Hints on keeping up with the hints...
Oct 28, '03 11:58:00AM
Contributed by: robg
In case you haven't noticed, the volume of published hints has greatly increased since Panther's release. Though this is typical with each "dot release" of OS X, the volume with Panther is unlike anything I've seen before. Since Friday, there have been nearly 200 hint submissions, and the traffic volume on the site has been staggering (compared to site averages). For example, a typical weekend day for the site is about 20,000 page views; this past weekend, we had 52,000 views on Saturday and 43,000 on Sunday! Monday's figure was 66,000 views, compared with a typical average of 34,000. The server kept up quite well, especially after I removed the 725KB movie clip that was re-downloading every time the main page loaded :).
The fast pace of hint publishing will continue for a while as I work through the backlog over the next few weeks. This is good news, but it does make browsing the site a bit tougher, so here are some hints to help you with the hints :).
- Take advantage of the new "Panther [10.3]" bar near the top of the screen. The first link in the bar displays a page listing all Panther hints that have been added since the release date; the next two links display older (pre-release date) hints that have been verified as either working or broken in Panther; and the last two links let you email me when you find an older hint that works / does not work in Panther.
- Use the Activity section of the "What's New" box to keep up with comments to previously published hints. Each date listed displays all hints and comments published on that day. So while the What's New box only shows the last 25 comments, clicking on Oct 27 will show all 197 entries (a single-day high, by far) added to the system yesterday.
- Check the hint count to determine how far "in" you should read. The counter counts hints displayed in the last 24 "rolling" hours (ie not from a certain starting point each day). If there are more than 10 recent hints, make sure you hit "Next" at the bottom of the screen to catch everything (there are a couple good ones on page two today -- anyone find the "Share your scanner" hint yet!?)
- To help me help you, please refer to the 10.3 meta-hint mentioned above to check for duplicates before you submit a new hint on Panther. Given the very high volume of submissions, I will not be able to notify you if your hint was a duplicate -- I'll just delete it and move on to the next. So save yourself some typing and check the summary hint first.
Panther marks another nice leap in both performance and features over its predecessor, and I hope the huge increase in activity here is indicative of an expanding market for OS X, both from prior OS 9 users making the move, and new Mac users migrating from other platforms. Thanks to everyone who's contributed hints and comments on the new system -- it's the community here that really makes the site work!
Comments (6)
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2003102811584827