Outlines are structured documents, primarily text, organized as a tree-like hierarchy of paragraphs. They are created with an outliner.
Radio comes with one: bring the Radio application to the front of your desktop, then select the File /New menu option (click the 'camera' wedge for screenshots).
You can easily move branches of the tree (nested paragraphs) around the document by clicking and dragging.
You may also hide or reveal the branches below any given node by clicking on its 'wedge', usually a small triangular symbol.
Outlines are a great way of presenting complex information in an organized way, providing several layers of relevance, according to which section or level of the outline is currently expanded.
If you've managed to read this presentation down to this very paragraph (or node btw), you know what I mean :-)
Outlines are also used to present and maintain all sorts of data collections, from directories to 'todo' lists.
activeRenderer upstreams outlines to your weblog's public site.
Radio's outliner saves outlines in an XML based format called OPML - stands for Outline Processor Markup Language. Several other outliners, such as OmniOutliner for MacOS X or JOE for Java can do the same. Besides, Radio automatically upstreams all files stored under its www folder to the public weblog site.
activeRenderer catches all OPML files upstreamed from the outlines subfolder of www, and translates the OPML into dynamic HTML, so that the published version may be read in modern Web browsers.
The outlines folder is automatically created in www when you instal activeRenderer.
Check out Tutorial 1 for more details on how to create your first outline (or expand the tutorial by clicking the 'up arrow' wedge). Pages rendered by activeRenderer rely on CSS styling and a little Javascript to make the collapse/expand/include features common to outliners available directly in the Web browser.
The resulting DHTML code works well with most recent, standard compliant web browsers. It has been tested succesfully with MSIE 5/6 and Gecko based browsers such as Mozilla and Firebird.
Opera, OmniWeb and Safari fans should wait for their favorite browser to make progress on the CSS and Javascript front. Safari is getting closer these days.
Publish Web pages organized as outlines, complete with expandable paragraphs/nodes and rich media content.
You can link to these outlined stories from your weblog's home page.
Style your weblog pages as an outline, as I do in activeRenderer's news page.
Each date heading, and optionally each entry's title is rendered as an outline node.
Add active blogrolls to your site's pages, such as the one featured on Jon Udell's technology column (look in the right sidebar, below the Google box).
Blogrolls are organized directories of links, saved as OPML documents.
activeRoll is a UserTalk macro for publishing blogrolls as active outlines, complete with expand/collapse wedges.
You should insert it into your page's template.
Expand this node, or check Tutorial 4 for details.
Publish your browser bookmarks as an active blogroll.
The activeBookmarks feature keeps track of your browser's bookmarks (or favorite links) and publishes a copy as an OPML outline file.
These outlined bookmarks may be rendered automatically on your public web site if the OPML file is stored under the outlines sub-folder of www.
They may also provide the source of an activeRoll if stored under the opml sub-folder of www.
Browse through your outlines repository (the content of your outlines folder), or through all kinds of news feeds, published in RSS format.
As of version 2.0, the activeRenderer browser also displays RSS news.
Click the News, World and Search tabs of the left selector tool and start browsing.
