Participant

Question

Searching forums is a pain

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
October 23, 2009
8 replies
10058 views

I am not sure why they changed it since it worked fine, and now it is a real pain to try and search a specific forum such as Indesign. It looks like you have to click on 'options' and scroll down the list to select the forum, which is *very difficult* in the tiny scroll box.

I am surprised a company who obviously puts a lot of thought into design of their products would have such an ill conceived feature.

or am I missing something?

This topic has been closed for replies.

H

heavyboots

Inspiring

FWIW, if you run Firefox you can also add this script via GreaseMonkey that will try and localize your search to the current forum.

Adobe Forums: Search this forum only

Actually, if you just search on "Adobe Forums" at userscripts.org and userstyles.org, you'll find a number of hacks by me and various others to upgrade the forum browsing experience in FF. (Why FF? Just because it supports this kind of thing easily.)

A

Anonymous

heavyboots wrote:
FWIW, if you run Firefox you can also add this script via GreaseMonkey that will try and localize your search to the current forum.
Adobe Forums: Search this forum only
Actually, if you just search on "Adobe Forums" at userscripts.org and userstyles.org, you'll find a number of hacks by me and various others to upgrade the forum browsing experience in FF. (Why FF? Just because it supports this kind of thing easily.)

But we shouldn't have to waste our time with lame hacks and workarounds for basic functionality, nor have to switch to slower/trendier browsers for a single website. Such suggestions may help some but let's not feed into the idea that this mitigates this huge jiveboard shortcoming whatsoever.

Phillip M Jones

Inspiring

But if Jive is unwilling or unkowing of a problem and you have to do something to make it usuable despite the short commings.

A

Anonymous

T

Tulcus

Participant

With all the new break downs, it is even more confusing on which forum I should go and post my problems.

Recently, I posted a solution to install Adobe CS4 on windows 7, I was told off instead.

I was told to search for forum and under what ever products I have and post my problem there and the place where I posted is not a place for me to post solution to my own problem.

And upon reading the comment I recieved, I was utterly disappointed. And the best part is, I can't delete the discussion I wrote under "Your Stuff".

What should I do? It's so hard to please the admins of Adobe while trying to help those who may be facing the same problem as me.

It's such a pain

A

Anonymous

Tulcus wrote:
Recently, I posted a solution to install Adobe CS4 on windows 7, I was told off instead.
I was told to search for forum and under what ever products I have and post my problem there and the place where I posted is not a place for me to post solution to my own problem. ... It's such a pain

Don't worry, Officer Smith is a bit severe but he means well. He could however have given a link to the forum where your tip belonged!

A

Anonymous

We were told the WebX forums had reached a point where no additional forums could be added.

Instead of leaving things alone as they were, they thought Jive could deal with the combined load and pulled the plug on WebX.

Hence the collapse of the real Adobe community.

Unfortunately the people up there that matter probably aren't even aware of the sinking ship we are on.

A

Anonymous

We were told the WebX forums had reached a point where no additional forums could be added.

Isn't the truth much more likely to be that WebX said that additional Forums could not be handled … until Adobe paid for the additional costs for hardware and staffing that such expansion would entail?

Either:

someone at Adobe stood to gain from the adoption of Jive;

or the bean-counters were allowed to control a purchase that they knew nothing about;

or the Macromedia people inveigled their way into the process and produced the sort of GUI and software that would mesh with their ideology (as was demonstrated so clearly in their previous abysmal Forums).

A

Anonymous

Sorry Ann – I think it's better to stick to facts.

I try to avoid speculation – it is so often wide of the mark.

A

Anonymous

Just adding my voice as to the unmitigated suckiness of Adobe forums now.

Here's a thought: isn't it a best practice for search interfaces to let the user limit their search range *before* searching? So users aren't forced to sift through a pile of irrelevant results? I thought that was pretty much an established standard in UI design for forums these days. Apparently Adobe doesn't think so.

I agree with Ann. What we're seeing now is a sign of the merge with Macromedia.

But it's not because the Macromedia side corrupted Adobe -- it's because Adobe doesn't have any competition to worry about now.

I think Adobe is starting to slowly develop that inevitable rot of monopolies; the one where their attitude toward customers goes: "Hey. We're the king and you're, well, not."

Captiv8r

Legend

Hi there Digleif

I would tend to disagree with your viewpoint. Perhaps it is that way, but I personally don't think so.

Certainly the Macromedia acquisition plays a role in things, but I don't believe it causes any sort of monopoly to occur. Sure, it does play big in the assorted tool markets, but after all, there are other tools out there that do what the former Macromedia tools do.

Here's where I see the Macromedia acquisition having a role. Adobe had X number of products. X number of forums to support users of those products. They acquire Macromedia and have a sudden influx of new users with their own forums to manage. Adobe now needs to find some sort of middle ground that will allow them a single forum type to manage that accommodates ALL users of ALL products because it's painful to try managing and maintaining two different code bases for forums.

Personally, I'm wondering if *ANY* forum software out there would possibly manage to scale to the levels Adobe needs. After all, they have 80+ products. Assuming one forum instance for each product, well, hopefully one can see the issue here.

I know others in this forum aren't too happy that the change occurred. They will say that what was there before was working just dandy. From their vantage point, perhaps it was. And if that were truly the case, wouldn't you think Adobe would have simply migrated the former Macromedia forums into the Adobe format? That would seem to be the cheapest solution. So to me, logic says that the other forums had likely reached capacity. Otherwise, why go to all the expense and trouble of installing a totally different system?

Cheers... Rick

Phillip M Jones

Inspiring

Captiv8r wrote:
Hi there Digleif
I would tend to disagree with your viewpoint. Perhaps it is that way, but I personally don't think so.
Certainly the Macromedia acquisition plays a role in things, but I don't believe it causes any sort of monopoly to occur. Sure, it does play big in the assorted tool markets, but after all, there are other tools out there that do what the former Macromedia tools do.
Maybe for PC Platform but not for the Mac Platform. The only other player of note for Graphics is Corel and the are PC only. as for PDF there is only Acrobat. there are two or three small PDF items but they don't do much and not relablity. As For a Photoshop equivelent there is nothing on Mac that does everything PS does.
Here's where I see the Macromedia acquisition having a role. Adobe had X number of products. X number of forums to support users of those products. They acquire Macromedia and have a sudden influx of new users with their own forums to manage. Adobe now needs to find some sort of middle ground that will allow them a single forum type to manage that accommodates ALL users of ALL products because it's painful to try managing and maintaining two different code bases for forums.
Personally, I'm wondering if *ANY* forum software out there would possibly manage to scale to the levels Adobe needs. After all, they have 80+ products. Assuming one forum instance for each product, well, hopefully one can see the issue here.
I know others in this forum aren't too happy that the change occurred. They will say that what was there before was working just dandy. From their vantage point, perhaps it was. And if that were truly the case, wouldn't you think Adobe would have simply migrated the former Macromedia forums into the Adobe format? That would seem to be the cheapest solution. So to me, logic says that the other forums had likely reached capacity. Otherwise, why go to all the expense and trouble of installing a totally different system?
They could simply have resubscribed the macromedia people to the WebX Forums instead of trying to merge them The bigest problem with the merge was a problem of destroying sign in cookies in such way that we could n';t sign. one you could get in both sides could enjoy WebX. They could have invested as much or less in improving upgrading webX.
But with the system we have now instead of being signed in permanently. we have to sign in two, three, four times a day. we have 404 erors pop up now and then. We've had one complete melt down in which we couldn't even get in for 18 hours. Ther are portions of the system going down almost every day . Just day before yesterday the singon/login on server died and if you weree own you could reply and if you were not on then you couldn't get in That was for an hour. The we have these relative starangers being moderators. Heck the one we have for this one has less points than I do. and according to most folks here I am a peon. (i don't two cents for the points - but if the people coming in were to base how they would ask a question on the points I would be more likely asked questions. OR based on how many post and how long I've been on forums wI ould still smke him.)
Cheers... Rick

Also a decent forum as soon as improvement are found to be bug free (or relatively so) it should be done within minutes of becoming gold. Not wait 3 , 6 9 months. With the old webx system if several people complained of something being broken. it was fixed (patched in days, sometimes hours of the complaints.

(Please note information is given by an Experienced User of Acrobat. I am not an employee of Adobe.)

A

Anonymous

I am surprised a company who obviously puts a lot of thought into design of their products would have such an ill conceived feature.

The "Good Design" was a feature of the original ADOBE products — it was never part of anything that came out of Macromedia.

And these "redesigned" Forums are a direct result of the Adobe-Macromedia merger.

The redesign (in order to incorporate the old Macromedia Forums) and the decision to "Go cheaply" with off-the-peg Jive software has been a terrible mistake and is a huge loss of service to all of Adobe's customers.

K

KooladaAuthor

Participant

This is a terrible shame, I hope they are listening to this and that Adobe has more control over the macro guys and wins out because the forums used to be great. Now they bite.

A

Anonymous

Koolada wrote:
the forums used to be great. Now they bite.

This is all that needs to be said really, this just says it all.

S

schmalexburns

Participant

Totally agree... I'm trying to find the thread I was in a few days ago and I'm still searching 20 min. later

A

Anonymous

Google the subject. It is much faster and will take you to the adobe thread.

K

KooladaAuthor

Participant

oops, well, to be honest I go so frustrated with search that I did not search that query...LOL

I hope they fix it--- a lot of us rely on this community for support.

Claudio González

Legend

Maybe you are missing all the previous threads complaining of the search function? And the very many threads complaining of the many deficiencies of these new forums?

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