LiveDocs Help Pages Come to InDesign CS3
About a month ago I wrote here about some powerful new Help features in InDesign CS3. The InDesign Help files which we usually reach by choosing Help > InDesign Help are now also found as web pages which can be accessed on the Internet. When Adobe Help Viewer 1.1 launches, you can get to them by clicking the This page on the Web link. These pages can be searched for on the Internet. The web pages will be updated and added to in the future, presumably fixing the inevitable errors which creep into documentation which is written as the software is being engineered.
Help Viewer Link
But now these web Help pages are enhanced to allow commenting. (Thanks to Tim Cole’s excellent blog for this information!) This feature was first introduced with the Photoshop Help web pages, and some of those have now been commented on, adding further information about the subject. At the bottom of each web Help page, you’ll see the Add Comment button.
Add Comments
Another advantage of the LiveDocs Help feature is that the current page has a URL (shown above the Add Comment button), which you can use as a reference when sending help information to other people. This is very difficult to do using Adobe’s Help Viewer.
Cool! I’ve already submitted a comment to the page on exporting XHTML (correcting an error in the help file). Let’s see if I can get my 15 minutes of fame.
They say all the comments are reviewed and if they pass muster, are posted within 24 hours.
Well, I guess the bit about 24 hours was more of a CYA thing…
my docs comment
Thanks, Anne-Marie. That’s very nice! It will now be much easier to cross-reference the Help files within our blog posts now.
Damn!
I had to listen to the mention of LiveDocs in the podcast and then read this message from Steve before I understood the amazing power of what LiveDocs means.
Shades of Wikipedia, this makes the entire Help system for all Adobe applications have the potential for incredible information.
Should I be worried about my book sales? I don’t think so.
But I just submitted an added bit of information for one of the General Preferences settings.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/InDesign/5.0/help.html?content=WSa285fff53dea4f8617383751001ea8cb3f-6d1f.html
And it was just approved. (And they even let me keep my subtle plug for my book.)
The only thing I fault Adobe for in doing LiveDocs is they aren’t PUBLICIZING them well enough.
LiveDocs is a fantastic resource and makes it more appealing that Adobe hasn’t shipped big, thick user manuals with the software.
Sandee, I don’t think you should be worred about your book sales. In fact, we want to promote excellent third-party books in the help system by linking to or even including helpful content. I’ll be contacting you and others about making LiveDocs Help more of a community effort.
have been using cs2 for a few years, and my chief gripe is that my indesign help pulldown displays only photoshop help.
trying to teach myself the software is especially hard when the help doesn’t.
any ideas?
Hi there,
Im using Indesign to create a brochure and inputting data into it from Excel using an XML input.
When ever i input a number, even if it is formatted as text in Excel, it adds a decimal place!
Is there any way of avoiding this???
Would appreciate any advice,
many thanks,
Gabriel
Printing error when i print on tabloid size paper, it enlarges document. This does not happen when i print out in other applications, only indesign. Any ideas?