Help to understanding Adobe Help

[CesarRVG]

So, I'm very very new to After Affects, I made the basic tutorials and now I watched one on youtube. In the first steps, the guy says let's create a slider and create it. I say, let's learn the definition of slider.

I clicked F1 and send me the this website, the help section, where I typed "Slider" and got this:

Well, not here, nor in the next page I found an article titled "Slider Control" or Slider Expression Control, where I can find a straight definition of what is a Slider Control.

Of course if I click the first item, I can somehow learn how to use it, but again, not a straight definition.

Looks like there's no real Reference manual online... or is it just the search function not working properly?

[Warren Heaton]

Phrase your internet searches with "Adobe helpx" followed by the application name and then the feature name.

This allows "Adobe helpx After Effects Slider Control" to bring back the following from the After Effects user guide:

• Using expression controls
  https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/expression-controls.html

If I had to write a definition for Slider Control, I'd go with something like "The Slider Control allows for controlling numeric parameters within an expression that is easy to update."

To find the After Effects User Guide via a web search, use "Adobe helpx After Effects User Guide" to bring back the following:

• Welcome to the After Effects User Guide
  https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/user-guide.html

- Warren

[CesarRVG]

Thank you for the hints. I tried it and yes, it improved the search results on Google.

But still, it looks like this is a new documentation style, more informal. I'm used the Microsoft style of help files.

Regarding to my specific question about the slider, as I told I'm in my very first days of learning and it got my attention because Slider is usually a control, a visual control, in almost any programming IDE. And here, well, it seems is not.

Thanks again!

[Warren Heaton]

From a user interaction standpoint, the Slider Control Effect is more or less what a slider control looks like and behaves likes not only in After Effects, but across most all of the Adobe applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, InDesign, Media Encoder, Audition, etc.

Maybe it's not the feature you're looking for?

[thepixelsmith · Accepted solution]

The slider control is used with Expression (The internal scripting language of AE) to control a numerical. You could for example link the rotation of a layer to a slider control using expression. 

All of the effects in the Expression Controls section are like that. They don't have any effect on any parameter by themselves, they are prebuilt controls that are non-functional until wired up with code. You would use an expression to link them to a property or properties to control.