OT: Why the trend towards useless "Help" in software?

Please excuse the off-topic post.

I'm just really wondering: why this new trend in software Help - with Adobe
and many other software companies. It seems every time I look for Help
within any software, I'm faced with a tangle of complex choices. It usually
starts with "How to Use Help" - what the hell? Then, there are fifteen or
twenty options, poorly labelled and confusing. A lot of it seems based upon
search functions which, for some reason, work terribly - a simple search on
some very basic question turns up nothing useful.

I'd say that about 3/4 of the time I give up before finding what I want.

I just really miss the days when software came with a set of written
documentation, and other options - to search forums or other collections of
information - were, well, optional, and not so ridiculously obscure and
complicated.

To me, frustrating. I almost never use "Help" within any software anymore,
because of this.

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Patty Ayers | www.WebDevBiz.com
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And - *paid advertising* within Help screens!


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Patty Ayers | www.WebDevBiz.com
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"P@tty Ayers ~ACE" <signup1REMOVE (AT) ayersvirtualREMOVE (DOT) com> wrote

Please excuse the off-topic post.

I'm just really wondering: why this new trend in software Help - with
Adobe and many other software companies. It seems every time I look for
Help within any software, I'm faced with a tangle of complex choices. It
usually starts with "How to Use Help" - what the hell? Then, there are
fifteen or twenty options, poorly labelled and confusing. A lot of it
seems based upon search functions which, for some reason, work terribly -
a simple search on some very basic question turns up nothing useful.

I'd say that about 3/4 of the time I give up before finding what I want.

I just really miss the days when software came with a set of written
documentation, and other options - to search forums or other collections
of information - were, well, optional, and not so ridiculously obscure and
complicated.

To me, frustrating. I almost never use "Help" within any software anymore,
because of this.

--
Patty Ayers | www.WebDevBiz.com
Free Articles on the Business of Web Development
Web Design Contract, Estimate Request Form, Estimate Worksheet
--

I find this really reprehensible... I actually make a point of exausting the
help menus as a prerequisite to mastering the software; just like making
marginal notes in a book helps to master the material... Let's face it, it's
the result of cost-cutting on Adobe's part...

Yeah, I don't like how you search for help on a topic in CS4 and are directed to a page of articles on CS3 and even earlier versions of DW.

Another fact I find not acceptable for a software of this priceing. On my installation with install-DVD there is no tutorial-project!

Good writing is hard work; good editing too; it's easier for them just to put a
bunch crap hyperlinks and flashy nonsense in the menu and call it help than to
actually hire people to do the necessary work of making the complex
understandable; as people become more and more used to the dumbed-down
standards reinforced, ironically, by the internet, they don't even know the
difference anymore...

David.

Thanks for the tips but are you, in effect, saying that you consider Adobe's
current Help documentation to be satisfactory?

I'm sympathetic to Patty's original point. I find Adobe's Help extremely
unhelpful and hard to use with (often) irrelevant information on the screen
clouding my ability to find what I'm looking for. I've given up on it after
persevering with it longer than I should have.

I invariably go to google for my queries and get the right answer within a
minute or two from a forum post or a blog.

However, it's quite easy to change the way that Dreamweaver help works. Go
to the following page:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Dreamweaver/10.0_Using/

I wonder how many people ever see that page and undertand the options
presented to them let alone change the radio button?

--
Regards

John Waller

From the point of view of someone who writes books about Dreamweaver, it's
wonderful. ;-)

Agreed and I hope you continue to do well from your well-thumbed books which
have pride of place on my bookshelf.

You are one of the few IT authors who, for me, explains things clearly, in
language I understand and in a practical manner. I've learnt plenty from
them. Thank you.

That's why the Community Help system has been developed. It uses Google
search, but includes only sources that have been verified for accuracy and
reliability.

Community Help etc is to be applauded.

However, for all the improvements in 3rd party help, I find the current
state of Adobe's own Help documentation, particularly finding what I want
quickly, to be appalling.

--
Regards

John Waller

I'd say that about 3/4 of the time I give up before finding what I want.

Same here, Patty.

In fact, my first course of action threse days is to google my question and
I invariably find what I'm looking for within a couple of minutes.

If I have no success with Google, I come to these fourms.

--
Regards

John Waller

"If the help files were sufficient on their own, there would be no need
for people like me to write books. "

Precisely my point; Adobe cuts costs on the help documentation knowing full
well that that will only increase demand for outside documentation on the
subject... Everybody wins except the consumer... Hooray, I'm laughing all the
way to the poor house... And more confused than ever,,,