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New feature - a real Frequently Asked Questions system! Site News
The "Frequently Asked Questions" list that I post here occasionally had gotten quite out of date -- it was last update in January! Instead of updating it and just letting the same thing happen again in the future, I went looking for a better solution.

After a bit of Googling, I found what I was looking for in Eclectic Designs' CascadianFAQ FAQ engine. This is a simple freeware PHP and MySQL product that makes creating and maintaining a FAQ list much easier. While there are many products in this category (and I looked at a few of them), I liked CascadianFAQ's simple setup and minimal formatting (which made it easy to wrap in the macosxhints layout). I had it up and running within five minutes, and wrapped in the site's look a few minutes after that.

So after a bit of work this weekend to transfer the existing FAQ content, I'm pleased to announce that the new official macosxhints.com FAQ is now online. Feel free to peruse the question and answers, and use the submission form if there's something you're interested in having added to the list. There's also a new FAQ link in the site's top menu (it replaced the About link, as all that info is now contained in the FAQ).

-rob.
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New feature - a real Frequently Asked Questions system! | 8 comments | Create New Account
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Ooof! (*gasp*) Ya got me...
Authored by: 1e6 on Aug 17, '03 11:08:37PM

Okay, I note that it IS truth-in-advertisingly-wise labeled as being for Frequently Asked QUESTIONS... which explains, I suppose the fact that there's no ANSWER to "When are you going to update the OS X Solutions Guidebook?"...? ;-)

But seriously -- overall, it looks great! A much appreciated upgrade to the site. Thanks!

/David

P.S. If there's an option to include step-forward and step-back to next/previous FAQ, respectively, I might use 'em. Or a way to let them all unfurl, Q's and A's both, when a category is selected. Ya see, you've spoiled me pretty good with the routine of headline plus hint, and I guess the more the FAQ looked like that, the more natural it might feel.

P.P.S. Or, I'm just an old dog barking because he's being asked to learn a new trick. Ya think?



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Missed one :)
Authored by: robg on Aug 18, '03 08:25:19AM

OK, added an answer there ... and I'm looking into tweaking the PHP code to spit out a few different views, but it might take a couple weeks to get to it. Shouldn't be hard once I do find the time, though...

-rob.



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New feature - a real Frequently Asked Questions system!
Authored by: JohnnyMnemonic on Aug 18, '03 01:18:01AM

I don't know if it should, or is, included with the FAQ--but I think it would be handy to have a Top 10 (or 25, or whatever) greatest hints. You could even have subscribers or registered users vote on the hint they find the most interesting, useful, or obscure.

There are A LOT of hints here. I've read most of them, but not every one--and I would be interested to know what others think are the most interesting hints. Also, a "greatest hits" would give a newbie a place to start with customizing their work environment, rather than having to search for their solution--since searching requires that they already know the right question to ask, and the right vocabulary to use (which many don't).



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New feature - a real Frequently Asked Questions system!
Authored by: jimhill on Aug 18, '03 02:29:55AM

A Greatest Hi(n)ts would be kinda nifty. Don't know how much work coding a dynamic one up would be, but two quick thoughts come to mind, each of which would require implementing a per-hint user feedback mechanism.

The simplest would be "Was this hint useful to you" with scores of +1, 0, -1 assigned to Yes, Neutral, No...Add the scores and the N highest-scored hints would appear on the dynamic page. I could see this breaking down, though, in the same way that the IMDB ratings is flawed: recent movies/hints get higher scores just because people rate while feeling warm and fuzzy or cold and embittered.

A more complex feedback mechanism would allow people to rank a hint from 0 (useless) to N (greatest hint ever in the history of great hints), and the list of greatest hi(n)ts would be formed from some numerical weighting scheme -- probably a simple mean.

Either of these is subject to deliberate skewing...sadly, most "rate this!" online stuff is. Given that we don't see competing hints here so much as we see "Here's a(nother| better) way to do it" in the feedback sections, perhaps it could work out.

Again, I don't know how much work it would be -- or how much time the new proud poppa has for feature-growth, but I really do like the idea of a greatest hi(n)ts -- maybe even one for each major section of the site: Classic, Networking, etc.


---
Mac OS X: Because making UNIX simple is easier than debugging Windows.



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New feature - a real Frequently Asked Questions system!
Authored by: samsprograms on Aug 18, '03 08:01:42AM

Click on Stats at the top and look around......



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New feature - a real Frequently Asked Questions system!
Authored by: jimphelps on Aug 18, '03 09:50:55AM

How tightly does the FAQ integrate with Geeklog? Is it completely separate? It looks like you have feeds into Geeklog from the FAQ manager.

Another Geeklog user,

Jim Phelps



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New feature - a real Frequently Asked Questions system!
Authored by: WAW401 on Aug 18, '03 04:12:05PM

also interested in how easy it is to integrate w/ Geeklog



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I'll write it up...
Authored by: robg on Aug 18, '03 04:26:38PM

It's what I would call a "very very light" integration. In other words, there's no database sharing between the two systems. I just wrapped the Geeklog template calls into Cascadian FAQ's code so that it would look good. Any macosxhints URLs in the actual FAQs were put their manually when I wrote the FAQ entry.

Not having the two systems' databases tied together isn't a big problem for me, as I'll be the only user of the FAQ system...

If I find the time, I'll write up a brief UNIX hint explaining what I did.

-rob.



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