Mapping Your Weblog to the Desktop Application

The Radio desktop application contains every command you find in your desktop weblog in your Internet browser. Realizing this invites us to explore the wider world of Radio Userland.

Are you ready to experiment? To do so, you must open your weblog as well as open Radio's desktop application.

The Radio Menu In The Desktop Application

With the desktop application open, check out its 'Radio' menu. You will see items like Web Server, Local Pages, Cloud Pages, Templates and more. Most of the commands further referenced by these menus match up neatly with the same commands within your weblog's browser interface.

Commands in the desktop application that match up to those in the weblog interface behave identically. 

So, you can manage your weblog either from your Web browser or within the desktop application.

Do note one important exception, though. You will still want to edit your posts within the weblog browser interface. You can do it within the desktop application but it isn't convenient.

This said, the desktop application offers you a full-blown writing and outlining environment suitable for many other tasks. That is a subject for another day.

Local Pages Within The Radio Menu

I will describe here the behavior of just one of the command sections within the Radio menu - Local Pages. Do this:

1. Open the Radio desktop application (if it is not already open).

2. Select "Home Page" from Local Pages.

Whoa!

Interesting, eh? This loads (opens) your weblog home page in your browser.

In other words, for many operations, whether you select commands within your weblog browser or within the desktop application, you will be routed back to your weblog interface.

Try Them All

Notice that the second command option within the Local Pages section of the Radio menu is 'Categories'. Select this to load the Categories page within the Prefs section of your weblog in your browser. Makes sense, eh?

Take my invitation and click on every last one of the commands in the Local Pages section of the Radio menu within the desktop application. You will break nothing - I guarantee it.

And The Point Of This Was ... ?

This exercise may leave you wondering, "if all the desktop application does is route me to my weblog interface, why bother?"

Well, fine. You never need to learn a thing about the desktop application to run your weblog.

My purpose here was to expand your mind just a little and - more importantly - your comfort level for working within the desktop application. Here is a more pertinent question. What do we find in the Radio desktop application beyond commands already available in the weblog interface?

... A sophisticated outliner for writing and brainstorming anything whatsoever about everything - whether or not such is published later by you to your weblog or other web sites.

... A fully functional desktop web server.

... Support for developing and deploying any number of personal web sites beyond the multiple weblogs supported in the weblog user interface - whether locally or to the Internet.

... Developer access to the complete programming (ok, scripting) language from which Radio was developed in case you yearn to build new Radio tools or extend Radio to suit your own fancy.

... All the databases which compose the Radio environment - open and accessible to your inspection and extension.

The open secret about Radio is that it is a only moderately constrained subset of Userland's full-blown publishing environment (Frontier and Manila). So, by learning Radio, you also open the way to mastery of Frontier.

Hey, not bad for forty bucks.

Indeed, outrageous.

While most of us are not programmers, you wouldn't be publishing a weblog if you didn't feel comfortable composing the occasional English (or German, French, Dutch, Swedish ....) sentence. Userland has expended tremendous energy over 20 years thinking about ways to help us write - most recently, to the Web.

Indeed, while weblogs are the carrot, an outline-enabled thinking and writing environment - on and off the Web - has always been the end goal.

So, at a minimum, give the Radio menu of the desktop application a whirl. And, hey, have some fun, okay? It's only software.