Adobe documentation (business owners take note)
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During the video upgrade of the studio, I decided to move from Vegas (I was 5 revs back) to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Being a geek at heart, I have a tendency to RTFM from cover to cover on new software to get a feel for the wheel. It goes without saying these days that there was no printed manual shipped, only a couple of DVDs. So, looked on the installation disk and there was no pdf documentation, nor was any installed. There was a DVD of movie tutorials, lame at best, and certainly not comprehensive. Upon further exploration, I discovered that bringing up help lead to a path where you could download the help file in pdf. Being rather old school, I know that a good help file is not at all the same as the user manual, but apparently this is no longer true. The help file is indeed the manual. Fine. Whatever. If you're too cheap to print one, at the very least you shouldn't make the customer scratch his head and poke around in order to find the user manual. Make it easy to use your product. I get much of my reading done in the bathroom, hence the stack of books and magazines. Perhaps you're comfortable with balancing a laptop at such times. I am not. Consequently, what I need is printed documentation. So, after stepping through, one app at a time, hunting down the pdf file and downloading it, I now get to print manuals out on my non-full-duplex printer. Those of you familiar with printing a 500 page manual in such a manner will no doubt have emotional scars from printing the second side only to have something get out of sync a third of the way through, forcing you to do multiple iterations to get it all done. And yes, I have nothing but free time to screw around with this stuff, thanks for asking. This is yet another example of companies making the customer do their work for free. I know nothing of Adobe Premiere, and I'm willing and eager to RTFM. However, before I can even begin learning how to use the software I just paid for, I have to jump through a number of PITA hoops that, as a customer, I shouldn't have to deal with. My point? Pushing off the work to the customer is an all too common practice today, in a great many industries, to the point where it's become standard operating procedure. Want to really stand out from the crowd, get excellent word of mouth and the loyalty of your customers? Think like a customer and bend over backwards to make their experience a pleasure, not a hassle. You'd be surprised what a huge competitive edge this can be since few companies think like this anymore.
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During the video upgrade of the studio, I decided to move from Vegas (I was 5 revs back) to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Being a geek at heart, I have a tendency to RTFM from cover to cover on new software to get a feel for the wheel. It goes without saying these days that there was no printed manual shipped, only a couple of DVDs. So, looked on the installation disk and there was no pdf documentation, nor was any installed. There was a DVD of movie tutorials, lame at best, and certainly not comprehensive. Upon further exploration, I discovered that bringing up help lead to a path where you could download the help file in pdf. Being rather old school, I know that a good help file is not at all the same as the user manual, but apparently this is no longer true. The help file is indeed the manual. Fine. Whatever. If you're too cheap to print one, at the very least you shouldn't make the customer scratch his head and poke around in order to find the user manual. Make it easy to use your product. I get much of my reading done in the bathroom, hence the stack of books and magazines. Perhaps you're comfortable with balancing a laptop at such times. I am not. Consequently, what I need is printed documentation. So, after stepping through, one app at a time, hunting down the pdf file and downloading it, I now get to print manuals out on my non-full-duplex printer. Those of you familiar with printing a 500 page manual in such a manner will no doubt have emotional scars from printing the second side only to have something get out of sync a third of the way through, forcing you to do multiple iterations to get it all done. And yes, I have nothing but free time to screw around with this stuff, thanks for asking. This is yet another example of companies making the customer do their work for free. I know nothing of Adobe Premiere, and I'm willing and eager to RTFM. However, before I can even begin learning how to use the software I just paid for, I have to jump through a number of PITA hoops that, as a customer, I shouldn't have to deal with. My point? Pushing off the work to the customer is an all too common practice today, in a great many industries, to the point where it's become standard operating procedure. Want to really stand out from the crowd, get excellent word of mouth and the loyalty of your customers? Think like a customer and bend over backwards to make their experience a pleasure, not a hassle. You'd be surprised what a huge competitive edge this can be since few companies think like this anymore.
By the time you figure a way to download, print and RTFKM, next version of their product will be out. And what you just finished reading would be already outdated. This an evil cycle, you know? :)
It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini
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During the video upgrade of the studio, I decided to move from Vegas (I was 5 revs back) to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Being a geek at heart, I have a tendency to RTFM from cover to cover on new software to get a feel for the wheel. It goes without saying these days that there was no printed manual shipped, only a couple of DVDs. So, looked on the installation disk and there was no pdf documentation, nor was any installed. There was a DVD of movie tutorials, lame at best, and certainly not comprehensive. Upon further exploration, I discovered that bringing up help lead to a path where you could download the help file in pdf. Being rather old school, I know that a good help file is not at all the same as the user manual, but apparently this is no longer true. The help file is indeed the manual. Fine. Whatever. If you're too cheap to print one, at the very least you shouldn't make the customer scratch his head and poke around in order to find the user manual. Make it easy to use your product. I get much of my reading done in the bathroom, hence the stack of books and magazines. Perhaps you're comfortable with balancing a laptop at such times. I am not. Consequently, what I need is printed documentation. So, after stepping through, one app at a time, hunting down the pdf file and downloading it, I now get to print manuals out on my non-full-duplex printer. Those of you familiar with printing a 500 page manual in such a manner will no doubt have emotional scars from printing the second side only to have something get out of sync a third of the way through, forcing you to do multiple iterations to get it all done. And yes, I have nothing but free time to screw around with this stuff, thanks for asking. This is yet another example of companies making the customer do their work for free. I know nothing of Adobe Premiere, and I'm willing and eager to RTFM. However, before I can even begin learning how to use the software I just paid for, I have to jump through a number of PITA hoops that, as a customer, I shouldn't have to deal with. My point? Pushing off the work to the customer is an all too common practice today, in a great many industries, to the point where it's become standard operating procedure. Want to really stand out from the crowd, get excellent word of mouth and the loyalty of your customers? Think like a customer and bend over backwards to make their experience a pleasure, not a hassle. You'd be surprised what a huge competitive edge this can be since few companies think like this anymore.
Don't know how the price tag compares, but did you look at Final Cut? It *does* come with a complete manual, as does Logic Pro, both of which my sister-in-law has learned from scratch, largely with the manual's help. Of course that's not much help at this point. :) I ran into something similar with Houdini. They do include the all the help, both local and online (maybe the pro version gives you a manual). However, due to my experience with many other products (MSDN, various other developer related software, man pages, etc) I completely ignored, simply assuming it would be crap. Turns out it's actually quite useful, and *full* of tons of examples that you can load up, all of which are commented. I was shocked, to say the least :)
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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During the video upgrade of the studio, I decided to move from Vegas (I was 5 revs back) to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Being a geek at heart, I have a tendency to RTFM from cover to cover on new software to get a feel for the wheel. It goes without saying these days that there was no printed manual shipped, only a couple of DVDs. So, looked on the installation disk and there was no pdf documentation, nor was any installed. There was a DVD of movie tutorials, lame at best, and certainly not comprehensive. Upon further exploration, I discovered that bringing up help lead to a path where you could download the help file in pdf. Being rather old school, I know that a good help file is not at all the same as the user manual, but apparently this is no longer true. The help file is indeed the manual. Fine. Whatever. If you're too cheap to print one, at the very least you shouldn't make the customer scratch his head and poke around in order to find the user manual. Make it easy to use your product. I get much of my reading done in the bathroom, hence the stack of books and magazines. Perhaps you're comfortable with balancing a laptop at such times. I am not. Consequently, what I need is printed documentation. So, after stepping through, one app at a time, hunting down the pdf file and downloading it, I now get to print manuals out on my non-full-duplex printer. Those of you familiar with printing a 500 page manual in such a manner will no doubt have emotional scars from printing the second side only to have something get out of sync a third of the way through, forcing you to do multiple iterations to get it all done. And yes, I have nothing but free time to screw around with this stuff, thanks for asking. This is yet another example of companies making the customer do their work for free. I know nothing of Adobe Premiere, and I'm willing and eager to RTFM. However, before I can even begin learning how to use the software I just paid for, I have to jump through a number of PITA hoops that, as a customer, I shouldn't have to deal with. My point? Pushing off the work to the customer is an all too common practice today, in a great many industries, to the point where it's become standard operating procedure. Want to really stand out from the crowd, get excellent word of mouth and the loyalty of your customers? Think like a customer and bend over backwards to make their experience a pleasure, not a hassle. You'd be surprised what a huge competitive edge this can be since few companies think like this anymore.
Printed Manual is no longer the norm for any software these days. If you want printed manuals you have to order separately[^] spend another $50 in addition to the big bucks you spent. It is very rare that people actually read the manuals or even the help files. I recently visited a customer site who wanted to integrate a third party software with my software. I requested for manuals or some information on the software. It turned out that the manuals (not printed) were all in Japanese. People using the software just knew how to use it even though the screens were in Japanese (though some things like error messages were in English). I was really surprised. So In some respects I understand why companies do that. The policy at my company is also to ship manuals only when requested (though we ship for free).
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Don't know how the price tag compares, but did you look at Final Cut? It *does* come with a complete manual, as does Logic Pro, both of which my sister-in-law has learned from scratch, largely with the manual's help. Of course that's not much help at this point. :) I ran into something similar with Houdini. They do include the all the help, both local and online (maybe the pro version gives you a manual). However, due to my experience with many other products (MSDN, various other developer related software, man pages, etc) I completely ignored, simply assuming it would be crap. Turns out it's actually quite useful, and *full* of tons of examples that you can load up, all of which are commented. I was shocked, to say the least :)
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
Final Cut and Logic are Apple-centric. Logic (which I once owned) actually ditched their Windows customers when Apple bought them. Final Cut is great - a friend who does pro video uses it, but he's a Mac guy. While they may have a windows version, it's been my experience (Pro Tools, are you listening?) that the stuff designed for Mac sucks when ported to Windows. There's also the Pinnacle / Avid stuff, pro quality, but I went with Adobe because of the wide variety of multimedia products they offer and (presumably) play nice together.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua!
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Printed Manual is no longer the norm for any software these days. If you want printed manuals you have to order separately[^] spend another $50 in addition to the big bucks you spent. It is very rare that people actually read the manuals or even the help files. I recently visited a customer site who wanted to integrate a third party software with my software. I requested for manuals or some information on the software. It turned out that the manuals (not printed) were all in Japanese. People using the software just knew how to use it even though the screens were in Japanese (though some things like error messages were in English). I was really surprised. So In some respects I understand why companies do that. The policy at my company is also to ship manuals only when requested (though we ship for free).
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The policy at my company is also to ship manuals only when requested (though we ship for free).
That's certainly a competitive advantage.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua!
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The policy at my company is also to ship manuals only when requested (though we ship for free).
That's certainly a competitive advantage.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua!
Christopher Duncan wrote:
That's certainly a competitive advantage.
Except that no one has asked for the printed manuals in the last 8 years.
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Final Cut and Logic are Apple-centric. Logic (which I once owned) actually ditched their Windows customers when Apple bought them. Final Cut is great - a friend who does pro video uses it, but he's a Mac guy. While they may have a windows version, it's been my experience (Pro Tools, are you listening?) that the stuff designed for Mac sucks when ported to Windows. There's also the Pinnacle / Avid stuff, pro quality, but I went with Adobe because of the wide variety of multimedia products they offer and (presumably) play nice together.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua!
True, I was just under the impression that you had an Apple box.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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During the video upgrade of the studio, I decided to move from Vegas (I was 5 revs back) to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Being a geek at heart, I have a tendency to RTFM from cover to cover on new software to get a feel for the wheel. It goes without saying these days that there was no printed manual shipped, only a couple of DVDs. So, looked on the installation disk and there was no pdf documentation, nor was any installed. There was a DVD of movie tutorials, lame at best, and certainly not comprehensive. Upon further exploration, I discovered that bringing up help lead to a path where you could download the help file in pdf. Being rather old school, I know that a good help file is not at all the same as the user manual, but apparently this is no longer true. The help file is indeed the manual. Fine. Whatever. If you're too cheap to print one, at the very least you shouldn't make the customer scratch his head and poke around in order to find the user manual. Make it easy to use your product. I get much of my reading done in the bathroom, hence the stack of books and magazines. Perhaps you're comfortable with balancing a laptop at such times. I am not. Consequently, what I need is printed documentation. So, after stepping through, one app at a time, hunting down the pdf file and downloading it, I now get to print manuals out on my non-full-duplex printer. Those of you familiar with printing a 500 page manual in such a manner will no doubt have emotional scars from printing the second side only to have something get out of sync a third of the way through, forcing you to do multiple iterations to get it all done. And yes, I have nothing but free time to screw around with this stuff, thanks for asking. This is yet another example of companies making the customer do their work for free. I know nothing of Adobe Premiere, and I'm willing and eager to RTFM. However, before I can even begin learning how to use the software I just paid for, I have to jump through a number of PITA hoops that, as a customer, I shouldn't have to deal with. My point? Pushing off the work to the customer is an all too common practice today, in a great many industries, to the point where it's become standard operating procedure. Want to really stand out from the crowd, get excellent word of mouth and the loyalty of your customers? Think like a customer and bend over backwards to make their experience a pleasure, not a hassle. You'd be surprised what a huge competitive edge this can be since few companies think like this anymore.
We have a full manual complete with tutorials and helpful tip and tricks, you name it. It's online and also downloadable in word or pdf format. You can access it by pressing f1 from any area of our app or from the download link where the software is downloaded etc etc. We have thousands of users in over 40 countries last time I checked and I'm willing to bet judging by the support questions and forum questions that no more than 1% have *ever* cracked the manual or bothered to look at it. People ask dead simple questions about stuff that's described in detail right at the top of the manual, we point them to it and say "that's covered in the manual on page blah blah" and they often are belligerent and say "why are you making me read the manual, just tell me right now how to do it". People in general seem to have an active dislike for reading *anything* these days. How many people even read books for enjoyment these days? I tell people I read a few chapters of a book every night before I go to sleep and they are shocked I don't have a tv instead in my bedroom so I don't "have" to read. On the other hand we have video tutorials and those are used heavily. They aren't offloading work to the customer they are putting resources where they do the most good. Us developers are probably the highest manual reading class of software users there is and it just drops off steeply from there. They *should* make it very easily accessed i.e. f1 button I agree. If you're going to the expense of making a manual then make it available for the readers out there. We've noticed this trend getting greater and greater in the last 10 years. We've often thought we should just make a cartoon manual since people hate to read so much these days.
"Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it." -- Lore Sjöberg
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True, I was just under the impression that you had an Apple box.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
:omg: Seriously, Jim, whatever you're smoking, it's time to share. :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua!
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During the video upgrade of the studio, I decided to move from Vegas (I was 5 revs back) to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Being a geek at heart, I have a tendency to RTFM from cover to cover on new software to get a feel for the wheel. It goes without saying these days that there was no printed manual shipped, only a couple of DVDs. So, looked on the installation disk and there was no pdf documentation, nor was any installed. There was a DVD of movie tutorials, lame at best, and certainly not comprehensive. Upon further exploration, I discovered that bringing up help lead to a path where you could download the help file in pdf. Being rather old school, I know that a good help file is not at all the same as the user manual, but apparently this is no longer true. The help file is indeed the manual. Fine. Whatever. If you're too cheap to print one, at the very least you shouldn't make the customer scratch his head and poke around in order to find the user manual. Make it easy to use your product. I get much of my reading done in the bathroom, hence the stack of books and magazines. Perhaps you're comfortable with balancing a laptop at such times. I am not. Consequently, what I need is printed documentation. So, after stepping through, one app at a time, hunting down the pdf file and downloading it, I now get to print manuals out on my non-full-duplex printer. Those of you familiar with printing a 500 page manual in such a manner will no doubt have emotional scars from printing the second side only to have something get out of sync a third of the way through, forcing you to do multiple iterations to get it all done. And yes, I have nothing but free time to screw around with this stuff, thanks for asking. This is yet another example of companies making the customer do their work for free. I know nothing of Adobe Premiere, and I'm willing and eager to RTFM. However, before I can even begin learning how to use the software I just paid for, I have to jump through a number of PITA hoops that, as a customer, I shouldn't have to deal with. My point? Pushing off the work to the customer is an all too common practice today, in a great many industries, to the point where it's become standard operating procedure. Want to really stand out from the crowd, get excellent word of mouth and the loyalty of your customers? Think like a customer and bend over backwards to make their experience a pleasure, not a hassle. You'd be surprised what a huge competitive edge this can be since few companies think like this anymore.
It's true that a customer would prefer a company that makes the experience more pleasant, but cutting costs is also a competitive advantage. At least, that's the way the companies see it.
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During the video upgrade of the studio, I decided to move from Vegas (I was 5 revs back) to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Being a geek at heart, I have a tendency to RTFM from cover to cover on new software to get a feel for the wheel. It goes without saying these days that there was no printed manual shipped, only a couple of DVDs. So, looked on the installation disk and there was no pdf documentation, nor was any installed. There was a DVD of movie tutorials, lame at best, and certainly not comprehensive. Upon further exploration, I discovered that bringing up help lead to a path where you could download the help file in pdf. Being rather old school, I know that a good help file is not at all the same as the user manual, but apparently this is no longer true. The help file is indeed the manual. Fine. Whatever. If you're too cheap to print one, at the very least you shouldn't make the customer scratch his head and poke around in order to find the user manual. Make it easy to use your product. I get much of my reading done in the bathroom, hence the stack of books and magazines. Perhaps you're comfortable with balancing a laptop at such times. I am not. Consequently, what I need is printed documentation. So, after stepping through, one app at a time, hunting down the pdf file and downloading it, I now get to print manuals out on my non-full-duplex printer. Those of you familiar with printing a 500 page manual in such a manner will no doubt have emotional scars from printing the second side only to have something get out of sync a third of the way through, forcing you to do multiple iterations to get it all done. And yes, I have nothing but free time to screw around with this stuff, thanks for asking. This is yet another example of companies making the customer do their work for free. I know nothing of Adobe Premiere, and I'm willing and eager to RTFM. However, before I can even begin learning how to use the software I just paid for, I have to jump through a number of PITA hoops that, as a customer, I shouldn't have to deal with. My point? Pushing off the work to the customer is an all too common practice today, in a great many industries, to the point where it's become standard operating procedure. Want to really stand out from the crowd, get excellent word of mouth and the loyalty of your customers? Think like a customer and bend over backwards to make their experience a pleasure, not a hassle. You'd be surprised what a huge competitive edge this can be since few companies think like this anymore.
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During the video upgrade of the studio, I decided to move from Vegas (I was 5 revs back) to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Being a geek at heart, I have a tendency to RTFM from cover to cover on new software to get a feel for the wheel. It goes without saying these days that there was no printed manual shipped, only a couple of DVDs. So, looked on the installation disk and there was no pdf documentation, nor was any installed. There was a DVD of movie tutorials, lame at best, and certainly not comprehensive. Upon further exploration, I discovered that bringing up help lead to a path where you could download the help file in pdf. Being rather old school, I know that a good help file is not at all the same as the user manual, but apparently this is no longer true. The help file is indeed the manual. Fine. Whatever. If you're too cheap to print one, at the very least you shouldn't make the customer scratch his head and poke around in order to find the user manual. Make it easy to use your product. I get much of my reading done in the bathroom, hence the stack of books and magazines. Perhaps you're comfortable with balancing a laptop at such times. I am not. Consequently, what I need is printed documentation. So, after stepping through, one app at a time, hunting down the pdf file and downloading it, I now get to print manuals out on my non-full-duplex printer. Those of you familiar with printing a 500 page manual in such a manner will no doubt have emotional scars from printing the second side only to have something get out of sync a third of the way through, forcing you to do multiple iterations to get it all done. And yes, I have nothing but free time to screw around with this stuff, thanks for asking. This is yet another example of companies making the customer do their work for free. I know nothing of Adobe Premiere, and I'm willing and eager to RTFM. However, before I can even begin learning how to use the software I just paid for, I have to jump through a number of PITA hoops that, as a customer, I shouldn't have to deal with. My point? Pushing off the work to the customer is an all too common practice today, in a great many industries, to the point where it's become standard operating procedure. Want to really stand out from the crowd, get excellent word of mouth and the loyalty of your customers? Think like a customer and bend over backwards to make their experience a pleasure, not a hassle. You'd be surprised what a huge competitive edge this can be since few companies think like this anymore.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
I get much of my reading done in the bathroom, hence the stack of books and magazines
Maybe more roughage? :laugh:
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We have a full manual complete with tutorials and helpful tip and tricks, you name it. It's online and also downloadable in word or pdf format. You can access it by pressing f1 from any area of our app or from the download link where the software is downloaded etc etc. We have thousands of users in over 40 countries last time I checked and I'm willing to bet judging by the support questions and forum questions that no more than 1% have *ever* cracked the manual or bothered to look at it. People ask dead simple questions about stuff that's described in detail right at the top of the manual, we point them to it and say "that's covered in the manual on page blah blah" and they often are belligerent and say "why are you making me read the manual, just tell me right now how to do it". People in general seem to have an active dislike for reading *anything* these days. How many people even read books for enjoyment these days? I tell people I read a few chapters of a book every night before I go to sleep and they are shocked I don't have a tv instead in my bedroom so I don't "have" to read. On the other hand we have video tutorials and those are used heavily. They aren't offloading work to the customer they are putting resources where they do the most good. Us developers are probably the highest manual reading class of software users there is and it just drops off steeply from there. They *should* make it very easily accessed i.e. f1 button I agree. If you're going to the expense of making a manual then make it available for the readers out there. We've noticed this trend getting greater and greater in the last 10 years. We've often thought we should just make a cartoon manual since people hate to read so much these days.
"Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it." -- Lore Sjöberg
John C wrote:
we point them to it and say "that's covered in the manual on page blah blah" and they often are belligerent and say "why are you making me read the manual, just tell me right now how to do it"
Yup, that actually happened to me. I actually bought a plane ticket to Ohio because the guy invited me up there to "kick my ass". I was more than happy to oblige him, so I bought a ticket on the next flight from San Diego to Columbus, and was leaving the parking lot on my way to the airport when the boss came running our to stop me. The next day, they hired someone else to do technical support. :)
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
We have a full manual complete with tutorials and helpful tip and tricks, you name it. It's online and also downloadable in word or pdf format. You can access it by pressing f1 from any area of our app or from the download link where the software is downloaded etc etc. We have thousands of users in over 40 countries last time I checked and I'm willing to bet judging by the support questions and forum questions that no more than 1% have *ever* cracked the manual or bothered to look at it. People ask dead simple questions about stuff that's described in detail right at the top of the manual, we point them to it and say "that's covered in the manual on page blah blah" and they often are belligerent and say "why are you making me read the manual, just tell me right now how to do it". People in general seem to have an active dislike for reading *anything* these days. How many people even read books for enjoyment these days? I tell people I read a few chapters of a book every night before I go to sleep and they are shocked I don't have a tv instead in my bedroom so I don't "have" to read. On the other hand we have video tutorials and those are used heavily. They aren't offloading work to the customer they are putting resources where they do the most good. Us developers are probably the highest manual reading class of software users there is and it just drops off steeply from there. They *should* make it very easily accessed i.e. f1 button I agree. If you're going to the expense of making a manual then make it available for the readers out there. We've noticed this trend getting greater and greater in the last 10 years. We've often thought we should just make a cartoon manual since people hate to read so much these days.
"Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it." -- Lore Sjöberg
John C wrote:
We've often thought we should just make a cartoon manual since people hate to read so much these days.
Someone started that, some little time ago. 'Starting Forth' and 'Thinking Forth' spring to mind as the progenitors of the practice.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
I get much of my reading done in the bathroom, hence the stack of books and magazines
Maybe more roughage? :laugh:
Brady Kelly wrote:
Maybe more roughage?
I use that heavily embossed toilet tissue. That's plenty rough enough for me! :)
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
I get much of my reading done in the bathroom, hence the stack of books and magazines
Maybe more roughage? :laugh:
Yeah I wouldn't want him to lend me a book...
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John C wrote:
we point them to it and say "that's covered in the manual on page blah blah" and they often are belligerent and say "why are you making me read the manual, just tell me right now how to do it"
Yup, that actually happened to me. I actually bought a plane ticket to Ohio because the guy invited me up there to "kick my ass". I was more than happy to oblige him, so I bought a ticket on the next flight from San Diego to Columbus, and was leaving the parking lot on my way to the airport when the boss came running our to stop me. The next day, they hired someone else to do technical support. :)
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001Awesome, I'm forwarding your message to tech support right now, they'll drink a toast of coffee in your honour I'm sure.
"Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it." -- Lore Sjöberg
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During the video upgrade of the studio, I decided to move from Vegas (I was 5 revs back) to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Being a geek at heart, I have a tendency to RTFM from cover to cover on new software to get a feel for the wheel. It goes without saying these days that there was no printed manual shipped, only a couple of DVDs. So, looked on the installation disk and there was no pdf documentation, nor was any installed. There was a DVD of movie tutorials, lame at best, and certainly not comprehensive. Upon further exploration, I discovered that bringing up help lead to a path where you could download the help file in pdf. Being rather old school, I know that a good help file is not at all the same as the user manual, but apparently this is no longer true. The help file is indeed the manual. Fine. Whatever. If you're too cheap to print one, at the very least you shouldn't make the customer scratch his head and poke around in order to find the user manual. Make it easy to use your product. I get much of my reading done in the bathroom, hence the stack of books and magazines. Perhaps you're comfortable with balancing a laptop at such times. I am not. Consequently, what I need is printed documentation. So, after stepping through, one app at a time, hunting down the pdf file and downloading it, I now get to print manuals out on my non-full-duplex printer. Those of you familiar with printing a 500 page manual in such a manner will no doubt have emotional scars from printing the second side only to have something get out of sync a third of the way through, forcing you to do multiple iterations to get it all done. And yes, I have nothing but free time to screw around with this stuff, thanks for asking. This is yet another example of companies making the customer do their work for free. I know nothing of Adobe Premiere, and I'm willing and eager to RTFM. However, before I can even begin learning how to use the software I just paid for, I have to jump through a number of PITA hoops that, as a customer, I shouldn't have to deal with. My point? Pushing off the work to the customer is an all too common practice today, in a great many industries, to the point where it's become standard operating procedure. Want to really stand out from the crowd, get excellent word of mouth and the loyalty of your customers? Think like a customer and bend over backwards to make their experience a pleasure, not a hassle. You'd be surprised what a huge competitive edge this can be since few companies think like this anymore.
I always take a book or cross-word in with me. You never know when the bog-roll is going to run out, do you? :)
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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Yeah I wouldn't want him to lend me a book...
Let's just say that I don't have the normal problem of people borrowing books and not returning them. :)
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua!
