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Old 06-26-2010, 10:44 AM
mikeg mikeg is online now
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Join Date: 09-19-2007
Posts: 106
Good thread; important topic. At least everyone here can agree UR is the greatest and that Help could benefit from an update. UR Help is FAR from the worst I've seen though. Obviously it could be improved for beginners, less technical users and even for technically-inclined power users who need to find/understand advanced topics more quickly. But ease-of-use and comprehensive feature coverage are difficult to achieve in part because UR is so massively feature-rich.

As quant mentioned, Help revamp is on the roadmap. Furthermore, it's scheduled for the next release! This is an enormous undertaking that will impact delivery of other important enhancements. We could be in for quite a wait unless Kinook can bring in documentation specialists. This would minimize resource contention between documentation and development plus--to echo Drew's point--developers/engineers are typically not the best at explaining their creations to the layperson.

Providing better quick-start Help for new users should be the highest priority. After that, I have the same wish as tfjern and everyone here (as far as I understand it). Geeks/power users don't mind digging through advanced help, online articles and discussion boards for obscure or sometimes undocumented tips. However, the thrill of discovery and pride of hard-won knowledge eventually wears off as our attention is needed elsewhere. Then we just want to find/understand information quickly--ideally without having to search in more than one place.

It has taken Microsoft many years to even approach this ideal with integrated local and online Help, ability to filter results by technology/area of focus, multimedia content, and (increasingly) clear, helpful articles that usually link to related materials. To create something like this is almost an industry unto itself. Only a few elite businesses can afford the resources and infrastructure.

In the world of relatively small vendors, Kinook is already an overachiever in terms of functionality. As for the Help update, incremental progress may be a reasonable goal/expectation.

Last edited by mikeg; 06-26-2010 at 12:46 PM.
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