Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: So What is a Guy To Do?

Author:Raymond Yee
Posted:9/29/2000; 3:21:50 PM
Topic:So What is a Guy To Do?
Msg #:21850 (In response to 21841)
Prev/Next:21849 / 21851

My sentiments exactly, Randal. We (at the UC Berkeley Interactive University) are also very interested in promoting Manila in the K-12 world -- in addition to the university world. Manila is a wonderful product, but more a "hacker tool" (as you wrote) than a polished, finished work that is so usable and so well-documented as to be absolutely compelling to the general web-using public.

You might be interested to know that about two weeks ago, I asked about where the current intense focus on Radio Userland left Userland's work on Manila. Dave responded that the focus Radio Userland still benefits Manila. However, Userland is not currently putting any more energy into Manila directly -- and therefore it's not a good time for users to offer input to userland on the future of Manila.

He added that because the Userland people use Manila internally that they will be motivated to fix it up. (i.e., "scratch their own itch"). I responded that a basic limit of the "itch scratching" philosophy is that Manila then becomes geared to web-savvy folks and not to a larger target audience (such as the K-12 world). I also asked about what usability testing has been done for Manila. (I haven't gotten any response to the last post.)

So where does some of us in the Manila community? I would say in a bit of a bind. I would walk away from Manila except for the fact that it is the only product that I can find that makes setting up dynamic, content (text)-oriented websites so easy. I could dig into the guts of Manila and potentially rewrite parts or extend it (via plugins, for example) -- but that's a lot of work, work that I have not been willing to take on so far -- and work that properly belongs to the developers at Userland.

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