INProfile Issue 4 | Page 29

The Discussion Area is a feature of our web site which is like an on-line message board. It enables users of Trend products and all woodworkers to interact with each other and leave questions, answers, hints and tips for visitors to read and respond to. Successful woodworking is clearly not just about tools alone. It’s also about becoming familiar with the best methods for carrying out basic tasks. With this in mind our site has our popular booklets featuring routing tips and techniques to download free. Many queries that our technical engineers face from router users can be characterised as frequently asked questions or FAQs. The knowledge built up is available using our on-line FAQ database. You can search using keywords like ‘collet’ to see the answer to your question and perhaps solutions to problems you haven’t yet encountered! The web also allows this concept of selfhelp to be extended with facilities such as our on-line Discussion Forum. This enables users of Trend products to exchange questions, answers and information with other woodworkers. The future for our web site will almost certainly involve new kinds of content like full-motion video and animated instruction manuals to download to your PC or even view on your mobile phone. Most of the manuals and booklets to download from our web site are in Adobe PDF format, designed for fast download times.To view a PDF file offline you’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free program which you may already have on your PC or you can download a copy from www.adobe.com. You can often get a copy of Acrobat Reader on a PC magazine cover disk too. There are separate categories (forums) for messages about routing, sawing, woodturning, finishing and an area to feature details about your woodworking projects. Within each forum are topics. A topic might be a single message or a group of messages and replies all about the topic, sometimes referred to as a thread. Your message can contain a web link (URL). So if for example you have your own web site with details of your routing projects you can insert a link to your site within your message. One of our routing booklets to download from the web. For now however, there is still much that progressive organisations can do with internet technology to give some real benefit to customers. In the long term, every manufacturer could sink or swim on the strength of their web content for woodworking web surfers. IP Anyone can read messages. To create your own topic or post a message you need to register on-line for the discussion forum. Registration is free and takes only a few seconds. If you’ve never used an online discussion area or bulletin board on the web then help is at hand. INProfile 29