CS4 - where is the desktop help?

[FabioIKO]

The CS3 normal help (not on-line) is very used for me. And very fast and so
pratic!!!
CS4 hasn't desktop help?
Will always need access help.adobe in the Internet?
I don't believe in it!!!!
Where can I download he desktop help?
Thanks.

[urami_]

Same here,
have been traveling allot lately and having hard time getting to internet. No use from
help because all the documentation is online. Find it really annoying, considering the install
is almost 1GB, unlike previous versions, and does not really have much more to offer beside some
really small extras. Where all the data comes from? For such small program, 1GB and not even help
files... pure weird...

--
Best Regards

Urami

--
"Never play Leap-Frog with a Unicorn."

<urami>
If you want to mail me - DO NOT LAUGH AT MY ADDRESS
</urami>

[Julian Ball]

Fabio, Urami,

Don't worry, there *are* local help files too.

If Flash CS4 detects that you're not connected to the Internet, it should
automatically revert to them. If that's not happening/you don't want to use the
help that's online, you can access the local help files directly at:

Mac OS X:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Help/[lang]/Flash/

Windows:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Help\[lang]\Flash\

You can see that there are three folders in here. The help page you normally
see when you go to help > Flash help is in 10.0_UsingFlash\index.html

HTH,

Julian

[FabioIKO]

Thanks for your answer.
Ok, I can see the local help but it is in html format.
I would like to use that old and honest help in help format, is there no more?
It is so easy and so fast to locate differently of html: outside of program
and slowly.
Have you the old and honest help?
Thanks.

[BWolfe [ADOBE]]

The old help format is gone, and not coming back. Sorry.

Regards,

Bentley Wolfe
Senior Support Engineer, Flash/Flash Player/Digital Editions
Adobe

[thecof...@gmail.com]

On Oct 21, 8:06 am, "BWolfe [ADOBE]" <webforumsu...@macromedia.com>
wrote:

> The old help format is gone, and not coming back.  Sorry.

There are very few added features in CS4 for developers to help
Actionscript coding in the code window and you removed the fast
searchable help. What on earth were you thinking when you did that?

I knida get it, that information is useful online, but not everyone is
blessed with hign bandwidth backbones to your web servers! When you're
coding and jumping about in the documentation just to make sure you've
got all of your method interfaces correct or a hundred other tasks the
last thing I want to do is wait for the OS to load up my web browser,
then connect to your documentation web servers half way around the
globe for a few lines of text, all of which takes over a minuite.
Before this task took me less than a second. What happened to Adobe's
focus on efficency and time saving tasks in CS4 here?

You built nifty search features for media and video, the documentation
feels like a giant leap backwards.

I'm loving many of the other features, but I'm very dissapointed in
the documentation and help features.

[david.m...@gmail.com]

The new help format absolutely sucks for the following simple reasons:
1. No matter how fast your connection, it's still slower than the
app.
2. I cannot have my help files in a tab next to my Actions panel
anymore for quick reference
3. Search results are irrelevant and poorly formatted
4. There should at very LEAST be an option to have F1 take you to the
local files instead of online!

Did you ask any real users about making this change? (Besides the ones
that write AS books as a hobby and already know all this junk)?

[Winkyboy]

Ugh! I can't STANNNNNND this online help crap:

It takes longer even just to initialize; the time between when I press
F1 and when I'm at a help page I can interact with must be ten times
as long as it used to be. Seriously. I just tried it again and am
still waiting while I type this. Still waiting. Screw it. [I
finished the next paragraph and finally noticed that the help page
came up.]

It never focuses on the topic in question; if I select a word and hit
F1, it goes to the root of the help index and I'm forced to perform a
new web search to find my topic. Then, I have to manually narrow it
down through a few more pages to choose between AS2 and AS3, etc.
WTF?! Browsing from page to page on Adobe's help site is like
browsing on dialup. See previous paragraph.

It is now MANY TIMES easier to use Google for your Flash help than
Flash's "built-in" help.

[JonKaye]

On Oct 20, 5:06 pm, "BWolfe [ADOBE]" <webforumsu...@macromedia.com>
wrote:

I can't find how to access the help files that my extensions/
components install. Are these gone too?

-jonathan

[JonKaye]

How can I access in CS4 the help files that third-party extensions install?

[Craig D.]

This new help system is extremely disappointing. even though there are some
local help files I can't seem to find anything on Actionscript 2 in them. I
know that AS 2 reference is online but it so slow and only gotten slower it's
become unusable. Please Adobe give us back our Help panel and the choice to use
local or online help.

[Jay_Adobe]

Hi folks. We hear your pain and are working on solutions to improve the
situation. In the meantime:

If you?re connected to the Internet, the Help menu within the product opens
the product Help and Support page by default. This page is a portal to all of
the Community Help content for the product. If you want to consult or search
online product Help only, you can access it by clicking the product Help link
in the upper-right corner of the Help and Support page. Once inside the Adobe
Help for the product, be sure to select the This Help System Only option before
you do your search. Otherwise, Adobe content and Community content will be
returned in the search results.

If you?re not connected to the Internet, the Help menu within the product
opens local Help, which is a subset of the content available in online product
Help. Because local Help is not as complete or up-to-date as online product
Help, Adobe recommends that you use the PDF version of product Help if you want
to stay off-line.

A downloadable PDF of complete product Help is available from two places:
- The product?s Help and Support page (upper-right corner of the page)
- Local Help and web Help (top of the Help interface)

If you are working in Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash,
Fireworks, or Dreamweaver, and you want to turn off Community Help so that
local Help opens by default, do the following:
1. Open the Connections panel (Window > Extensions > Connections).
2. From the Connections panel menu , select Offline Options.
3. Select Keep Me Offline and click OK.

[albee]

I appreciate the need for up-to-date Help files, but I have to agree with the
other posts--the old Help panel was much more useful, faster and, for those of
us who have developed in Flash for years, indispensable. And with software
updates, the Help panel was always up-to-date anyway, and if we wanted more
info or examples there was frequently a link that would access the on-line help
at adobe.com. So I want to add my vote to bring back the Help panel! It is
really one of the most useful features of previous versions of Flash and not
including it in CS4 is a step backward...

Thanks!

Alberto

[Rothrock]

Yeah. I've got to add my voice as well. The new help system is less than
helpful.

I tried the Keep Me Offline trick, but that seems to break the context
sensitive use of F1. I type var myArray:Array and then press F1. Should take me
to the Array class, but I end up with a page that just tells me that there is
online help.
(file:///Library/Application%20Support/Adobe/Help/en_US/AS2LCR/Flash_10.0/index.
html)

That seems to be for AS2.

If you can't (or won't) go back and you have to keep it in html. Then I have
some suggestions.

The first thing you could do to make it more helpful is actually have it put
the list of the classes down the side. That way if I have more than one
question I can jump back and forth.

There is a lot of inconstancies between all the different pages I end up. I
can't ever rely that pressing F1 is going to take me where I want to go. For
awhile it kept taking me to some top level help page where I first had to
select Flash CS4 and then drill down. If I ask for help from Flash I don't
expect to have to wade through files for all the other Design Premium
applications.

Well my post is a bit of a mess and all over the place, but that is how I feel
about the new help system! So it is kinda apropos.

[Vitzkrieg]

I have to agree with everyone else on here. We just updated to CS4 where I
work figuring we would try to keep up to date, but what a mistake that was.
The templates, components, and custom help files we use and the thousands of
files we've created the past few years are all done in AS2.0 and there's no
support for it.

I realize the world is getting more and more connected, but who ever decided
to force everyone online should be fired. Sure it's easier to keep everything
up to date, for the developers at Adobe, not the developers out in the world
using CS4. On-line or off-line, the new help system blows.

If you're going to copy the help system that Sun uses for Java, at least make
it as good as what they have.

[GhengisJones]

Online Help is a TERRIBLE idea.

The day I installed CS4 Master Collection I clicked on Help in one of the
progs and guess what?

The Adobe server was down!

I have enough trouble with my ISP tanking when I need 'net access!

Other times, the Adobe servers have been very sluggish.

People have deadlines to meet and Help that is unreliable is no help at all.

And FWIW, any kind of HTML-based help in any program is vastly inferior to the
old-school Help simply because the search is so useless.

Used to be you could search "Pen Tool" (for instance) and very quickly find a
good description of said tool and its capabilities.

Now you just get any old article that mentions "pen" and "tool" and you have
to weed through a bunch of useless crap.

[in...@dauntless.be]

If you don't care about 'updated livedocs', try out our new
application which lets you view, search & bookmark your local docs:
http://www.airdoc.be