Top Ten List of "Instant" Enhancements For Radio
As I've written before, Radio UserLand is great for people who are satisfied with the bare bones two templates and don't care about changing anything. It's also great for programmers. But for people in the middle -- the huge group that wants some customization but doesn't know how to code -- 8.0 is very much of a take it or leave proposition.
A Top Ten List of Improvements for Non-Programmers
1. More templates. The two templates are nicely designed, but pretty bare bones. If you want any boxes, a place for links, pictures, etc., you've got to code everything yourself.
2. Instant navigation bars. "a href" -- gimme a break. There's no reason I should have to use HTML to place and insert hyperlinks for, as an example, favorite sites that I'd like to list in a left or right column.
3. Instant photo placement. I read the instructions for inserting a photo or graphic. Yeah, right. I want to click on a photo or graphic (or browse within my files), place it within my text, and then have an easy way to crop and align it.
4. Instant contact information. What's my name, address, phone, e-mail address, etc.? How about a box on the home page?
5. Categories listed on the home page and, optionally, on all pages, for everyone to see. A high level table of contents. This has enormous potential. Categories would be navigational bars on steroids. For example -- My Digital Photo Weblog -- with categories: My Equipment, My Photos, Tips for Photos, My Photo Trips. By listing categories this way, you really could turn a Weblog into a much more powerful and useful product. But they've got to be listed on the pages!
6. Subcategories or subsections. Based on the previous suggestion, you have a category of My Photo Trips, with the subcategories of My Alaskan Trip, My Grand Canyon Trip, etc. Hey people -- wake up -- when you want to search for information, do you immediately think about using a calendar? How about turning categories into a truly useful organizational tool?
7. Instant bullet points and horizontal/vertical lines. An instant way to insert bullets or graphics that serve as bullet points, plus horizontal and vertical lines, could go long way towards making long sections of text easy to read.
8. Instant boxes/tables. Click an icon and be able to insert a table according to columns and rows. Enter text, enter a graphic. Include a hyperlink.
9. Instantly modifiable themes. Don't like the red border running from top to bottom down the left? Change it to blue. Don't like the graphic of a circle in the top left corner? Click on another graphic and insert it. Want a green calendar rather than a black calendar? Click on the color chart.
10. Weblog + Web site. A combination Radio Userland v.X.X + authoring tool like MS FrontPage. I won't hold my breath for this!
Bottom line: I like what Radio UserLand 8.0 can do, but its power isn't available to me.
5:48:15 PM 
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