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It's like watching a child graduate high school and head off for college. Macromedia Contribute is graduating and heading off for bigger and better opportunities. Versions 1 and 2 languished in small and mid-size offices, content to help solo players and small teams update their corporate Web sites or their corners of the company intranet. But version 3 is ready to take on the enterprise.

And really, thank goodness it's finally happening. Contribute has always been an incredibly useful application, but it was held back by not having the large team functionality and scalability that big corporations demand. Now that's changed; versions 1 and 2 were training wheels, this is the real thing.

For those hearing about Contribute for the first time, it's a tool that lets even the least tech-savvy person in your organization edit your intranet or Web site with ease. An administrator sets up editable areas in pages, so that users can only change certain things like headlines and articles. Then users open the pages and update them as if they were working in a word processor.

Most of the changes to this version revolve around enterprise functionality, such as the new review and approval system. The first versions of Contribute were for small teams or individuals, so they didn't need an automated approval process, but bigger teams need a strict workflow. Administrators can now create ordered workflows and specify who can make pages live and who can only edit pages. After Contribute users have finished updating their pages, they can send a notification for a manager to check them and make them live. The managers can send the pages back for revisions if necessary.

Contribute's toolbars haven't changed much from the last version, but now include an option to send pages for review.

Macromedia has also added functionality to the editing abilities so users can do more than just change the text. Users can now edit images within Contribute, saving them the trouble of opening a second application. Contribute doesn't have a huge amount of image-editing ability, but it will certainly do the job when you need to quickly crop a picture. Contribute now also fully supports cascading style sheets and can insert videos directly into a Web page. Finally, users can move between Contribute and external HTML editors, taking pages into Dreamweaver or other editors for a technical look around, then going back to Contribute to finish the page and send it on.

The Contribute interface hasn't changed much with this release, which was a deliberate move by the developers. The challenge was to add enterprise abilities while still keeping the interface simple and clear. If you're an existing Contribute user, you won't need to re-learn your way around.

Administrators can now create shared assets for all the organization's users. This means commonly used images or pieces of text will always be within reach. Mac users will appreciate that Contribute now supports the Safari browser and that FlashPaper, which is built into Contribute, now works with Macs.

Speaking of FlashPaper, Macromedia's answer to the PDF format, it's been updated to version 2 with this release. New features include text searching, hyperlink support, and an Office plug-in that lets Windows users access FlashPaper from within Microsoft Word. We haven't noticed FlashPaper taking the Web by storm in the year since it was introduced, but maybe this will be its year. Maybe.

Macromedia has raised Contribute's price to $149 for a single license, up from the bargain $99 of the previous versions. The upgrade price is $79, and a six-license pack costs $699. FlashPaper is now available as a standalone product for $79 for a single license.

Last, but certainly not least, Macromedia has unveiled a full content management system, the Macromedia Web Publishing System, with this release. A tightly integrated package, it consists of Macromedia Studio MX 2004 with Flash Professional, Macromedia Contribute 3, and Contribute Publishing Services (a server-based J2EE application that lets Web and IT managers centrally administer and track Web Publishing System usage). A 10-user license goes for $2,499.

Contribute takes a giant step forward with this release, and has moved into the larger world of enterprise. If you're looking for a content management and site updating system that's as easy to administer as it is to use, look to Contribute.

Click to send a page for review and you'll get a pop-up list of possible recipients.