How to obtain free answers from Experts-Exchange.com
Method # 1: Using Google Cache
For demonstration, I am trying to look on how to covert C code into Assembly. Now, if I enter this query in Google, I get some pretty decent results. Now, we are trying to look for a solution at Experts Exchange. So, I go to google.com and type in covert c code to assembly site:experts-exchange.com. The ’site:’ is an advanced operator in google which limits our search results to that particular website and in this case, it is experts-exchange.
We click on the first search result on the experts-exchange.com article with no solution but a button stating View Solution.
If you click on the View Solution link, you are redirected to a page telling you that you need to subscribe to view the solution. Not today though!!
Go back to the google results page and click on Cached which loads a cached version of that webpage.
Guess what ? The cached page holds all the answers to the question right at the bottom. Just scroll down and see for yourself.
Method # 2: Using the User Agent Switcher extention in Firefox
The User Agent Switcher extension adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser. It is designed for Firefox, Flock, Mozilla and Seamonkey, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. You can get the User Agent Switcher extention from Firefox. This method would help us automate the above procedure in case you wanted to do something like this in the future
Since it’s fair to assume that the search engine spider could see the full answer to index it, I’ve always just switched my user agent to a Googlebot before browsing Experts Exchange. They were just looking at the Browser’s user-agent (A HTTP Header that identifies the requesting Browser) to let Google’s robot through but not me. So all I had to do to see this content was pretend to be the Google’s robot. Changing User-agent in IE is possible but very cumbersome. But I would not recommend it because a lot of other things like windowsupdate , sites that use browser detection instead of object detection in javascript will be very confused. I would instead suggest doing this in firefox or Flock and the ‘User Agent Switcher’ extension supports both these browsers.
Once you install the user agent for your browser, close and restart your browser. Go to Tools –> User Agent Switcher –>Options –> Options –> User Agents
Under User Agents, click add and add the following information as shown from below
Congratulations!! You are all set now. All you need to do is turn of Javascript in your browser. Go to User Agent Switcher, choose Google Bot, visit the site(experts-exchange) or any other and watch as the solution shows up too. You can use this if you want to go to any Internet Explorer Only site by switching the User Agent to IE.
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It is much simpler. The answers are already in the page and in plain site. Check the link for details.
Or alternatively, you could recognise the fact that Experts Exchange is a business and would not exist if it didn’t make a few quid……then you could read the user agreement and realise that Experts Exchange is free to contributors – that’s right, spend a little time each month answering some questions for people and qualify for free membership.
The problem with expert-exchange.com is that lots of times their answers are merely crap. I’d love to have a place where I could get REAL help not shots in the dark from wannabees experts. That’d be invaluable to me.
I used to support OS2 (anybody remembers that?) for freeon all IBM’s boards back in the early 90s and trully enjoyed doing it FREE.
I’ve found the best site for answers to developer / IT type questions resides on the free site: stackoverflow.com
Language agnostic, very detailed answers, and very passionate users. Check it out, you’ll be impressed
I use Swiftfox on Linux and Experts Exchange answers show up at the bottom of the page for free. The “you must join” stuff shows where it is expected, but scrolling past that you get to the actual answers anyway. Also, IE hides the answers. I’m willing to bet that any odd useragent is treated like Googlebot, such that all search engine spiders can index the site.
You dont have to do any of that. Experts exchange is completely free, they just hide where you can sign up for free.
http://www.experts-exchange.com/registerFree2.jsp
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Cheers! Sandra. R.