Purchasing a licence

Alex, if one purchases the grid control, does one get better API documentation? The grid control you have written is awesome, however, documentation is very sketchy. If my company is going to make a purchase, they need to see documentation.

Please advise

We just bought a license a few days ago. There is not difference in the provided documentation. I know from an email conversation with Alex that he is aware of the problem with the documentation and I have the impression he is working on a solution.

I have one suggestion that could help the documentation situation. I have just started using the grid and the forum has been a help but you have to wade through a lot of material to find an answer.

I suggest that answers to some of the common questions be posted in their own threads that have specific keywords in their titles (I assume the search function includes title in the search fields).

For example Alex (and others) could post answers in their own thread in the form howto: blah blah blah. or code sample: ...

Just a suggestion.

I agree, the forum is a rich source of information and on the same side it is not easy to find answers; and sometimes I cannot find it all even if it is there--until someone else knows about and posts the link.

My company took the risk with the documentation problem and it is now up to me to at least document all my solutions findings. But this is still better than not having this great library for our online reporting system.

...and of course more examples would be a great help!

Yes, more documentation and examples would be nice. However, using just this forum, so far I've solved every challenge I've faced with making this amazing grid do just what I wanted. I've got everything I've needed by:
1) reading through every contribution so far (it took a while);
2) regularly checking new entries in case they have relevance; and
3) where I've been totally stumped, posting a few questions of my own (which Alex or someone else has answered promptly).

The grid already does everything I need (so I'm not hanging out for any updates or new versions). And, for me, having to rely on the forum to learn the grid's secrets is a small price to pay for the benefits of having the grid in the first place.

Thanks again.

Yes, I agree that documentation requires a lot more work. Here is what I am doing currently:

1. Merge documentation pages and forum - (done) see this as an example:

http://www.activewidgets.com/general.faq/

I will group existing forum threads together under related documentation page. If someone starts new forum thread as a comment to documentation page - the thread stays attached to this page.

2. Make documentation pages editable (done, see 'edit this page' link top right). I would very much appreciate any help in writing docs, so anyone who can add a few lines, please do it.

http://www.activewidgets.com/grid.examples/

3. Install better site search script - what would you recommend (php/mysql)?

4. And actually write missing docs - I don't promise this magically happen overnight, but I will spend more time on this in the next 3-4 weeks.

Alex,

Re better site search. I don't know how you are doing your search now but I do a lot with MySQL keyword indexing. Works very nice and returns a match quality value that allows you to sort by relevance.

The keyword indexing did not work well until MySQL 4.0.12 or so. If you need, let me know and I can share some code. (ken dot gregg at rwre dot com)

I also just found some php Bayesian filter code that could help automate the classification of forum threads. Have not had a chance to play with it yet but it looks interesting.

http://www.phpgeek.com/pragmacms/index.php?layout=main&cslot_1=14

Alex,

Check out mnogosearch for a site search, those dudes rock.

Thank you very much for the suggestions, I will probably try mnogosearch. And Bayesian filters/classifications were recently discussed at Joel-on-software forum too...