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Sébastien Périer
Sébastien Périer
Currently Being Moderated

Help getting worse and worse

Jul 12, 2012 5:38 AM

When CS5 went out, i spend a lot of time here trying to undertand what happened to the online help.

I even stopped adding comment and being part of the community help because metric driven design is,

as far as the help layout is concerned, a very very bad idea.

 

My hopes were limited for CS5.5 and I really wanted Adobe to correct this in CS6...

 

I wonder what happened with the online help part of Adobe apps in general, and AE specifically.

 

I wanted to check some stuff on it, and it’s a complete disaster (at least in french).

 

All the links in the "what’s new in cs6" are pointing to Todd’s blog home page, not even to the related post, and it even links to it when the topic is not disscussed at all on the blog. Hopefully, they all comes with another link to the home page of video brain, not even to the correct course or anything.

 

I’ll be more specific; For a tutorial I’m recording, I wanted to check some info on the new material properties, because I’m not a 3D guy and wanted to use the correct french words and be sure not to mess-up.

 

So I went to the online help home page, got in the what’s new in cs6 page, then scrolled down to new material option where it linked me to Todd’s blog and video brain. Both on the home page. Because I didn’t care about watching a video, and needed to read some stuff in french to get the correct words, I went to the Layer & properties part of the help.

 

What a joy, 6 of the 7 topics wheren’t updated since january 1st (meaning no info about new stuff in CS6) and the only part updated is about 3D layers, yay ! So let’s open that page.

 

I got 8 topics, none with info about the materials, old or new, only basics info about rotating,moving, 2d/3d layers, intersecting... and, on this "Product affected: Adobe After Effects CS6" page, info about Photoshop 3D layers, a feature removed from the product.

 

That’s when I used that handy "search box", because that’s what I was told when I complained about how lame was the CS5 docs navigation compared to the CS4 one: the paradigm shifted from topic related discovery to keyword search related discovery.

 

Let’s try to find out some info for the "Options Surface" category.

it takes me to the community help results: http://community.adobe.com/help/search.html?searchterm=optionsurface&q=optionsurface&lbl=aftereffects_product_adobelr&x=0&y=0&area=0&lr=en_US&hl=en _US

 

The first AE related link is 7th on the list despite a search in AE related docs... And on the 4 AE related links, nothing to do with what I need. Yes, I know, I searched the french name, but shouldn’t I get community results in french , or at least, official documention results in french ?

 

If I select the "only adobe content" radio button, it’s worse. Less AE links, less relevant.

 

If I click "support" instead of Community help, it’s not better, still more links pointing to Illustrator or Photoshop than After Effects. At least, 1 link is related to 3D layers in raytraced environment, but not what I’m looking for.

 

Oh yes, now there's a topic browsing page. Let's have a try with that. Guess what ? Couldn’t find the info I was looking for.

 

Removing the breadcrumb navigation in CS5 help was an ugly move, but this new help system is just... I don’t know how to say it politely. I haven’t been satisfied with the help system since CS5, when you removed the very usefull, always on context and organised bredcrumb navigation on the left hand side of the screen. I wished you stoped the "search" paradigm and went back to the "organised" one. I know your metrics shows people love searching. But how many search does they have to go through before getting the correct result ? How many unsuccessfull search before they don't bother anymore ? Honestly I’ve never seen such a messy help, and it really is confusing. It even feels like Adobe doesn’t bother about it anymore, and that it’s now relying only on external content, giving the feeling that the only thing up-to-date are the links to videobrain/creativecow/whatever rather than the official content itself. Hopefully, the curators for these links only points to very good tutorials.

 

The other thing that is bothering me, is that we get more and more video content instead of text content. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching videos. But I also love to read the docs. It’s much more effective that trying to seek in the video for that special piece of info you are looking for (and there no way to know if the info you’re looking for is indeed in the video or not, or to "search" it's content).

 

And don't get me started on the Help App, I never understood why you did it in the first place. Not as inconvenient as the website, but nearly.

 

Not having an efficiant documentation is bad. I’ve been asking for an help redesign since CS5, complained in a blog post and on the community help forums. With this new non-sensical online help, where nothing is to be found easily, this will soon become mendatory. If Adobe doesn’t care for help anymore, they should remove it completly instead of making it less and less relevant, and more and more messy. If you have an email address where I can send this rant I’d be glad to let the right people know.

 

 

Seb

1126 Views   3 Replies   Latest reply: Terri Stone, Jul 13, 2012 9:47 AM
 
Replies
  • Terri Stone
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    1. Terri Stone,
    Jul 12, 2012 2:01 PM   in reply to Sébastien Périer
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    Hi Sebastien,

     

    Your post has found the right people on the Community Help team. I'm sorry that this has been a frustrating experience.

     

    We really appreciate the time you've taken to give specifics about the problems.

     

    We've already fixed some of the problems on the French Help & Tutorials page and we'll re-test the links and fix the remaining ones. We'll let you know when that's complete.

     

    We recognize that the online help function is not working correctly and have assigned engineers to fix it. We'll also be adding back in "Search this reference only" in the near future.

     

    I also wanted you to know that the Community Help AIR app is no longer used for CS5 or CS6 help. Online help will launch in your preferred browser. We only use the AIR app for installing offline help files.

     

    Feel free to send direct email to me at thestone@adobe.com if you have more specifics to share.

     

    Best,

     

    Terri Stone

     
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  • Sébastien Périer
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    2. Sébastien Périer,
    Jul 13, 2012 5:17 AM   in reply to Terri Stone
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    Thx for the reply Terri,

     

    i'll probably send you a mail with more thoughts, but what I feel from your answer is that you didn't get the major issue I have with the online doc since CS5.


    Sure it's nice to know that you'll fix your broken search engine and that you'll add some filters back (reference only). But the major issue here is your paradigm shift from indexed content to searched only content. Nothing can be found easily. Absolutely nothing. Either in localised versions or in the english version. The layout is nerve breaking, and the search results are really bad (but this is what you are going to fix someday soon).

     

    For an online help to be efficient we need properly organised and Indexed content first, and then a powerfull search engine to find it if we don't know where to look. Right now, you've wipped out the index & organisation and just piled stuff here and there leaving us the only way you think we want to browse the help: search. And that's the problem. We are not able to browse the help anymore; We can only search it, and we even cannot rely on that.

     

    Sincerly, go browse the CS4 online help. it was clear, and working like a breath with the always handy, and always displayed breadcrumb navigation. It also featured search. Now, go back to CS6, and tell me where is the improvment. No way to properly separate official docs, from adobe official blog posts, from 3rd party sites/blogs. Everything is mixed-up and unbrowsable. Even some of the "topic pages" makes no sens, as I demoed in my previous post. No way to keep on context. No way to explore more without returning back to the search results. Having more great content from 3rd party is really interesting, but it's poor integration with the official docs makes it an experience breaker.

     

    When I'm in my app and need help, I need to first and foremost go to the official help, I need it clearly organised and with an understandable and clean layout. And when I'm on my topic and feel I need more info/ in depth knowledge, a link to 3rd party tutorials, free or paying. And it's not the experience I'm getting. And it's the experience I need. I don't understand how it became so messy, but honestly, I've never seen something like that.

     

    Also, you've increased focus on video content. Yeah watching tutorial is cool. But video is not searchable. Video is not immediate. When I need help, I need to read the answer first to fix my issue, and then, if I feel I need to learn more, go to AdobeTV, Videocopilot, Videobrain & such to learn more stuff. Your enphasis on 3rd party and video content have shrank the volume of quickly available info. We need more text content, and more text content from within the official documentation, not from partners. Because once again, each time i'm redirected to a partner site, I loose context...

     

    So please, stop focusing on search only, and bring back the much stronger breadcrumb navigation, bring back in front the official documentation, so the info precise, findable, and not dilluted.

     
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  • Terri Stone
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    3. Terri Stone,
    Jul 13, 2012 9:47 AM   in reply to Sébastien Périer
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    I do understand your concerns, and the appropriate people inside Adobe are listening.

     

    Thanks again for your detailed feedback.

     
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