making stuff unconditional in FM12

Sun Mar 30 09:27:26 PDT 2014

Aw .. c'mon .. that's a bit harsh, don't you think?

I'm not a fan of the "new" (since FM9) UI either, but personally 
attacking the people behind the current product really isn't fair. The 
current team developing FrameMaker *is* very interested in customer 
feedback, and does listen. (And it's certainly not the programmers' 
faults .. they implement the features they are told to.)

The new UI is a significant change from the old standard, but can be 
tamed if you're willing to spend the time to learn how to make it do 
what you want. There are training videos and other info about setting up 
workspaces and other features, and with FM12, they have fixed most of 
the missing keyboard shortcuts (I believe). I totally agree that there 
are some frustrating aspects to it, but that's the new world of UI 
design. If you don't like it, stick with FM8. No one is forcing you to 
upgrade (although they do encourage it).

As for XML editors .. I think you'll find that XMetaL is considerably 
lacking when compared to FM. Especially if you're planning on generating 
PDFs .. you'll either need to take a step back on your formatting and 
layout, or you'll still need to use FM for PDF publishing. (But I am 
biased .. I'll admit that freely.)

Cheers,

...scott

On 3/29/14 4:08 PM, Zimmerman, Gary wrote:
>
> **
>
> I swear it's like the Adobe FrameMaker developers do absolutely NO 
> usability testing, get absolutely NO feedback from existing customers, 
> focus groups, or anything else before they foist on us a crappy, 
> untested GUI that their offshore developers implemented in some kind 
> of cultural vacuum.(Not offshore culture so much as programmer culture 
> - before any programmers get offended, there are plenty of exceptional 
> programmers who have a GREAT sense of usability and customer needs - 
> apparently Adobe hasn't hired any for the FM team, nor any 
> usability/human factors consultants.)
>
> The programming underneath may be great (I doubt it, with the general 
> fragility of the thing for many releases now), but the usability if 
> off-the-charts bad.Like something designed by a bunch of college 
> programmers who have no concept of building a usable product, but 
> instead think "more is better" so they toss in everything figuring 
> that they'll have something for everyone, and end up with such a hash 
> salad that you spend more time jumping through GUI hoops than you do 
> productive writing.(Remember what college kids did when word 
> processors introduce lots of fun fonts to play with - the FM 9 and 10 
> GUI is pretty much the GUI equivalent of "ransom letter" tech writing.)
>
> I can remember when FM was unquestionably a better choice than Word 
> for any serious documentation work.Now they're approaching parity.I 
> don't know about FM8, but when we jumped from 7 to 9, it was all 
> downhill after that.We're on 10 now, debating upgrading.We're also 
> moving to a DITA CMS and Xmetal editor - much less powerful, but it 
> does what it needs to do without being an obstacle to the writers.We 
> didn't even consider using FM as our XML editor, though the transition 
> might have been less of an issue for our writers who are used to FM.
>
> Sorry to rant.I LIKE FM.I'm just so sorry they messed with the GUI and 
> messed up so badly with 9 and onwards.They may fix it to be decent 
> again incrementally, but like Windows 8, they should have scrapped the 
> whole thing when they realized what a horrible blunder they made 
> instead of turning a deaf ear and insisting everything was great for 
> so long, when real users knew it wasn't so.Credibility gone.Maybe 11 
> is better, maybe 12 even better.Don't know if I'll ever get to try them.
>
> -- garyZ
>
> **
>
> **
>
> *From:*framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com 
> [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] *On Behalf Of *Rick Quatro
> *Sent:* Saturday, March 29, 2014 7:50 AM
> *To:* 'rebecca officer'; framers at lists.frameusers.com
> *Subject:* RE: making stuff unconditional in FM12
>
> Hi Rebecca,
>
> I see what you mean and agree that if you want to quickly remove all 
> conditions from a selection, it is painful. They should put the 
> Unconditional button back in, or have a modifier key were you could 
> uncheck everything with one click.
>
> Rick
>
> Rick Quatro
>
> Carmen Publishing Inc.
>
> 585-366-4017
>
> rick at frameexpert.com <mailto:rick at frameexpert.com>
>
> *From:*framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com 
> <mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com> 
> [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] *On Behalf Of *rebecca 
> officer
> *Sent:* Wednesday, March 26, 2014 11:19 PM
> *To:* framers at lists.frameusers.com <mailto:framers at lists.frameusers.com>
> *Subject:* making stuff unconditional in FM12
>
> Hi everyone
>
> I just went looking for the "unconditional" button in the revamped 
> Conditional Tags pod in FM12. It ain't there.
>
> Am I just being blind? Or is there another one-or-two-click way to 
> make stuff unconditional?
>
> At the moment, it looks like I either have to go the Copy Special 
> route, or manually untick all the tick boxes. To add insult to injury, 
> they go On > As Is > Off, so I have to click each tickbox *twice* to 
> clear it. Seriously, Adobe??
>
> Cheers
>
> Rebecca
>
>
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