Disappointed with product introduction

[hmm63]

I am new to FrameMaker.  Based on its popularity and others' comments, I'm sure it is a fascinating, feature-packed program that can do a lot for me in my technical writing.  However, I am disappointed with Adobe's lack of introduction to the product.  Any product should come with material that tells me what is special about it and who is meant to use it.  It should also have sample work to show what can be done with the product.  Instead, Adobe begins with a Getting Started with FrameMaker that introduces the user interface and screen basics, which are not yet of concern at this introductory stage.  Note also that there is a section called "What's new in FrameMaker 9", clearly oriented to past users, but totally ignoring the need of new users to learn about the essence of FrameMaker.

I hope the folks at Adobe are listening and will provide some introductory material.  I would be most thankful for it.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I'd strongly recommend getting a copy of Scriptorium's great Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FM8 (available from their website as a PDF for cheap!). It covers a great deal of material with only the user interface being the main difference - functionally FM9 works much the same. Helped me quite a bit as a newbie FM9 user last year.

[Michael_Müller-Hillebrand]

hmm,

The information from Scriptorium are really great:

http://wiki.scriptorium.com/ contains material of an Accelerated Introduction

For »Publishing Fundamentals« they seem to have a special price currently, see http://store.scriptorium.com/items/Books/list.htm

Regarding samples, most users do not have the option to create something from ground up, they have to follow some kind of corporate style sheet. Have you looked at the sample templates that ship with FrameMaker?

- Michael

[Art_Campbell1]

In addition to playing with the default templates to discover how some things work, take a look at the Updates page for Frame -- there is a collection of templates you can download and play with dating from the 5.x releases, but which are still very usable.

Art

[peter minneapolis]

hmm63 wrote:

I am new to FrameMaker.  Based on its popularity and others' comments, I'm sure it is a fascinating, feature-packed program that can do a lot for me in my technical writing.  However, I am disappointed with Adobe's lack of introduction to the product.  Any product should come with material that tells me what is special about it and who is meant to use it.  It should also have sample work to show what can be done with the product.  Instead, Adobe begins with a Getting Started with FrameMaker that introduces the user interface and screen basics, which are not yet of concern at this introductory stage.  Note also that there is a section called "What's new in FrameMaker 9", clearly oriented to past users, but totally ignoring the need of new users to learn about the essence of FrameMaker.

I hope the folks at Adobe are listening and will provide some introductory material.  I would be most thankful for it.

I agree that it's hard to find good getting started training materials in the FrameMaker package that you buy. Some versions of FrameMaker were shipped with a training disk, or with training materials on the main disk. I'm not sure if recent versions do.

Recently some Adobe products have come with a 30-day free subscription to Lynda.com online training. Sometimes there's something in the package that tells you about these goodies, and other times you'll get email that tells you about them. You probably have to register your software at Adobe.com. You'll need to create an Adobe user account (free) if you don't have one. The adobe.com site isn't easy to find your way around. On the home page, type register in the search box at the top right, click Product Registration, and the registration log-in page appears. You can create an account if you need to.

Search Google for terms like "adobe.tv framemaker tutorial," "free online video training framemaker," and "framemaker training resources" without quotes for some good links. These searches include content from the official adobe.com site as well as others.

Forum participants are users who volunteer to help others in the community, as they've been helped - passing a torch. You're always welcome to post questions here. It's most helpful to would-be helpers if you state the subject of your question clearly, one question or problem per message thread. And, provide your exact version of FrameMaker; it's the version number (like 9.1) and the build number (pxxx) displayed with Help > About FrameMaker.

And, you can help others who struggle to find good introductory material in the package by posting a formal request at https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

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Peter Gold

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