*** From the Archives ***
This article is from March 5, 2008, and is no longer current.
What’s Up With the Adobe Exchange?
SJ wrote:
It has been months since any new Exchange plugins have been added. I have to wonder why. Can you give me an answer?
I’ve been wondering the same thing myself, for a long time. Adobe had a somewhat vibrant store of cool plug-ins, scripts, and other materials on their Adobe Exchange site for a couple of years. Then, it all stopped around the end of 2006. Steve Werner noticed that a new “beta” site went live last May, but there was no new content added for half a year. It was like posting a brand new ghost town.
Then, suddenly, at the end of 2007, someone woke up, posted a couple dozen new items that developers had uploaded… and then fell asleep again. As I type this, there has been nothing new since 10 December.
Why? Does InDesign Exchange Beta mean “we have a high school student intern running this thing”? I don’t mean to be mean, but come on… Adobe has teased us long enough. I think they need to get that ball rolling and make it a real resource, or put it out of its misery (and ours).
I wish we had the resources to build a real InDesign “exchange” here at InDesignSecrets — with uploads, ratings, and so on — but honestly, we’re working on a shoestring here and we can’t build that kind of content management system. Adobe is perfectly situated to host it, but again, it doesn’t help anyone if it can’t be maintained properly. I even heard an Adobe employee at last week’s InDesign Conference say that it was hardly worth looking at these days, because a lot of the material there is out of date.
That said, there are some pretty cool items on the Exchange that are useful. For example, someone at the conference was asking about a way to turn footnotes to endnotes… a quick glance at the Exchange shows a script to do just that. I haven’t used it, so I’m not sure how good it is. But it’s worth glancing through the stuff that is there, just in case.
There are a few other similar resource sites out there, but nothing else that I’ve seen that would be a true replacement. Any suggestions from readers? (Or, anyone who wants to build us a system for real cheap?! ;) )
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Have a look at the PromotorBot, as maintained by Adobe’s Mark Niemann-Ross on his site. Here is the rss feed.
Thank you for that, Dirk! Yes, I should have mentioned that great resource. However, that is really just a listing of plug-ins and developers. It doesn’t let people upload/download, rate them, list scripts or templates, and so on.
That was on of my favourite bookmarks! Hardly click on it anymore, it is/was a great resource.
“As I type this, there has been nothing new since 10 December.”
Interestingly, that coincides with the time when part of Adobe went through a major reorganization with people moved around and some people let go.
I have no idea if that happened with the staff responsible for Exchange, but it’s a working hyphothesis.
You may or may not notice that there haven’t been many online eSeminars for creatives or print people for a similar reason. That’s still being sorted out.
David, you might send a message to an Adobe insider like Tim Cole to see if he can find out.
Months ago I mentioned this to Adobe’s Noha Edell here in New York City. She said she’d mention it to someone. Shortly thereafter they started taking submissions so I thought it might have helped. Then they “closed shop” again.
I truly hope they keep it. It was a great resource and can be again. When it was being updated I often would tell my students about it. Now I don’t mention it because so many things are old. I actually have several listings on there. One of the downloads is an old version and I can’t even update it. I had to change the text to tell people NOT to download it, but instead visit my webpage. Sad :(
Also, if Adobe’s reading this, it would be very nice if developers can respond to the comments people post. If someone is having a problem and posts it, the developer could help them and also let others know in case they also have that issue.
I had submitted several scripts to Adobe Exchange starting about a year ago, but they never got posted. When I check the status it just says they are under review and to check back in a few weeks. I’ve given up on submitting anything new there now.
Photoshop gets its usual support but little activity on Illustrator and certainly very little on InDesign. I too wonder why. Maybe not many contributing? Hopefully this thread will spark interest and generate answers from the big A.
Gray, it’s not because people are not contributing. We are. I know for a fact that I and others are contributing (trying to at least). There is no one “home” to answer the door and post the things we are submitting though. When some parts of the exchange work and others don’t, that just tells me there are different admins for each section. Maybe InDesign has none?
Honestly, I find the Adobe website a bit of a mess and I know for a fact I download a document on “how to” do something in InDesign, when I eventually managed to contact someone in Adobe I was told that document was obsolete and I was directed to another section of the site. Why was there obosolete information available on the site? I don’t know.
I do know this: There is nobody at home on the Exchange Site. People know of other people wanting to put stuff up there. Would it be an idea for you guys to get together and put up a site yourselves for downloading scripts etc. I personally don’t have a clue about scripts or websites, but I do know that I like them.
I agree that Adobe’s website has had many issues. Things need to be updated better. Navigation could certainly be improved. Even the update Exchange beta needs work to make it better.
I do already have my scripts on my website and have for years, but that requires people to Google a search and flip through many sites looking for interesting stuff. The Exchange was great for people to quickly find things they may not have found easily otherwise. Many people found my scripts through that site because even the Adobe Bridge has tie-ins to the Exchange. So it’s sad that they promote something that is outdated.
As David said in this post, for a non-Adobe site to re-create the same experience of submissions, storing files, allowing comments, etc like the Exchange does, is not a simple or cheap venture. That’s why we hope Adobe will get going on this. I think it’s not a good thing when a large company like Adobe, a company that makes such popular website producing software like Dreamweaver can’t keep it’s own website updated. They should be inspiring people with adobe.com (and other parts of the site) instead of looking outdated and having bad interface design.
Could it be that InDesign got the lion’s share of new goodies in CS3 that the admin folks don’t see the need for additions? Though glad to see you are trying to add some neat new functionalities. Wake up Adobe and open the door!
I’d like to see a way to add new objects to the stroke panel but InDesign is way better in many ways at dealing with strokes than is illustrator.
A source (head of a user group) told me a few days ago that a new person has just been ‘promoted’ to run the Dev Exchange and that is as we speak going through a major overhaul and to expect a great new resource.
Let’s wait and see.
OR MAYBE… Adobe is the 800 lb. gorilla and simply doesn’t care what we think.
???
Hey, looks like there have been some new posts up there in March and April! Perhaps my little rant here woke them up for a moment. I hope it continues. This is a good sign.