Last week we published our brand-new design for our WPF reference guide site called WPFpedia. Today I’d like to do an introduction on how to use the home page of the resource guide to examine resources.
This screen shows the main home page of WPFpedia. There is a Resource List on the left and a quick Search sidebar on the right. Let’s examine what you can do with each one.
The Resource List
The Resource List is a quick list that defaults to showing the most recent resource items.
Each item shows:
- Number of votes
- Post date
- Number of views
- Special adornments such as admin favorites
- Title
- Summary description
- Source hostname
- Number of comments
- Tags
Voting
Under the vote count indicator, a plus button allows logged-in users to vote for the resource item. This tells other users that you think the resource item is helpful and also allows you to easily find it again from your profile page.
Viewing a resource
To view a resource, click on the resource’s title.
Searching by tag
Any of the tags can be clicked to automatically search the resource guide by that tag. This same concept applies anywhere tags are listed on the site.
Sorting the list
The Resource List can be sorted mutiple ways:
- Newest – The newest moderated resources appear first
- Most-viewed – The resources with the highest view counts appear first
- Most-votes – The resources with the most votes appear first
- Upcoming – New resources that have been submitted by users but have not yet been approved appear here
- Random – Resources are listed completely randomly, which is a great way to discover some interesting resources you wouldn’t normally look for
The Search pane
While the Resource List allows you to page through resources using one of the sorting methods, sometimes you may be looking for specific information. After all, this is a resource guide where searching is its main function! :)
The Search pane, located on the right side of the home page, allows for complete searching of the resource guide.
Searching using a query
You can type text in the query box marked Enter search text and press the Search button to find the results the most closely match your query.
Searching by tag
As mentioned above, you can click any tag to automatically search the resource guide by that tag. All resource items that are tagged with the search tag will be returned in a list.
The tags listed in the Search pane use varying font sizes. The larger the font, the more resource items are in the guide that use that tag.
Summary
I hope this summary gives you the information needed to start using the guide effectively. In follow-up blog posts well examine some other pieces of the site.
Jump over to WPFpedia now to start using it.