until September 30, upgrades are only $9.99 (compared to $49 thereafter). Individual licenses are $99, as with version 1.0, with savings for 5- and 10-pack bundles. Contribute 2.0 works with Windows 98 SE, Me, 2000, and XP, and Mac OS 10.1.5 or 10.2.x.