When planning for the make-over this website we focused on adding new features to encourage community interaction but also to improve feedback and interaction between registered Community members and the Sony Ericsson Developer World team.

Continuing our commitment to freely available technical information and listening to developer feedback, we have upgraded the discussion forums with new services and extended comment posting to technical articles on the website.

Article comments
To stimulate discussion, registered members can now post comments and suggestions on some of the technical articles published on Sony Ericsson Developer World. Moderated by our Forum Moderator and live for three months after publication, this feature has been retro-fitted to all Tips, Tricks & Code articles published in 2006 as well as all five parts of the JSR 184 programming tutorial from Redikod. Moving forward, all Tips, Tricks & Code articles will have this functionality as will new Developer Case Studies and some other news articles of general interest.

You can test this service out on this article; just click on "View Comments" at the top or bottom of this page and then "Add comment" to get a pop-up window where you write and submit your comment.

Discussion forums
The existing discussion forums have been revamped with a new and better forums engine as well as the introduction of a new ranking and reward system, question tracking and RSS feeds. We have also started a new feedback sub-forum to get your initial opinions on this forum update. The ranking system enables registered members to mark their threads as questions and award fellow members points for how helpful their answers/contributions are. As you actively participate in threads, build skills, reputation and share your wisdom with others over time, your own points will pile up to improve your experience ranking from "Newbie" to "Wizard".

Before you login to check out the new forums, below is a quick user guide explaining the three main new features.

Quick guide to the new forum functionality

1. Ranking and reward system The ranking system is built up through the ability of a thread originator to reward forum members that provide helpful answers with award points. A new thread can be marked as a question, giving the originator the ability to rank the answers posted by other members by awarding points accordingly. Answers can be graded as "Helpful" giving 5 points or "Very Helpful" giving the maximum 10 points. Points accumulate over time to reflect your experience ranking. Deciding that an answer is "Very Helpful" means that you are satisfied with the result and there are no outstanding issues. The "Helpful" category means that the answer given goes towards solving the issue but not completely so the question is still open. Every question can have one "Very Helpful" answer and two "Helpful" answers. When rewarding questions, you have the ability to mark your question as "answered". It is important that you mark the question as "answered" due to the forum search functionality and to avoid more people trying to provide additional answers. Starting life as a "Newbie", all members can move through the ranks as they actively participate in forum threads to "Junior", "Professional", "Veteran" and ultimately "Wizard".

2. "Your questions" tracking
To help active forum contributors keep track of all your questions, the "My forum settings" option lists all past questions, both resolved and unresolved.

3. RSS feeds
We have implemented RSS feeds throughout the discussion forums to help you keep up-to-date with the latest forum postings, popular threads and much more. To get a RSS feed simply follow the following steps:

1. Click on the RSS feed icon on the page that you whish to subscribe to (category, forum, thread or anything that has the RSS link icon on it).

2. You will get directed to RSS feed Main page with lots of options, to get the RSS feed you selected in the beginning click on the ""Get requested feed" link.

All feeds are in RSS 2.0 format.

More information:

• Visit the forums>>
• Forum RSS feeds>>