You've seen the ad on the site; Experts Exchange is getting ready to roll out major revisions to the site that we believe will make it easier to get your questions answered, and if you are an Expert, will make it easier to focus on the zones you are interested in.

There are three major areas that we are changing.

The first is the Question Wizard. When you ask your question, you won't have to navigate to a zone to make sure it is in the right place. The Wizard will look at your question and your title, looking for keywords. Based on what you tell the Wizard, it will suggest a number of possible places to put your question, and you can choose up to three; there will be no need to create those 20-point "pointer" questions. It will be important to make sure you include important information -- like a version number or what language you are coding in.

The second has to do with the number of topic areas -- we're calling them zones -- and how you find your way around them. You will see a new set of tabs across the top of the page; some will be familiar, like Databases, while others are new. Almost every zone can be reached through at least two of these tabs. For example, the Windows XP zone can be reached through the Microsoft tab, the Operating Systems tab, the Software tab, and even a few others. We have also added somewhere around 750 new zones, including a ton on Digital Living -- zones like iPods, Televisions and Home Security. Almost every flavor of Linux is listed now, as is almost every Database program, and we have beefed up the Storage, Security, Programming and Hardware zones as well.

The third is the Expert Tab, which will probably be the page you will bookmark if you are answering questions. You create a filter for the questions you want to see. For example, if you want to see all of the Open Questions in Windows XP and Windows Vista, but only want those worth more than 250 points, you can create a filter for that. The filter will also notify you of new questions; you can get an immediate notification, or an hourly or daily digest. There is no limit to the number of filters you can create, and you can have different notification schedules -- or no notification at all -- for each of them. When you get to the Expert Tab, you can simply run the filter, and it will give you the results; from there, you can go to any question.

Also on the Expert Tab are views of both questions you are a participant in and questions you are monitoring.

angelIII joined Experts Exchange in March 2000, and has been a long time contributor in the SQL topic area. He has also achieved over a dozen other topic areas to reach the 10,000,000 point level (and recently went over 11 million), so we asked him what keeps him going.

How did you first find Experts Exchange?

Well, I cannot remember how I found Experts-Exchange. It must have been in the context of a development issue I had at that time, and using some search engine I found a "solution" on EE.

What made you start answering questions?

Shortly after finding my solutions on EE, I noticed that I could also answer some questions, giving back to the EE community what I took from it: knowledge.

What do you get out of answering questions (besides 10,000,000 points)?

In short: Knowledge.
This might sound contradictory, but it's simple: by looking at problems that I don't know initially, I test them out, and learn often something new about things while answering.
Two other points:
* I hope that by my contribution, more and more beginners (newbies) do less "crap", i.e., better development.
* With my contribution, less time is lost when searching for problems...

Tell us a little about yourself -- the who, what, where stuff.

"Little" is a problem here, simply because I do a lot of stuff. Apart from my job where I am some kind of Billing Manager, Database Administrator, Developer, Analyst, Troubleshooter, Documenter etc., I do a lot of EE. Being married since 3+ years now, I am a happy father of a 14-month-old daughter (Kira, not yet on EE). A lot of hobbies, where I do combine my computer knowledge, as I am webmaster of the sites of the three clubs I am in: chess (angeliii.an.funpic.de), music (www.grevenmacher.lu/hmg/, in migration), and gospel choir (www.thediols.lu). Another activity: collecting stamps. Well, not very much these days, too much on EE :-)
I live in Grevenmacher, Luxemburg.

What do you do when you're not doing Experts Exchange?

Most of the time, see the list of hobbies above. Of course, I spend as much time with my daugther as possible!

What got you started in the IT business?

My education, after high-school, was twi years of kind of university-level studies in development. Having the best results of the class, I had no need to send a CV around; I got interviewed by some companies off the bat. I only changed jobs in February this year from that company to the company I work right now... I guess for another 8 years :-)

What got you interested in Exchange?

Actually, I was first a developer (VB5-VB6), and had to complete the MCSD certification. <whispering>I still use those to develop small utilities</whispering>. As most applications have some kind of database (my first one was on Oracle 7.3), I learned also the databases stuff. The second project was SQL Server (7), and as the company was a Microsoft Partner, I "had to" stick with that (also got forced to do the MCDBA certification).
After that, I had to work for other customers on Oracle, so was "forced" to learn that database product... To finish, for personal projects, I used MS Access a lot, and for the recent web projects, got used to MySQL. That turned out to be a good investment for my current company, where MySQL is used for some databases.

ericpete is the editor of the Experts Exchange newsletter. He considers the main benefit to doing that job to be the opportunity to write -- something he has done professionally since he was a young boy.

When I was just a lad, my father helped me learn to lay out newspaper pages. Since dinner and new shoes were dependent on the success of advertising and the resulting revenue, it was important, he said, to consider what happens when someone looks at a newspaper page. The eye travels, generally speaking, in a particular route, and one had to set up the page to take advantage of it, trying to compel the reader to stay on the page longer, which makes it more likely he will see the advertising and hopefully respond to it. "Four seconds", he said. "That's all the time you have to get their attention."

So I was a little tickled when I received an article from my better half that described the results of a study that says that online retailers get about four seconds before a user will go to another website to buy an item. That's it: about the length of time it will take you to read this paragraph.

I've always thought pretty much the same thing about websites, though. It seems reasonable that the short attention spans attributed to newspaper readers wouldn't be improved by delivering something electronically, so I asked some of Experts, who do various levels of web development, what they thought. Their comments:

periwinkle: It occurs to me that what matters to people isn't actually a fast loading time, but instead, the appearance of fast loading time. Let me explain.
 
Over a decade ago, I worked for a company which produced a DOS-based RDBMS (relational database management system) software. While producing new versions, we went through our collected list of feature requests. One request was faster loading time.
 
Now, in this next version we had added a number of index checking routines which actually was going to increase the load time from about 8 seconds to about 11 seconds (in those days, things moved slower on 110 MB harddrives and 256K of memory), and our clients were asking for it to load faster. One programmer came up with an idea, which we implemented and placed in front of our beta testers. We added an informational screen which loaded first... and updated, depending upon where things were in the loading cycle. Ironically, our beta testers were thrilled with how much "faster" the product loaded.
 
Similarly, much later in that company which then produced a Windows database product, they developed a web interface that pulled a full set of records before displaying on the screen. They found if they displayed the first record and continued to download the full data set, that clients were much happier.
 
In this world of high speed Internet, people's tolerance for waiting has grown much shorter. I suspect that this is one of the reasons for the development of AJAX, which allows changes to be displayed without reloading the full page -- rather similar, in some ways, to the display of the first record while pulling the full record down from the server.
 
In regard to the appearance of a web site affecting a user's perception of a company, I do think that this is true. I remember looking up the website for a tiny company out of a small upstate New York town, having passed by the company myself. Was I ever amazed to see the professional looking website! I would have thought that they were a lot larger than they were.

jmcg: First, Akamai's business was founded on the notion of pre-positioning web content on its distributed network of servers. The results of the study reported here are a little too self-serving to be accepted uncritically. They might be correct, but it's a little too close to the notion of an oil company pointing out the fact that small, energy-efficient cars are not as safe as great big SUVs when the two get into a collision.
 
As web users gain more experience with using the web, they gradually come to appreciate that some sites are a pain to work with and others are much more pleasant. One part of that difference is the "responsiveness" of the site: it's undoubtedly true that customers will give up on an unresponsive site whose servers cannot keep up with current demands. But even a site with good response time is going to be rejected by users if they are forced into lots of page loads to do every little task or if they cannot easily find the products they are looking for or if the site's navigation system is too unconventional.
 
Good design means taking all of these factors into consideration.

stone5150: I don't neccessarily think people are more impatient than they used to be, just that technology has improved to make it so they don't have to wait on a regular basis anymore. When 56K was the standard connection speed you got used to waiting for even a text page to load. But now, the only thing you have to wait to load are Flash pages and streaming video.
 
As broadband internet is becoming more accessible and cheaper, people are becoming more accustomed to faster page loads and less tolerant of delays -- especially delays for something they can get at a thousand other places.
 
Another factor is the glut of information and the easier accessibility of said info. It used to take a real guru to find an item on the Internet, but search technology has improved by leaps and bounds so that even a complete novice can find at least a few stores (or thousands) that selll a hard to find item.

skirklan: The general rule in advertising no matter what the media is you have less than three seconds to deliver your message. This is more true today with all the competition for attention. The Internet has taken an already contentious pie and taken a big slice from TV time, radio, video games, family time, school time, et al.
 
I believe this rule applies even more importantly to e-shopping. My opinion is a combination of the above rule and the fun rule. Buyers expect online time to be FUN, and fun disappears when the experience becomes grueling either through poor navigation, sluggish graphics or buried and manipulative info management. If you're interested in moving a lot of product, your site had better be fun and fast; and provide better or similar values available at local retailers. If your instore experience is more fun than your online experience at the same retailer, well, why bother? AND don't forget about the tradeoff. Most shoppers will not pay more for shipping than the cost of the merchandise. Also, they do not expect to work to shop; delays, extra screens, unnecessary diversions and other things that prevent a speedy closure to a sale will serve to dissuade.
 
As in all advertising, poorly put together identity does matter. Website design is just another part of the package. If a hot babe puts on her best Dior, has the perfect tan, perfect hair, fabulous nails, and lots of big diamonds but drives up in a beat up VW bus, the transport is a tip that something's not quite right. Any part of an identity package may provide the clue for the general public to dismiss an entity as reputable.
 
Something not mentioned in the article but pertinent to the issue is supporting some of the older web browsers. Retailers who expect a broader market must make sure coders allow for all browsers. Writing for just the latest (like Costco) is tantamount to only allowing late model cars to park in your parking lot while they shop. You're cutting your own market.

shekerra: I am at times a shop-O-holic online (well over $1500.00 a year.) If the site is slow to load, I am out of there within a 10-second time frame. If the site is navigationally challenging, I never waste my time. I feel if the site owner is not concerned about navigation then I will turn cold on spending money at their site. Online shopping is all about getting what you want, when you want it, how you want it, and as speedily as you can acquire it.

mrichmon: Interesting, but not a lot of details. Sounds like a lot of headlines. But I agree with this: "To make matters worse, the research found that the experience shoppers have on a retail site colours their entire view of the company behind it. About 30% of those responding said they formed a "negative perception" of a company with a badly put-together site or would tell their family and friends about their experiences."
 
I know that it is very true. Often when I am on an interview committee I will look at the websites people put on their resumes and, if badly done, will question more the skills they claim to possess. Of course I am on interview committees for technical developer/programmer positions usually.
 
I would say though that in general people are less patient for retail sites, but that is not necessarily true for other sites. For example, in my job we develop web applications. We found that if the application is easy to use and saves the person time overall, they will wait when there are slower pages, as long as they can tell that something is happening. For example, in one application in IE 6 the load time was significantly slower than in standards compliant browsers, such as Safari, Firefox, etc. So we added a loading bar just for IE 6. (Haven't checked load times in IE 7 yet).
 
But in general, my team is very critical of even our own applications. The one I mentioned above in IE 6, showed progress loading even without the loading bar, and total time was about 5 seconds, which we considered too long :o) We generally aim for things that we know are long to somehow be partially pre-loaded so that the overall load time is about 2-5 seconds and even lower whenever possible.

I'm kind of glad I don't live really close to a big city; that day the retailers call Black Friday (because it's the day a lot of them get rid of the red ink and get to finally use the black kind) is one that I have always tried to avoid. And I tend to avoid the bigger online stores on the Monday after Thanksgiving as well, for the same reason. This year, it was the worst of all possible worlds for Walmart. You had to know that their stores were busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger on Friday, but so was their website -- so much so that it went 404 for much of the day. But as it turned out, "Cyber Monday" was pretty much business as usual for the big online sites; business was up, but not substantially.

While we're on the subject of the holidays, now is the time when your teenager might be coming home from college and will want to show his old friends what the dorm room is like. That's fine, but it would be a good idea to make sure your antivirus software is up to date before he logs into that new computer you bought when you sent him off to school with your old one. Everyone has heard about the problems MySpace has been having, but now there is another one; security experts are suggesting that the bad boys out there are hiding malicious code inside images that are then posted on MySpace, and just viewing the images might be enough to infect your machine.

I was going to get a couple of those "credit card" gift cards for my children to use, since we probably won't see them at Christmas, but I'm glad I didn't. For one thing, most of them expire -- meaning you have just given Visa or American Express or some chain your money and have gotten nothing in return. They'll let you reactivate the card -- for a price that eats into the value of the card pretty quickly. Sounds pretty Scrooge-like to me. For another, people have been scanning the cards that are hanging on the aisles in stores, and then monitoring the cards for activation. Once the card is activated, these folks steal all the money attached to it -- so it's a good idea, if you're going to buy one, to get it from the inventory behind the counter.

Finally, you have to be extra careful this time of year. My nieces went to a store, where someone was blocking access to one of the game toys and wouldn't move while she piled up her cart with the games (anyone care to bet that they won't show up on eBay in the next day or so?). I saw a story about a guy who bought a PlayStation 3 the day they came out, and sold it on eBay for twice what he paid for it. He told the local TV station that he was going back to the store to get another one, and he was still $600 ahead. Another story was about a man who was shot in a parking lot while shot while waiting in lineto get into the store. And then there were the people injured at a mall promotional event. It's no safer if you bought a PSE and plan on selling it.

I may just send those on my gift list a card with a check in it.