Dan Rubin, of superflousbanter fame, is looking to create a Designer CMS on Rails. I would have loved it if he said he was looking to create a Designer CMS on .NET 
. My goals for ActiveType are very much inline with what he outlined in his post.
- Easy to incorporate into existing projects
- Easy to integrate with new projects
- Easy to tweak without being a programmer
- Easy to use (for designers, developers and clients)
I still have a ways to go before I get there but I think I'm making progress. I recently had a designer create a new UI for the CMS Administrative interface (screenshots coming soon) which should make the overall experience of working the ActiveType much better for content contributors. My overall goal is to allow most users to do 99% of the tasks required for managing their site directly through the in-context toolbars and menus. More advanced tweaks to the system will still require launching the administration interface, but, the majority of users should be able to just browse to the page or folder they want to update and use the editor toolbar to quickly incorporate their changes into the site.
If Dan get's any traction with his Rails powered CMS I'll be sure to check it out for inspiration!