Post your question here

Now I may not know the answer but with a bit of luck someone else will! This is yet another of Andrew's 'experiments' so I have no idea whether I'll be able to manage all the queries or just stare at an empty page for months. All I can say now is that you can ask your question simply by hitting EditPage, enter the password muddled, then type it below at the start of the list. Adjust the text to be Format: Heading1 (in the toolbar above) and then your question will appear in the contents list too.

So here goes. I'll start it off with a few . . . Andrew

Why is Dreamweaver8 such a pain?

Like most MacroMedia products now run by Adobe, intuitive user interfaces don't seem to be their forte. DW8 is supposed to make life easier for people using CSS for their sites. It probably does but if you only use a little bit or are still figuring out the basics of web design then it can be a nightmare. I have a client where the chap responsible for updating the site was pretty comfortable with MX, the previous version. He could edit pages and generally did a good job which saved me a lot of support time. Now I am forever having to fix things that he seems to have no control over. I have pages littered with unwanted styles and stuff and it takes ages to sort out. I have recommended he returns to Dreamweaver MX and would say the same to anyone else too, even CSS guys for the time being.

Why is Moodle such a pain?

Moodle is, at heart, a great idea. People can add things to their pages and students or colleagues can get at them. They need no special skills but they do need patience. Beneath the lid is this vast load of PHP code that few people other than my ILT Intern called Matt can comprehend. So if you try to anything other than what it expects you run into trouble. I have been a very outspoken supporter of Moodle for several years, and it is brilliant in many respects but it is time it was dramatically improved. It has become the tool of choice in the FE field and is a promoter's dream product in terms of brand recognition and active users. So, despite it being a free resource, there should be plenty of backing from the bigger boys to bring it kicking and screaming into the Web2.0 world. Or maybe they have seen the writing on the Joomla! wall?

Why doesn't my Skype phone work?

I plug it in and it should just work. But every time I have to go into the Skype panel and adjust the Advanced settings to get it to use the Skype phone mic and the laptop speakers. Otherwise I neither hear it ring or do people hear me talk which kinda defeats the purpose. Obviously I'm doing something wrong. Answers'll have to be on a postcard until I've got it working!