Ack! Dave has linked to me already.

It's only fair that I answer my own question:

Radio is the simplest tool ever made for writing the web. Your muthah could use it.

This may seem like a raging contradiction to my own earlier post today but it isn't. Defining the core design goal of Radio is a snap.

To borrow that unoriginal oft-used industry metaphor, Radio at the topmost level is the dashboard for knowledge management - I hate that concept but it is partially unavoidable in our present state of confusion.

The fact that the engine is a Ferrari can be none-of-your-business.

Or almost.

Radio's UI does a reasonable job of keeping details away from the unwary given the P2P, web service character of the product. Compared to earlier versions of Radio and even Manila, the UI is elegant. Kudos deserved.

(I won't even mention Radio's root update and download processes. Your muthah has no idea that centuries of software experience lie behind that careless power. I didn't mention it?)

However, users poke around. Select pref boxes. Deselect them. Try this. Mess with that. Even your muthah. You are now re-entering the Twilight Zone.

What is needed on the doc side (can you hear me telling myself to write this?) is sumpin that distinguishes that first end-user layer from all the rest and keeps it cleanly separated. This needs to do three things:

1. Explain in excruciatingly boring but vital detail how to do the five-minute thing and keep it going indefinitely.

2. How to reverse field safely back to 1. after you have gotten yourself into trouble by madly clicking on prefs.

3. Interpret just a bit of the Userland philosophy so that 1. and 2. are seen as an invitation to play rather than a prescription for an anti-depressant. All software is game-like (not only Civ II but even, perhaps especially, monstrosities like Microsoft Word). Many users falsely consider that a defect rather than a benefit and a clue about training themselves.

feedback:   9:26:39 AM    

Dave replies beautifully to Steve Pilgrim's excellent questions about a range of Radio capabilities.

Dave is right.  These are questions a wide range of non-technical users will have. Still, the unintentional humor here is that these questions are already extremely technical.

Radio is probably as simple as it can possibly be. Newbies who charge Userland with terminal geekiness are wrong. Frontier is a marvel of 'fit to function' as is Manila.

You really can run a weblog in Radio within five minutes.

The problem is this - Userland products invite experimentation and exploration by users. Exploratory use is the very heart of the Userland culture. But Radio embeds within it a decade of knowledge about a vast array of subjects that span nearly the entire Internet culture as well.

So, to Dave and Steve:

Roots, bugs, parts, applications, engines, subscriptions, aggregators, XML, RSS, scriptingNews, themes, folders, files, templates, upstream, community server, rendering, permalinks, post numbers, categories, routing, referer rankings, hosting, domain names, templates.

And this list emerges after Dave did a great job distinguishing as needed between using Radio in a simple fashion and digging under the hood.

It is not Userland's responsibility to explain the entire Internet to every user. It isn't even Userland's responsibility to provide a raft of written documentation. Caveat Emptor. Forty bucks for software with power untouchable for four hundred bucks or maybe any bucks.

The discussion forum is full of folks - many of them arch-geeks - with a respectful attitude to questioners and a willingness to supply lore at any time.

Yet, if only Radio were as powerfully and fittingly documented as it is designed and programmed.

If it were, millions might use it.

feedback:   8:31:56 AM    

All right. I haven't drunk the Kool-Aid but I have sipped from the cup. I bought RadioUserland.

No apologies, far from it.

Userland not only makes something close to the best software out there in its category (whatever the heck that is) but far more importantly it creates the most interesting software. Forty bucks is a very, very small price to pay for watching real minds at work.

So what the heck is it?

The best way to create a web site? Write for the Web? Program for the Web? Create web services? Drive yourself nuts trying to understand what the heck it is?

Yes.

feedback:   8:06:23 AM