Radio Userland Nausea

Well, much as I love this weblog (i.e., the free editing interface, the free server, the free filespace), I have to say once again that Dave Winer's software is not for the casual user. I tried downloading and using the (yes, free) beta of Radio Userland as a remote editing tool tonight. I had read on Scripting News that it was an easy way to edit a Manila site (which these weblogs on Weblogs.com are).

After about an hour of reading all the most likely documentation, and trying and failing to proceed, and watching Radio Userland repeatedly pop up a dialogue to inform me about a missing file (why would I care?) I finally gave up. Into the trashcan with the RU folder. No, I didn't search the Radio Userland mailing list archives. I said casual user, remember?

It really isn't that big of a surprise. Documentation on Userland software has always trailed functionality, at least when I followed that sort of thing. And I'd guess you have to have a huge commitment to learning the system, since when this thing comes out of beta, it'll likely cost something similar to Frontier (another Userland product), which goes for nine hundred some dollars a year. Too rich for my pockets.

So I'll just keep using the forms interface to Weblogs.com, and accept that that's going to be the only way I'll be editing this weblog (that and precomposing articles in BBEdit). Unless you are a professional webmaster, or a young person with lots of time and energy, you probably should too.