Everyone who uses Radio wishes that it would do something different than it already does. Some wish it would do what it does better, easier, or faster. Here's my wish list. There are many like it, but this is mine.
Application
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These wishes are things that would change the application or it's general behavior.
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People love to personalize things. It's easy to do this with the weblog environment with themes (see below under Presentation). What else can you do? Add on accessory tools. Amazon Tool for easy Amazon API access is one idea.
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Vanity domain name hosting for Radio weblogs. Point the domain to an IP and let Manila's mainResponder framework handle the redirect to the static folder.
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Make FTP the primary upstream tool and xmlStorageSystem second.
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Multiple User support. With MacOS X I have multiple users running the same application. I want Radio to store user info in separate places so I have my weblog and my wife can have hers.
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Advanced features need to be better exploited, something along the lines of a Radio Lite vs. Radio Pro. The scheduler is my latest discovery--a great tool for helping an advanced user get something done, but I can't find any documentation to support it. A search through the Radio discussion group got me my answer.
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Presentation
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Suggestions here are changes that would affect how the application looked or reacted to user input
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One of the best parts of the
Radio
experience is control over your visual presentation. Advanced users have tools like HTML templates, CSS files, rendering rules and macros at their disposal. What about the beginner or casual writer? They have themes. "Bryan Bell" has come up with some great themes in the past--I use "Candid Blue" on
my site
--but he is only one person. Radio has the power to control it's own environment so why not try this:
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Imagine a Radio function that asks you questions and helps you build your theme. How many columns? What colors? What graphics? You answer and then Radio builds simple themes using CSS. It sounds like that's a neat little $19.99 add on to me.
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Default Themes more easily customized
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The default themes are easily modified with scripts since the structure is the same, but the colors change. Make up 3 or 5 structures and write Radio scripts to handle color and graphic subsitution. This would go with the Theme Generation above, sharing a common bucket of graphic, function and color elements.
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Collaboration
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The aggregator is Radio's strongest and weakest point
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Viewed through the web browser--no learning curve
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supports all flavors of syndication formats and includes infrastructure for more
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Chaning to a simpler HTML layout using CSS will allow developers to add flexible layouts without breaking the system.
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Publicly accessible page on your site so you can view the content of the aggregator's poll. Think Bloglines meets Radio. Once again, Radio has the code to do this, but needs someone to make it happen outside of the desktop website.
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Using the web interface, import OPML files to allow easy additions of subscriptions.
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Change the code so displaying the content of the aggregator is handled through a macro with a template parameter (this is a maybe, written here so I don't forget)
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Comments servers chosen from a drop down list on the pref page. Apple provides three time servers for all of it's customers world wide. It would help during times when servers are overloaded.
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Comment searching with results via XML/RSS. The comment sites are organized as Manila discussion groups, so we aren't too far off on this.
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