WHEN will offline help be available. It is unacceptable to have a program that is sold commercially, at a pretty good price, and is at least sold to be used by universities, etc. and there is NO OFFLINE help. When I click on a help button, I expect some kind of response. Often in Biblioscape NOTHING happens, not even a statement to say 'would you like to link to the proper section of online help'.
As for the online help, some visual guidance would be useful. Biblioscape is not totally intuitive, and to use it one has to be dedicated to making it useful; i.e. you have to work at it. I would never give this product to a relative neophyte in reference management, or even computers, because too much knowledge is assumed and there is no place to turn to for immediate help. The forum is pretty good and reasonably responsive, but something more efficient and educational is required. I don't know if Paul is doing this all on his own, and if he is, he is doing a very good job. But if there are others involved, at least one of them should have as a dedicated position the job of making a useful help system. For success as a product, this is ESSENTIAL. In many ways Biblioscape is head and shoulders above Reference Manager or Endnote, but I think their chances of survival are better because they have some way of immediately helping the user.
Don, Our experiment with 100% online help is not a success. From version 8, we will move back to offline help plus screenshots. Thank you for your input. Paul
Offline help
WHEN will offline help be available. It is unacceptable to have a program that is sold commercially, at a pretty good price, and is at least sold to be used by universities, etc. and there is NO OFFLINE help. When I click on a help button, I expect some kind of response. Often in Biblioscape NOTHING happens, not even a statement to say 'would you like to link to the proper section of online help'.
As for the online help, some visual guidance would be useful. Biblioscape is not totally intuitive, and to use it one has to be dedicated to making it useful; i.e. you have to work at it. I would never give this product to a relative neophyte in reference management, or even computers, because too much knowledge is assumed and there is no place to turn to for immediate help. The forum is pretty good and reasonably responsive, but something more efficient and educational is required. I don't know if Paul is doing this all on his own, and if he is, he is doing a very good job. But if there are others involved, at least one of them should have as a dedicated position the job of making a useful help system. For success as a product, this is ESSENTIAL. In many ways Biblioscape is head and shoulders above Reference Manager or Endnote, but I think their chances of survival are better because they have some way of immediately helping the user.
Don
Don, Our experiment with
Don, Our experiment with 100% online help is not a success. From version 8, we will move back to offline help plus screenshots. Thank you for your input. Paul
Any thoughts on when version
Any thoughts on when version 8 will be out?
DOn
Yes, we will do that once a
Yes, we will do that once a few major features are added to 7.x releases. For now, we will keep updating the online help. Thanks.