Using Grydz

Grydz is designed to be incredibly simple to use, even for noobs. Like a wiki, anyone can add, edit, update, (or even delete) content. Every change to the content of a grid is tracked via the revision history, so vandals can be tracked and their damage reverted. Revisions also allow you to see what a particular grid looked like at any point in time since its creation – very cool!

Below there are a variety of help topics to help you get started. We’ll be augmenting these topics with screencasts very soon.

Topics

General Concepts

Items

these are the ‘things’ that are getting compared. They are displayed across the top row of any grid. In general these are products, services, people or places, that are common to the grid topic.

Features

Features are the primary attributes used to compare Items. Features are listed on the left column of each grid and are logically organized into Feature Groups.

(Feature) Groups

These are general containers to better organize features. For example, a grid on Stereos, might have group called ‘Connectors’ and another group called ‘Power Specifications’, each with several related features having to do with that group.

Searching

Grydz uses a basic keyword searching strategy to allow you to find grids of interest easily. When you type a keyword into the search box, the contents of all grid titles, descriptions, items, groups, features and cell values are searched. For example searching for ‘Clinton’ might pull up a grid on ‘Past US Presidents’ or ‘2008 US Presidential Candidates’

In addition to keyword search, at the left of the search results, there are several additional facets to filter your search results. Underneath the search box, you can see how each facet selection modifies your search query.

Viewing a Grid

When viewing a grid, there are a variety of ways to customize what is displayed in your browser. You can scroll the visible grid region by using the scrollbars on the right or bottom of the grid, or you can click and hold your mouse on the grid, then drag the mouse to scroll the grid.

You can show or hide any Item, Group or Feature in a grid. The small down arrow to the right of the Item, Group or Feature will provide you a hide/show option. For hidden Groups and Features, a top-level menu in the top-left cell of the grid allows you to re-show hidden elements.

Sharing a Grid

If you have created a ‘special’ view of a grid that you would like to save or share, click on the ‘Save/Share Custom View’ button. This will save the current grid revision, with only your visible rows and columns and generate a special short-link that you can share via email or the web with friends and colleagues. This feature is excellent for filtering a large grid into a ‘shortlist’ to share with a boss, for example.

When you mouse-over any grid item (top row), more information about that item is displayed in a caption ballon. This includes a URL and expanded description for the item.

My Choice & Community Choice

Items in a grid may have several annotations. These include:

My Choice – this indicates that you have selected this item as your favorite from this particular grid. Your My Choice selection is private by default, but is used to tally the Community Choice selections. If you’re not logged in when you select your choice, you will be required to login and/or create an account.

Community Choice – this indicates the Top 3 items from this grid, as selected by the community. When a user selects an item as My Choice, that becomes a vote. The top vote getter for a given grid is given the award of Top Community Choice, the second biggest vote getter, #2, etc.

NOTE: Selecting My Choice for Gridz where you have made a selection is one the most important and easiest ways to participate in the grydz community.

Editing a Grid

Each grid has a set of tabs above it. To Edit the contents of a grid, click on the ‘Edit’ tab. From this view, you can click on the Grid title or description to edit those elements. In addition, you can click on any Item, Group or Feature to edit those labels.

To add a new Item, Grid or Feature, click the green ‘plus’ icon, enter a name for the new element, then click the green ‘ok’ icon.

To enter or change the value for any cell, simply click on the cell. A value editor will be displayed that will provide you with a set of default icon choices for the cell as well as other values used in that same row.

Each cell can have a default icon, or a custom text value. In addition, you can enter a footnote for any value in the grid. This allows you to easily reference other material on the web that may be relevant to a reader.

Creating a Grid

From the homepage or search page, click on ‘Create a Grid’. This will take you through a few simple steps to create a Grid of your own design.

Managing Your Account

Click on ‘My Profile’ in main menu at the top-right of any page to access your profile and update your settings. Inline help is provided on most pages to explain the individual settings.

FAQ

Q: Why can’t you guys spell?

A: IYKWIMAITYD, WR l33t ;-)

How can I ask you a question?

A: Drop us an email:mailto:help@grydz.com