FrameMaker 10 UI bugs - workarounds?

[rlauriston]

I've been using FrameMaker 10 (unstructured) heavily for the first time and started keeping a list of the UI bugs I encounter regularly. I'm on Windows 7, 64-bit, single 1650 x 1050 display. I don't have any of the following problems with any of the many other applications I use.

1. Document window size and position are not saved.

2. Docked panels often appear behind the document window, and I have to resize or close the document window to use them. Since window size and position are not saved, I have to resize them dozens of times a day.

3. Sometimes I have the opposite problem: the side of a window is completely blocked by the character or paragraph tag catalog, so I have to minimize, close, or move the panel before I can resize the window.

4. When I open a panel, sometimes it appears behind another panel that's already open, and I have to move one or the other before I can use it.

5. The first time I press Ctrl-f, I can just type the search string, but after that the focus within the Find/Change seems to be random, so I can't.

6. After a book has been open for a while, it no longer responds to menu commands. I can double-click files to open them or use the right-click menu, but if I try to select a menu command such as Edit > Update Book or File > Save As PDF the book window minimizes and is no longer active. The only workaround I've found is to close and reopen the book window.

7. A separate FrameMaker button appears on the taskbar for each file that's open.

8. The FrameMaker console window appears behind the application window. Bringing it to the front is sometimes difficult.

9. When I first start FrameMaker, Ctrl-F6 switches between open windows. After a while, it stops working.

10. Alt-key menu letters are not displayed for all menu commands (e.g. Documents on the Window menu).

11. If I Alt-Tab to FrameMaker from another application, pressing Alt-Tab again takes me to another FrameMaker document window (if more than one document is open) instead of back to the other application.

[kmacdowe+brdcom]

I too have experienced all these bugs. I am disappointed Adobe would release a product with so many significant, obvious bugs, not fix them, then release a new version.

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

They did fix them...in particular they fixed

1. Window positioning in FM9, giving a tabbed interface with multiple tiling options available in the menu bar
2. The tabbed interface (FM9)prevents docs from appearing behind panels, unless you choose the "fly-out" option, which is best for really small screens
3. Tabbed interface again solves this quite nicely
4. Saved workspaces allow panel management based on task
5. Find/Change focus works as expected in FM 11
6. OK, so you got me here...FM has *always* "gotten tired" and needs to be restarted occasionally. Much like many tech writers I know!
7. If you double-click an FM doc in Win Explorer, you get another instance of FM open. Same with CPT and RH, and others.
8. Console much improved in FM11, and displays as panel, not separate app.
9. I use Ctrl-tab for this. It works, and always has (for me...)
10. Alt-key mapping is more complete in FM11
11. Sounds like you inadvertently used Ctrl-tab, not Alt-tab

they called it FM 11

-Matt

[rlauriston]

They fixed the bugs I encountered in FM10 in FM9? That's a neat trick.

I eventually figured out that if I reset FM to its defaults and just worked with UI the way it comes out of the box I did not encounter nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, or 11. They're still bugs, since they make features of the UI unsuable.

I gave up on keyboard shortcuts because of bugs such as 9 and 10. I encountered lots of other broken shortcuts. The people who coded the FM9 UI clearly did not test driving from the keyboard.

5 and 8 are still constant annoyances but there's no way I'd recommend throwing good money after bad to fix them by upgrading to FM11, which I hear has even worse bugs and as usual offers no new features of any significant use to me.

[Arnis_Gubins]

Robert,

Can you please expand on what you've heard as "even worse bugs"?

The ability to configure various workspaces (i.e. having different panels open and placed where one wants) to allow quick changes in workflow (authoring, editing, grraphic placement & manipulation, indexing & marker insertion, etc.) is a very powerful time saver. It took me a while to get the hang of it (muscle memory going back to the last century was kind of getting in the way), but once I did, I really prefer it to the way it was (warts & all).

The UI operations in FM11 have been cleaned up substantially and the keyboard shortcuts (I'm assuming you mean the F8 & F9 tagging) work now as in FM8 & earlier, except that it provides the full catalog list in context (at the insertion point), instead of the status bar listings. The Find/Change is vastly improved, provides history lists and doesn't mess with the focus like in 9 & 10. Though, they have introduced other phunnies (e.g. the Zoom list) by trying to fix some last minute behavioural anomalies.

Note: you can modify any keyboard shortcut at any time via the cfg files. There really weren't any broken "shortcuts" in 9 & 10 - all 1100+ of them still triggered the appropriate sequence. However, I do agree that a few sequences were poorly implemented (like the F8 & F9 ones) due to the functionalities in the new interface. The development team have been fixing things as they can. Complaints about the old-fashioned interface abounded, so introducing a new one has given folks something new to complain about...

Even though there aren't killer improvements in the non-structured features, the addition of the Object Styles is a significant one (if you use a lot of graphics in your documents). On the structured side, there have been so many features added that the unstructured types are defintiely not feeling the love...

Out of curiosity, what would be some of the significant new features required in FM that would make you want to upgrade?

[ksoltys]

> Out of curiosity, what would be some of the significant new features required in FM that would make you want to upgrade?

I'll jump in with two: expand/contract markers inline (like IXgen) and regular expressions in search and replace.

Keith

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

@Keith, these are 2 great suggestions. I'll add them to my list of FM12 requests at

http://framemaker.mattrsullivan.com/2012/08/16/framemaker-12-ui-requests/

and will submit them thru adobe.com/go/wish. Since they are features that currently exist (IXgen for markers, and GREP for InDesign, Dreamweaver), if lots of others do the same, there's a good chance of seeing some progress with the next release.

-Matt

[Arnis_Gubins]

@Keith,

You can also add these suggestions to the "Seeking inputs on desired features in FrameMaker" thread over in the FM Features Request sub-forum. This thread is actively monitored by the FM development team.

@Matt,

There are a lot of good ideas/feature requests in that thread that you could consolidate in your FM12 wish list.

[rlauriston]

The two worst bugs I've heard of were the print to .ps one fixed by 11.0.1 and the super-slow saving to PDF Kapil Verma posted about on the framers list last week.

[Arnis_Gubins]

Thanks for mentioning those.

[For those not familiar with these issues, here's what's currently known]

The slow PDF saving/printing seems to be something that is quite user/installation specific and this complaint has been around for the last several FM releases. That's why Kapil is asking for examples in order to track this down - AFAIK, it hasn't been duplicated at the development end.

The FM11 unstructured book printing to .ps bug  (i.e. not using the recommmended "Save As PDF" route to create PDFs) was identified and rectified in a few weeks, thanks to the postings on the forums.

The development team is responsive, so if something in FM isn't behaving as expected or described (including things in the UI to bring this thread back on track), please use the forums to vent!

[rlauriston]

The slow PDF generation was reported by people who encountered it after upgrading from FM10 to FM11.

Are you an Adobe employee? If not, why not let them make their own excuses for shoddy QA and ever-decreasting usability?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Arnis is a moderator, not an employee.

[Arnis_Gubins]

All Adobe employees are identified by Staff badges in these forums.

I don't happen to see any excuses, just statements of what is currently known about issues or what I've experienced as a FM user.

[rlauriston]

You told me that some of the bugs I complained about in FM10 were fixed in FM9 and made other excuses to dismiss the reality that things that used to work and are theoretically supported no longer work.

I suspect the situation is that in FM9, when Adobe added the keyboard-hostile new UI, they stopped QAing anything involving the old Windows-standard UI. Undock anything and you're in a swamp of bugs.

If Adobe's not going to support the old UI, they should disable it to avoid confusion. And they should have some QA testers on computers without mice.

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

And since he's not an employee, ya might want to thank him for his contributions, rather than snapping at him.

There's more than one poster I usually breeze past, for lack of common courtesy.

-Matt