Help Viewer
Comments: 10
This is an old and oft-heard rant, but I hope the person or people responsible for the Help Viewer in OS X were fired.
Actually, no I don’t. I hope they were shot in a pre-dawn raid by masked human interface commandos.
Seriously, though, they have my sympathy. What could have happened on that particular sub-project that it turned out so bad?
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Posted to General Rants • 2003.08.05 (Tue) • 16:49
Comments
Posted by Gabriel Radic 2003.08.05, 19:54
Amen.
Did you know that most of the stuff that works in the Help Viewer is only HTML files, so it can be viewed with any browser? Hmm, maybe you can even try to replace the Help Viewer application with a re-named copy of Safari?
WebCore (a.k.a. Safari) rendering is expected in Panther’s Help Viewer.
Posted by Aegir 2003.08.05, 20:02
I would request that they be tortured first. I remember having a lot of problems with my ADSL modem when I first got my mac - it wouldn’t work. Go to the help, wait 20 minutes for the thing to load, and then it helpfully tells me that the help I need is on the Apple website. Now, if I could get to the website, I wouldn’t need the help, would I?
Posted by riccard0 2003.08.05, 20:16
we can only hope ;-)
Posted by Horst 2003.08.05, 20:57
I agree.
Latest example: I wanted to check something in iChat AV help about videoconferencing. I click on the respective link. When I go back to the index page, Help Viewer begins downloading an update to the iChat help file. ALL references to iChat’s AV and video capabilities are gone; it seems the file was replaced with the old iChat 1.0 help file. What a show of utter incompetence!
Posted by russh 2003.08.05, 21:27
I’ve seen Help Viewer running in Panther. It works VERY well… so let’s hope the speed/etc holds up for the release version. Last year I attended a conference session led by members of the Apple “Help” team. The developers present were impressed by the robust and empowering implementation of the Help System — once they UNDERSTOOD it. Not that it is complicated… Apple hasn’t done the best job of touting the features and how to take advantage of them. Even the smallest developers can write to it and have auto-updating help files for their applications. The Apple folks were quite candid about their dissatisfaction (FRUSTRATION) with the speed of the current system. Thankfully, Panther seems to have solved this.
Posted by russh 2003.08.05, 21:30
FWIW, here is the weblog of one of Apple’s Help system designers:
Posted by teradome 2003.08.06, 00:02
I miss Apple Guide. Sure, it was a bitch to compile and test a guide file, but come on…coachmarks and guide events ruled.
http://turing.acm.org/sigs/sigchi/chi95/Electronic/documnts/shortppr/kjk_bdy.htm
Posted by Casey 2003.08.06, 23:46
The help viewer in Panther is dramatically improved, it launches almost immediately. Just something to look forward to :)
Posted by Luis 2003.08.07, 11:24
Yes, but does it do more than just launch faster in Panther? When you search, can you easily or automatically limit the search to a single app? Can you get an index of terms, or an instant rundown of topics based on keywords a la iTunes?
Posted by Trapp 2003.08.12, 08:41
But will it matter? The help files have never bailed me out of any situation, nor has Apple’s online help forums and database. Are my technical problems so special, or is this some kind of conspiracy?
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