Lists For Use

Fraser Spiers complains that Tinderbox has the graphic pizzaz of an IC layout program. Of course, that's the point: we're not trying to be pretty. We've got a lot of work to do; pizzaz is fun, but the work is what matters.

For example, take that list of sites I mentioned yesterday. We'll put the short title of the organization in the note title, and we'll put the main URL in the URL attribute.

We can turn this into a blogroll instantly, with a simple template. And we can make everything in this list have a common prototype, *protoOrganization, so that the URL will be a key attribute. We'll add an action to the container so the prototype is assigned automatically.

• Need to add new organizations? Just hit return. Or drag a link or a bookmark from the browser.
• Need to reformat the blogroll? Just change the stylesheet.
• Want to add an organization but don't want it on the blogroll? Just turn off HTML Export.
• Want to know how many organizations we've got so far? Select the blogroll and Get Info.
• Want to make some notes about the organization? We aren't using the text of these notes yet; just type.

What we've done, really, is to build a smart personal application for our personal research. It's taken only minutes to set this up. If our work changes, it's not a huge investment; we've lost five minutes. But if we spend any time at all on this, we'll save lots of time by getting the information down, ensuring it's organized, and keeping it flexible and open to change.