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May 2, 2010 4:19 PM

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  15. Laura_Kersell,

  

  May 19, 2010 2:39 PM   in reply to Sébastien Périer

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  Hi Sebastien,

  Thanks for the screenshots. Here's what's happening;

  1. AE help needs to be reinstalled from the Community Help AIR app install page: www.adobe.com/support/chc. Close/Quit Community Help app. On install page, select After Effects from the product drop down menu, then click Install Now. In the application installer dialog, click Open, then Run Now since you already have the latest version installed. This will update the installed CH app to include AE Help content.Add more products if you want following the same workflow. Click the home button and you should see the AE icon. The CHC home page gives you access to product help for all products installed on your system.

   

  

   

  2. The Bridge content you are looking for is in the Help system: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/creativesuite/cs/using/WSEC5DD830-699C-4ed b-9615-4E369166A440a.html

  It may have been a search term issue. I tried searching on "tools menu in Bridge" and the top result was also the one above.

  Bridge content is also indexed jointly with products like Photoshop, so you if you have Photoshop (or After Effects, etc.) selected as the product, returns will include Bridge topics (which is what the attached screenshot illustrates).

   

  

   

   

  If navigating to Bridge content, note that for CS5 it is organized under a Creative Suite heading on product help homepages.You can also find Creative Suite (and thus Bridge) topics from any of the product help home pages that ship with Bridge, such as Photoshop. Click on the Creative Suite link, just beneath "Using Photoshop" and you'll see an Adobe Bridge topic in the TOC.

   

  

   

  3. The main reason the TOC isn't on every topic page is that we want the "Help TOC" to offer more than Adobe reference content. The homepage for CS5, and the Community Help AIR app, is a start in that direction, and will continue to evolve to offer navigation options that serve a diverse set of users and products. We've offered a new search panel in the Community Help AIR app that allows view of both content and results simultaneously, and lets users of products like Flash search across the upwards of 10 Adobe Help collections for their product. We use a range of user research methods to understand where users are struggling and try to respond to the majority use cases. We've chosen not to dominate the content experience with multiple persistent navigation systems.We understand you have a preferred method of navigation that works for you, and that you put high value on Adobe Help, which is also appreciated.

   

  FYI for the sake of others reading: The Adobe Help TOC is not on every Help topic page, but can be accessed in these 4 ways:

   

  -Help package title in breadcrumb

  -Home link in breadcrumb

  -Product title in banner

  -CHC "Home" icon in app chrome

   

  Hopefully this gives you a bit more context for the change.

   

  Best regards,

  -Laura

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  16. Sébastien Périer,

  

  May 6, 2010 1:14 AM   in reply to Laura_Kersell

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  Shouldn't be AE help already installed since I already have AE installed ? This is really confusing. I shouldn't have to manually add the help contents of the software I have installed.

   

  And for the Bridge exemple, my point was to show you how frustrating can be search based help. I have a menu called Photoshop in bridge. If I want only official help I need to check "this reference" and then I search for Photoshop. No result. So I have to try again until I find the keyword that adobe thinks is relevant for Me. And Bridge is a cross install tool, so if I need to check for all it's reference inside other Adobe products I'll have to uncheck "this ref only" so then everything will be crowded with community help content. For info, I found this page in less than a minute using the TOC.

   

  And yes I know I can access the toc from those 4 ways, i've already been told that. But nobody in the CHC team finds this frustrating, so I won't complain anymore, I promess. Maybe i'm the only guy in the village who doesn't like to go to a page, then jump back to the first page to go to another, then jump back again, then again and again and again.

   

  And it's not just a navigation method it's a paradigm shift. See how frustrating it is for users who don't want to search your help. See the bridge exemple I stated. I have a menu called Photoshop, and I search for Photoshop as it's the most relevant term for me in this menu, and no results. I have to multiply the searches because Adobe search thinks that Photoshop is not a relevent term. I want to browse the official help. Why not keeping the 2 methods ? How hard is it to embrace a sliding menu, hidden by default for exemple, ala Lightroom (seriously, have a look at how lightroom hides and shows panels) for official help pages. What's the cost of that ? I'm not against search, just it's not the only solution, and not the best anyway.

   

  And justifying this change just to make Flash users happy, well, I'll remember that one. Let's kill all other apps features so Flash guys will be happy when searching for the 10 different flash apps available.

   

  And I don't think blending official help and community help in one "big" happy help is a good idea. You just don't know how good the community content is, and how relevant it is just based on tags and text content. More and more content is in video, and video SEO is just not there.

   

  So I won't bother you anymore, I understand that you don't care to mess up dedicated design for search paradigm, that you don't care about 10 people complaining against the huge mass that doesn't care anyway. You wanted community involvement to improve the pages with adding comments and such. I joyfully did that in CS4, check for the 200 comments I added in the AE french help and for the dozens I added in the Pr/AE english help.

   

  I won't bother doing that for CS5, just because you don't care. I'm fed-up complaining on this topic, I'm fed to explain that you design choise is a bad design choice. I'm fed up of not having the choice to navigate into the help files and forced to use search instead just for the sake of metrics. And I'm just fed up that I can't access the content easily to add valuable info. See, that's the magic of it. You design this for the mass people, the ones who never gets involved or cares, in order to try to involve them more, and in the end, you loose the dedicated guys who tries to help for the good ol' mass too. Just because they can't access the info as easily as before. Brilliant.

   

  Thanks Laura for your patience.

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  17. jdhughen,

  

  May 6, 2010 7:03 AM   in reply to Sébastien Périer

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  function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
  
  

  .

   

  And yes I know I can access the toc from those 4 ways, i've already been told that. But nobody in the CHC team finds this frustrating, so I won't complain anymore, I promess. Maybe i'm the only guy in the village who doesn't like to go to a page, then jump back to the first page to go to another, then jump back again, then again and again and again.

   

   

  http://forums.adobe.com/QUOTE

   

  I hate it. It make no sense, and serves no purpose other than to muddy the

  water and force a lot of other content on you that you aren't initially

  looking for. You should be able to get straight-up help/TOC like we've been

  able to do since forever and then if WE desire go to the other stuff.

   

  Joel

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  18. AlexCzet,

  

  May 6, 2010 10:18 AM   in reply to jdhughen

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  What I don't understand is why this is so complicated.  Help should be simple, if not it is not help.

   

  It feels like you guys are just bloating the whole thing to an extreme, but you won't see that you are making things worse, instead you are blaming users for not "getting it".

  It is kind of like the whole installer disaster in CS4.  Instead of keeping things simple you just made it the most complex installer in the history of installers, and then tried to make people understand how it was necessary.

   

  Help is something that should be helpful, and not require all kinds of additional steps to get to the info you need

   

  Alex

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  19. Animotion.nl,

  

  May 8, 2010 11:34 AM   in reply to jdhughen

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  Op 6 mei 2010, om 15:57 heeft jdhughen het volgende geschreven:

   

  I hate it. It make no sense, and seves no purpose other than to muddy the

  water and force a lot of other content on you that you aren't initionaly

  looking for. You should be able to get straight-up help/TOC like we've been

  able to do since forever and then if WE desire go to the other stuff.

   

  Joel

   

  Amen to this.

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  20. craulmedia,

  

  May 9, 2010 3:12 PM   in reply to Laura_Kersell

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  Dear Mrs. Kersell.

   

  the majority of Adobes problem with satisfying user experience is lacking objectivity on their own products.

  Doesn't matter if its the layout and usability of a community forum, a employees blog or even the software itself. Disappointing if you think about it that you guys are creators and designers of DESIGN SOFTWARE not taking the trivial thing serious?

  Just if you like it, that doesn't mean that the rest of the world likes it too!

   

  The Online Help System is bloatware now.

  It does not have anything to do anymore with the logic of navigation.

  Instead of discussing and explaining here, you could have used the time to fix what you've broke.

   

  Not everyone wants to install additional tools and applications like (hot) AIR.

  What most of you people at Adobe are forgetting is the fact that not everyone is working permanent on its own machine nor that people have instant administrative access at hose machines allowing them to install tool and apps.

  Talking a little off topic for now, but that's one of the weakest parts working with software which is not "multi machine" capable as fire and forget whenever i would be able to carry all my settings and presets with me and install them with ease and without quirks in my workflow setting up everything from scratch everytime i'm opening Adobe software on alien machines.

   

  However.

   

  You're using simple HTML websites, no PHP, MYSQL or some complicated AJAX implementations, so whats the problem working with a frameset consisting two frames one for navigation and one loading content?

  Where's the prob?

   

  Look here http://documentation.apple.com/ it's not perfect and some functions need to be polished but it's absolutely the right direction of user friendliness.

   

  At Adobe Online Help i'm lost after a few clicks.

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  21. Sébastien Périer,

  

  May 9, 2010 3:54 PM   in reply to craulmedia

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  BTW, can we get rid of that annoying yellow box asking if it's our version ? I summon help from the Help menu inside my CS5 application, then why do I always have this nagging floating panel asking me if i'm on the correct CS version ?

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  22. Todd_Kopriva,

  

  May 9, 2010 4:02 PM   in reply to Sébastien Périer

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  Sebastien, that yellow box is mostly intended to address the person who arrived at a page through search (e.g., through Google) and ended up on a page for the wrong version.

   

  If you close the box, it should stay closed, including for future sessions. If it doesn't that's a bug.

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  23. Sébastien Périer,

  

  May 9, 2010 4:21 PM   in reply to Todd_Kopriva

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  I have the feeling it get resetted everytime new content is downloaded & extracted in CHC. I'll keep an eye if the yellow screen comes again after an update, and fill BR accordingly.

   

  And you're right Todd, this box is relevant if you arrive on the help page from the web, but irrelevant when you arrive on the help from the menu of one of my installed software, and even more irrelevant when this same software launch another software specificaly designed for help.

   

  So sadly again, the experience is not good (or at least not well thaught on this specific case).

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  24. jdhughen,

  

  May 9, 2010 6:57 PM   in reply to Sébastien Périer

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  Sébastien Périer wrote:

   

  "this box is relevant if you arrive on the help page from the web, but irrelevant when you arrive on the help from the menu of one of my installed software, and even more irrelevant when this same software launch another software specificaly designed for help."

   

  Amen !!

   

  Local help with constant TOC first !  then online if you want more.

   

  Joel
  

   

  Message was edited by: jdhughen

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  25. craulmedia,

  

  May 11, 2010 11:20 AM   in reply to Laura_Kersell

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  Dear Mrs. Kersell,

   

  this Thread is NOT Answered.

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