In the iceplant lab, located in Berkeley, California, I've been busy creating a new Radio UserLand theme. It's my version of a web standards based template that was made available under a Creative Commons license by the CSS Gods at WestCiv.
A few hours have past and I've made good progress. At first I thought I'd just throw in a few Radio macros, add some sugar and spice, and poof! A new Radio theme. Ha! Well, it's not that it's terribly difficult to create a Radio theme. It's more that, as I started working on it, I realized that I really want to release something useful and well done, with little bits of style here and there. So, that's the hold-up. I'm busy digging in. Hopefully I can crank this out before I hit the playa. If not, you'll have to wait till I'm back to see the fruits of my pre-labor day labor.
Looking for more Radio themes? Check out the theme library at UserLand.
In my new role as product manager for Radio, I'm hoping to find a developer that will build a tool to sync enclosures. Care to give UserTalk a try?
Steve Kirks
I too have been thinking about a Radio enclosure tool that I call Radio Activate. I am brushing up on my UserTalk, but I've a long way to go before I can actually code this thing. Whoever creates this tool, I know I'll be using it.
Over on the Radio discussion board, I'm engaged in a discussion on how Radio ftp functions work.
Radio makes it possible to upload any of your categories to it's own ftp server. That's how this Radio Missing Manual site and my Coral Reef Report site are configured. They are just categories in Radio that I have created. After I created the categories I set them up to automatically ftp to their own server, which means they can now be accessed via their own URL, not like this /categories/coralReefReport/.
Radio has a news aggregator but I've not used it for a long time. I use NetNewsWire to read my RSS feeds instead. Unfortunately, NNW doesn't handle enclosures. Enclosures are files that can be attached to RSS feeds and automatically downloaded by an enclosure aware aggregator, such as Radio UserLand.
So, I've added those feeds to my Radio subscriptions list. I've configured Radio to accept and download enclosures. And finally, I turned my Radio aggregator back on so it can check for RSS feeds with enclosures that have been updated recently. If there is an enclosure, Radio will download it at night when I'm asleep, ready for listening, viewing, using in the morning.
What next? I intend to watch Adam's enclosure to iPod project closely and implement it myself when the time is right. That way mp3 enclosures will not only be downloaded to my computer, they will automatically be added to my iTunes list and synced up with my iPod.
I use Radio daily so I could benefit from this as well.
I believe there is room for another site about Radio.
UserLand just reinforced their commitment to Radio by hiring Steve Kirks as Radio Product Manager.
Because I want to.
After explaining how a Radio tool called radioEditThisPage works, I got this response from Hetty, another Radio UserLand user.
Some time ago I bought that Radio Kick Start book. The only problem is, people like me need something like The Missing Radio Manual. What we now have is a sort of a descriptive 'grammar' of radio for people who already learned and know 'grammar'. I don't mean a book 'for dummies' (I'm not a dummy, as I had in my windows days, installed Linux on the HD), but a book that explains things the way you just did.
Gee, thanks Hetty. Here's how I explained it.
You install the tool. You add a macro to your #itemTemplate.txt file like this:
<%radioEditThisPageSuite.myRadioEdit ()%>
And then you publish your home page. Now, you'll notice two little dot's were inserted where you placed the macro. Click on one of those dots and Radio will come to the front, with the post all ready to be edited. Make your edits, save them and then the post will be pushed to your Radio site.
I hear you Hetty. As a Radio user, I've been plugging away at this amazing little engine for a few years and I'm still learning new things. Thanks to books like Frontier: The Definitive Guide by Matt Neuburg and Radio UserLand Kickstart by Rogers Cadenhead, as well as the various Radio self help sites floating around the web, and most importantly, the community of people who help answer questions, I've been able to get quite a bit done on the web.
Of course, I've got plenty of web bookmarks for Radio sites. I've got little notes stashed here and there that I refer to when I want to extend Radio in some fashion. I'll bet you and other Radio users do as well. Since this is the web, and I've adopted Radio's tagline as my own, I'm going to move those tidbits from my computer, into this site, created in Radio, of course, and do my part to contribute to the world of Radio users who have the power of Web publishing on their desktop.
How will this site be different? We'll have to see but I am going to do my best to think like a newbie and keep it simple. What's a newbie? A person new to something, such as Radio or spelunking. I am not a Radio newbie. I am not a Radio programmer, either. I'm a Radio user. And I'm hooked.
