Michael: maybe I didn’t get my point across. It isn’t the usability of the individual actions that are tricky for me. I worked out pretty fast how to look at stars, and how to add stars and so forth. My issue was more that I didn’t understand what the connection was between being able to attach a message to a star and the book. However, as I can’t read the “read about the book” then I may just be misremembering things. Once there is a new stable version of flash out that lets me look at it then I’ll revisit it.

Personally, I have always felt that a large part of what makes the site unique is that it ‘pushes’ the user ever-so-slightly. It requires a little imagination, willingness to explore and an open mind.

More directly, I don’t think the site really needs an explanation (let alone an FAQ). At startup a user is presented with, ‘create a star’, ‘search the stars’ or ‘read about the book’, all of which seem to me to clearly indicate what they do. In terms of usability, most everything has an explanation of how to use it.

I think the commenter’s real problem is that he is looking for a box into which he can neatly fit the site—and there isnt one. Even just re-reading through his comment, ‘it is very hard to work out what the point of creating a star is or who you are supposed to dedicate stars to or what they do’. What’s the point? Who you are supposed to dedicate stars to? What they do? To me, the beauty of the site lies in the fact that the answer to every one of those questions depends solely on who you ask, and what it means to them.

I think that if you are going to have a tech that is *so* fussy about which version of flash you have installed (ie a specific release of the latest minor revision) then you should probably have some more elegant failure processes in the detection process.

“You have version 9,0,31,0 installed”

Which version do I actually need?