Infragistics Team,
I have been using Infragistics tools for most of a decade, and have been supporting my developer peers in the Infragistics forums for nearly that long. I would really appreciate you giving this proposal some serious thought. I have taken a lot of time to think this through and document it for you, and I hope you will afford this suggestion appropriate consideration.
I have been chewing on an idea for a long time that would be an enhancement to the Infragistics documentation and support website.
You really need a community-driven code samples area, preferably cross-linked into the documentation.
You have made some efforts at code samples in the past... And they have been pretty good. Your staff content authors are brilliant. Tony, Craig, and Murtaza are amazing, and I love reading their stuff. The problem with each effort has had to do with goal and structure, not content. Here is a summary.
I know documentation is tedious, and is not really core to what you do (which is developing outstanding tools). Having a community code sample site would actually take some pressure off of your documentation team, because people could go to the community site to fill in the gaps. I am sure it would also take some pressure off of your support staff.
So here is what I am thinking would be features of a Community Code Samples website...
Like I said, I have put a lot of time in using your products, and fleshing out this proposal. I believe that this suggestion offers some real gains to your company in reduced documentation and support pressure. That translates to real dollars and cents in reduced support costs.
Even more than that, it will help galvanize the loyalty of your user community. Your talented users will feel appreciated, and your new users will more quickly tie in to the sense of community. That translates into real dollars and cents in increased sales and retention.
I hope you will consider it.
Thanks,
Rob Hudson
Rob, thank you for reply to your old post that I've missed!!!
I'm also a decade-customer of IG and I SUBSCRIBE ALL of your statements in your main posts. You have done a great job with great content, many thanks for having wrote the "thinking" of most of us.
PS: Microsoft it's a non standard company ... they are bigger but they move forward their brain ... not always ;). If you use VS2010 I really suggest to you VS2012, MS team have done a great job.
Regards and have a nice Halloween,Davide
A little over a year ago, we had this really valuable discussion. I haven't been active on the website this last year, because I've been focused on customer deployments and migrating off of 11.1. I am just now diving back in. I am curious what progress has been made on topics addressed in this thread.
Looking through the forums this morning, there is one thing that strikes me. It appears that the support staff are still relegated to posting their code samples into the forums, where their work is poorly categorized, and will be eventually lost. Are you guys working on a place where they can put code samples that is organized and can be easily referenced?
Also, as a source of inspiration for managing sample code, have you seen what Microsoft is doing with their OneScript website? It looks pretty genius.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/onescript/
Thanks, - Rob
Thank you very much! I have appreciated the opportunity to contribute, and I look forward to great things from Infragistics as a whole.
There are several very good reasons that you guys dominate.
-Rob
Rob:
I hope you had a good weekend! I had a few responses and answers to your last posts:
Search
The search you see on the site right now does not index the same information nor is it the same engine as what will soon power our new site. I think you'll find many of your concerns regarding search will be alleviated when we bring our new engine live. I still expect to have areas where we can improve, but I think we'll take a big step in the right direction with our new search.
Plus, remember that we're still going to have formal and loosely structured areas of the site as well. We can look into the tagging approaches you suggest. We don't have anything hierarchical planned at the moment, but we are instituting a much more rigid tagging schema which is primarily maintained by our Interaction Design Group, the same folks to oversee our APIs.
Showcase Samples
Yes, the showcase samples and the Application Samples are one in the same
Samples Browser
Again, I agree with you regarding the samples browser. What we have up today is a trimmed down version of the real browser going up with the new site. Beyond it just being less functional, we have also redesigned the navigational area with much more explicit UI elements - including page numbers in place of the cryptic dots!
Creating Dynamic Content
Good point - I was just throwing a concept your way. We'll certainly have to think through any approach. We certainly want any 'related' information to be related indeed. Again the search we using is a search appliance with an API allowing us to customize the results. This is far beyond anything we have live at the moment.
Building a Cohesive Structure
Yes - I was thinking for this to work the returned data would have to match the control or feature name and must have the 'How To' tag applied to the topic.
Code Snippets
These are great ideas. I'll chat with our Developer Support lead about your ideas when we get to the point of making the integration changes.
Crafting 'How Do I' Content
I've asked everyone on my team to read your suggestions regarding perspectives for creating content. What's nice is that some of the structural changes we're making in our writing address a few of the items you call out specifically. The inherent problem here though (as you pointed out earlier) is that since there really are so many different ways and contexts a control or feature may be used, we often find it difficult to define the right 'How to' scenarios.
Organizing 'How Do I' Content
Again - great suggestions. We'll refer back to your ideas as we develop the features.
Other Resources
I'm so glad you like the cheat sheet! Grid migration was one use I was hoping for people to find great benefit from the sheet. Right now we not doing all we can to help people find the cheat sheet, startup solutions and the like.
Notifications & RSS
The limitations of our RSS and notification systems are largely rooted in the software we're running to power our Community site. Here also, I'll spend some time with our web team to discuss how we can deal with these issues in our new website.
Best,
Craig
Quick update...
I just noticed the "RSS Subscribe" button located in the tab row used for navigation. No wonder I missed it. It's in literally the last place I would look.
When I was looking for the RSS option, I scanned the whitespace at the top, bottom, and sides of the content area. I also checked the page footer and page header. It never occurred to me that it might be in the navigation area.
Also, the Blogs page that announces the Cheatsheet does not have an RSS option, even in the navigation area.