Hi,

When speaking with Skydemon users and asking about it's limitation, it's becoming obvious that the answer is no longer about the product itself. A recurring complaint is now about documentation.

For a new user the learning curve is high, but even for a long time user it's sometimes hard to find about the new functions. I've summarized the main 'SD 2014 additions' to a panel of users last week, and most of them were not knowing at all about most of them, even the historical users.

The documentation, in his actual format, is not as helpful as it should be:
- Some parts are confusing, due to the formatting (lack of clear marking/separators/titles). 
- Not being able to (easily) download the documentation leads to multiple unofficial versions of the documentation, all generated by different people, and based of different versions, since this is the only way to search, navigate or read the documentation in a modern way (with search, annotations, read position saving, ...). 
- There's no exhaustive description for menus and trying to figure how an entry acts could be the start of a very long journey. On the other side, finding the menu for a documented capability is as difficult.
- A clear changelog (with a link to a specific part of the manual or an explanation of any new capability) is really missing.

Comparing with other tools on the market, Skydemon is way ahead when speaking about capabilities. But the documentation is way behind... 

I know I've initiated one of the most annoying topic a development team can think about (sorry about that), but I'm absolutely convicted that this is now one of the main area of improvement for Skydemon and definitely a way to give this wonderfull product the love it deserves

M

I don't want to get inbetween you and Tim but it is nonetheless true that only the minority of customers reads the manual. A well designed application should not rely on users having read the manual anyway. After all, the computer needs to adapt to the user and not the other way around. And SD is pretty good in this respect.

I don't think that stating a well known fact, i.e., that most customers don't refer to printed documentation for problem resolution, constitutes "blaming" of customers. Not if you consider the kind and level of support offered on this very forum. I haven't seen a RTFM kind of response from any of the SD team members posting here.

-- Chris.

Chris

I agree wholeheartedly. I have a friend who never reads 'the manual', and when he has a problem, he will usually contact me, knowing that I will have read it from cover to cover! However, in the case of SD, I find the product so intuitive to use, that I have only, rarely, had to refer to the documentation. Nevertheless, this does not obviate the need for well formatted, accurate, up to date and searchable documentation. Rather, it underscores the need, so that when information is needed, it can be found easily and speedily. SD documentation may have had its shortcomings in the past, primarily because product development has has been so rapid, but knowing the SD team, and how they respond so positively to users' needs and requests, I think the forthcoming new documentation is likely to exceed expectations, and hopefully, it will be in a format that allows the SD team to keep it up to date without undue hassle.

Mike
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I couldn't agree more.