The first time you refer to the product use its full name: Radio UserLand. You may refer to it as Radio after that.

Avoid judgmental statements. "Radio will normally publish your weblog.." -- No. There's nothing abnormal about switching a pref. Hunt for a better word. Normal is judgmental. Tech writing must be neutral. Further it only feels normal in Dec 2001. For all we know it may be normal next year for people to have five buttons on their home page. We can't predict the future.

Whenever possible I try to put new prefs panels at the end of their sections, so as not to break links in the mail list archives. THis was one of those cases when it should have been at the end. It's an advanced pref, controlling the UI, not for newbies. It wouldn't hurt anything if it were the last item in the list.

Use an active voice -- get on the user's side asap. Explain the feature from the user's pov, not the developer's. There's a real tendency for developers to explain why it works the way it works, as opposed to saying "you should do this if." Adopting this attitude makes for better designed software too, in addition to users who feel like we're on their side.

9:25:52 AM