Who selected the default list of product forums, and why?

[Brutus_Maximus]

I am struck by the odd list of product forums listed at the entry point to the new forums (http://forums.adobe.com/index.jspa). There are one-click icons that jump to the Flash Player, Acrobat, Flash, Photoshop Elements, Dreamweaver, Livecycle, Photoshop, Adobe Reader, ColdFusion, Flex, Acrobat Connect Pro, and Lightroom forums. I can understand the massively popular products like Flash, Adobe Reader, and Photoshop, but Livecycle, ColdFusion, and Acrobat Connect Pro? Why are those niche products elevated to such prominence, while flagship Adobe products like InDesign and Illustrator are buried in a drop-down menu? I wonder if these were just random selections by the web design team, or if they reflect a corporate emphasis on "new media" products over print design.

If it is just a random selection of Adobe products, is there a way I can create my own jump list, or will I always have to dig through a labyrinth to find the forums that interest me most?

[Curt Wrigley]

Brutus_Maximus wrote:

..

If it is just a random selection of Adobe products, is there a way I can create my own jump list, or will I always have to dig through a labyrinth to find the forums that interest me most?

Your guess is as good as mine.  One thing is clear; if they are only listing 10 products, a bunch of people will be upset regardless of which they choose.

On finding forums; I suggest using bookmarks.  Drag your favs to your browsers toolbar for quick access.  Thats a lot faster than popping back to a webpage for an index.

Or; the History menu near the top of the forum is helpful to keep track of the last 3 forums you were on.

[Guest]

I smell a pruning of the product line coming on...

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

dave milbut wrote:

…a pruning of the product line …

The thought has crossed my mind too.

[Guest]

dave milbut wrote:

I smell a pruning of the product line coming on...

Yes, now is the season to hive off unprofitable minor products whoever you are.

[Brutus_Maximus]

>>I smell a pruning of the product line coming on...

Perhaps, but we're talking about two major components of the Adobe Creative Suite. I honestly doubt Adobe is going to kill off that thriving product line. So why bury those forums so deeply while highlighting relatively minuscule niche products? I suspect it's more likely that the page was developed by web-centric staff who really don't have an understanding of the full product line or the culture of the former U2U forums.

I'd say they should avoid the appearance of favoritism and just present an alphabetical list of product forums on a single page, as they did previously. The current setup imposes a heirarchy where there really should be none.

[D__McCahill]

Not wanting to seem contrary, but I like that new opening page. It is a lot friendlier than the gawd-awful mess from the prior forums. There were so many sections that people got lost, and wound up just picking a forum and asking their question there, often never coming back to find an answer, since they could never find the same place again.

[Brutus_Maximus]

I grant you that. But what proportion of forum visitors are going to go to the Adobe Connect Pro forum, for example, compared to the InDesign or Illustrator forums? If the forum design team is going to provide handy jump links, shouldn't they evaluate the traffic flow and tailor the list of quick links to the most commonly visited forums?

It seems like a niggling issue, to be sure, but it seems emblematic of the way the new forums have been developed and rolled out.

[D__McCahill]

Brutus_Maximus wrote:

I grant you that. But what proportion of forum visitors are going to go to the Adobe Connect Pro forum, for example, compared to the InDesign or Illustrator forums?

I dunno. Connect is not a Design tool, but it is a big business tool for conducting online meetings. We use a competing product at our college. It might be that Connect is a high markup product, with all those business users. And everyone knows that designers are much more clever than business people, and they can be expected to figure out how to get to a second level menu, while the execs won't (unless their secretary/assistant is handy).

[Phillip_M_Jones]

Maybe it was just a matter of the people putting the system online didn't have the time or talent to create a Favicon for each of the products which would have been a thousand times better.

[~graffiti]

PjonesCET wrote:

Maybe it was just a matter of the people putting the system online didn't have the time

<Sarcasm> Could be true since they've only been planning this since '06'. </sarcasm>

[Brutus_Maximus]

>>Maybe it was just a matter of the people putting the system online didn't have the time or talent to create a Favicon for each of the products which would have been a thousand times better.

Perhaps. Although it appears that most of the quick links use Adobe's standard two-letter product identification icons, so there really wouldn't be anything new to design. Perhaps the web team could make an array of all the product icons, distributed into a grid. Remember that "periodic table" product grid Adobe promoted when they released CS3? That could be used as an interactive portal into the forums, so no products receive "top billing" at the expense of others.