Feedback Improve the manual experience

[Luke Peña]

I loved the old manual and found it straightforward and useful, but find the behavior of the new manual frustrating and obtuse.

Middle clicking on a term used to open it inside of game maker, and middle clicking on a new term would simply navigate an open manual to the new page. Now it opens it in a separate browser, and middle clicking again opens new tabs, even if I do it on a term that already has an open tab. This might be convenient for multi-monitor setups, but for me it's very difficult to work with, especially since I've grown used to the old way for over a decade.

Also the UX on the search feature is horrendous. In the old manual, it was just a list of terms. That was it.

Now, every single entry is a paragraph. And most of the display information is useless. Here is what every entry looks like:

Thing you're looking for
Page outlining the thing you're looking for
Here is a long file path for the html file of the page for the thing you're looking for. It's
not even something you can use, it's just a filepath. So you can't even save it, you can't click
on it. It literally does nothing.

All of this text is white with the same indentation, so you end up with a giant wall of text. It's a miserable experience to use. The index search is super snappy and super clear, so it makes the search function almost entirely useless. We literally just need the "thing we're looking for", not all that extra crap. Does it actually serve a purpose for anyone that I'm missing?

Is it just me that feels this way? It's really been a thorn in my side since the beta release came with the new manual. I just want the manual to open inside of game maker like it did before and for the search action to get rid of all that useless boilerplate text.

 

[Kezarus]

For me, the Syntax, Return and Example sections are the things that I look for.

I usually have to read all the description for a "if id find nothing then returns -1". If that was on the Return I wouldn't even need the paragraph.

The old manual was better, IMHO, but it's a lot to be changed to match the same layout.

 

[gnysek]

Return part should be just below table with arguments IMHO, as sometimes it's offscreen.

 

[Evanski]

@matharoo
I only ask, when I middle click things to open the manual, can it update the manual I have open rather then opening a new manual?

 

[matharoo]

Please submit reports through Help > Report a Bug.

 

[Pixel-Team]

Please submit reports through Help > Report a Bug.

Just look at him. Throwing his weight around already! To hell with us "little people."

 

[Evanski]

Just look at him. Throwing his weight around already! To hell with us "little people."

@Nocturne 's got to be so proud!

 

[Kezarus]

At first I was like... what is @matharoo saying?

But then... XD

 

[matharoo]

I can't really do anything about those issues if there aren't any reports/tickets for them. Simple as that Of course, feel free to discuss it on the forums as well, not saying you shouldn't!

 

[Kezarus]

But, in all honesty, why the suggestion tag exists in the forum? Just for us to discuss refine the idea and the "someone of the participants post a suggestion feature"? Isn't it more pro-active for someone of the staff to post a suggestion/bug themselves?

In some of my jobs we have this kind of bureocracy, but they were really big companies with more than 20k empleyees. And EVEN then... most of the times we or another team just solved the problem and record a ticket ourselves. For an enterprise with less than a hundred... idk, makes less sense and you can always have an internal report of what was done to not lose track (version control, anyone?). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

( may I say that I personally am contacted by internal/external users and I'm more interested in solve the problem than in bureocracy (that I deeply despise, 'cause, at the end of the day, it's a report that no one reads) but that's just me =] )

 

[TsukaYuriko]

The Suggestion tag here in the Community Chat forum is for suggestions about the GMC. As the forum description states, "Discuss anything relevant to the GameMaker Community as a whole." No mention of GameMaker. The Tech Support forum has no Suggestion tag. It does have a Discussion Feedback* tag, which is for the discussion of feature requests or potential bug reports, to refine them before they are filed.

Feature requests and bug reports should be filed by the person they originate from so that the developers can contact them to clarify or discuss matters related to the report. If you tell me that you want something to change and I tell that to the developers, they'll ask me those questions, then I'll have to ask you, you tell me, then I tell them. Very inefficient.

 

[Nocturne]

This is actually in the wrong forum... so I'll move it now to the GMS forum. I should point out too that the GMS2 forum also has a suggestions tag (well a Feedback tag!), and it is specifically designed for people to put forward suggestions to discuss with the community before placing a formal suggestion to YYG through the helpdesk (in which you would then LINK the topic you made to prove support for the suggestion). We've always been very clear that this forum is pretty much independent of YYG and you should never expect anything discussed here to be taken by them and acted on unless it is accompanied by a helpdesk ticket...

I do NOT think it's fair to expect YYG to be browsing the GMC daily looking for bugs and then creating test projects to reproduce them and then file them anyway on their bug tracker. They already HAVE a centralised system for bugs that is the helpdesk, and it's easy enough to file a bug as there is an option in the Help menu in GMS2. It's not complicated, and it helps a small company make their product better. Personally, I'd much rather make a test project and send them it through the helpdesk than have developers wasting valuable time scoring the forums, reddit, twitter, etc... just in case there is an issue posted. Their time is better spent improving the product!

Finally, on the subject of docs. PLEASE file helpdesk tickets and don't post here to harass poor @matharoo... He's only just started the job and will need a few months to find his feet. When I was doing the job I did accept bugs posted here and I did accept bugs that were sent to me via PM, but I worked for YYG for 9 years! I was settled in and new what was required of me and what I could and could not do. Now, I'm not saying Matharoo will do the same, as he is not me and he will have his own fantastic way of dealing with things. What I am saying is that cut him some slack until he settles in and OWNS the documentation. At the moment, he's patching stuff and catching up and learning the YYG way, so let him do that and catch his breath, and FILE BUGS PROPERLY instead of here on the forums.