How to open Adobe Help in your Browser

Like the Beatles, "I'm feelin' down…" And this tweet from John Olson pretty much sums it up.

I dont think I can be anymore clear on how much I hate the Adobe help system. Adobe Community Help app BLOWS! Give me html help back plz

June 16, 2011 6:50 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@john__olson

John Olson

I’m a fan of Adobe’s Dreamweaver documentation and often recommend it to students. However, Adobe’s system for delivering that documentation through an AIR-based* Help application (or as Adobe likes to call it Adobe Community Help) is at best annoying and at worst almost unusable**. So I was glad to learn from Rick Stone that it was a simple task to turn off some of the most annoying Help “features” or to bypass Help entirely and simply view the documentation in your browser.

The solution is simple, but since I’m not use to thinking of the help system as an application separate from the program it supports, I overlooked it and I suspect a lot of other people will as well. Here’s what you need to know.

Adobe Help preferences

As a stand-alone application, Help has it’s own preferences that you can access from within Help by choosing the Preferences item under the Adobe Help menu. To start Help choose [Program Name] Help from the Help menu of any Adobe Creative Suite application. You can also open Help directly from the following locations (assuming you installed your programs in the default location):

• Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Help\Adobe Help.exe
• Mac OS X: User Name/Applications/Adobe/Adobe Help.app

The Settings:

There are a number of Preference tabs and, if you are sincerely committed to using Adobe Community Help, you can explore them. The only one I’m interested is the General Settings tab.

I recommend that, under Accessibility Mode you select the Open Help in browser application option. The next time you choose the Help option within an Adobe program, the appropriate page from Adobe’s online documentation will launch in your browser.

It's really that simple and it improves the usability of Adobe's documentation immensely.

*AIR, as I understand it, stands for Rich Internet Applications only backwards. According to Adobe it enables “developers to use HTML, JavaScript, Adobe Flash® and Flex technologies, and ActionScript® to build web applications that run as standalone client applications without the constraints of a browser.”

**The most annoying “feature” of Help is that you are constantly being prompted to update AIR, update Adobe Community Help (which requires the program to restart), update the Local content or, as was the case when I last tried to use it, all three. You can control these settings to some degree using the Download, Updater and Local Content tabs in the preferences panels but the options are confusing and I’m not going to go into them here.

The other truly annoying “feature” is that closing the Help window quits the program and you are forced through another launch (and potential update) cycle the next time you want to use Help. Since most people have a browser open almost constantly, launching Help in the browser avoids this issue (and, in any case, a browser will load more quickly than Adobe’s Help application).

Let me know what you think

I’m interested in hearing your opinions of Adobe’s Community Help, pro or con, along with any tips you might have for navigating the Adobe Help maze. So please drop me a note using the comment form at the end of this post.

How to center a web page layout in Dreamweaver (or any other web design program): Duration 2:40

Click for step-by-step directions to Center an HTML Page Layout…

Hi, my name is Jim and I’m a CSS’oholic.

I remember my first floated div. It was heaven. Soon I escalated to CSS rollovers buttons and list-based menus. I was on top of the world!

And then, the downward spiral began. Before I realized what was happening, I found myself watching the sun come up over the lonely back alleys off the information superhighway as I hunted for one more CSS fix that would finally get my pixels aligned.

And then a friend took me to a CSS Anonymous meeting. I was skeptical at first but, thanks, to CA I’m on the road to recovery. Sure, I still face the occasional dawn with a mouse in one hand and an empty can of Red Bull in the other. I know I’ll always be a CSS’oholic but with the help of the 12 Step CSS Anonymous program at least I’m getting more sleep.

12 Steps to Conquering CSS’aholism

When faced with an impossible deadline and uncooperative CSS.

1. Just say “NO!”  Why waste time making your page look perfect in Explorer 6? If the user cared what your pages look like, he wouldn’t be using IE6.  
2. Back up: Now. And now! And NOW! When you stretch the limits of your CSS knowledge, the code will probably break before you do. When that happens a backup means you’ve only wasted time not trashed your site.
3. Search: OK, I know Google is probably the first place you turn when faced with a CSS issue but do you use it effectively? Here are few suggestions:
   • Construct your query carefully: You’ll get better results and the very process of refining your query may lead to the solution.
   • Focus on newer results: Web design has come along way in a very short time. By limiting your results to the last year you can eliminate a lot of once good advice that’s gone bad.
   • Bookmark sites that come up regularly: There’s a reason you keep stumbling across sites like W3.org and W3schools.com.
4. Exploit forums: Online forums are full of CSS enablers. I try to be active in forums where the people are knowledgeable and help and usually, when I need help, it’s offered.
5. Tweet: It seems crazy to think you can get the answer to a complex question in the 140 characters Twitter allows but:
   • Distilling your issue into a question of 140 characters helps you focus on the real problem.
   • You don’t need THE answer; you just need the idea that leads to it.
     Of course, if you’re not active on Twitter, when you desperately need help probably isn’t the time to get started.
6. Take a time out: What works for kids, works for adults. A brief break can help you approach the problem from a fresh perspective.
7. Compare your code to code that works: If you’re customizing standard code (like Dreamweaver’s built-in Spry) invest in software such as BBedit (Mac) or TextWrangler (PC) that allows you to compare your copy of a document to a virgin, working copy. Then you’ll only need to worry about the code you know has changed.
8. Get the big picture: Does your issue occur on one page or many?
   • If your pages share a fixed structure and only one page is broken, the problem is probably in the unique content of that page.
   • If the problem occurs throughout your site or in a particular section of your site then focus on the elements that are common to those pages.
9. Narrow your focus:
   • Where’s the break? If everything after X is whacky, the problem probably occurs at or before X.
   • Which browser(s): Does the problem occur in one browser (think Internet Explorer) or multiple browsers? Since each browser has its own quirks, pinpointing the problem browser can help you locate a solution.
   • Validate: I’ve got nothing against a bit of invalid HTML or CSS if things still work but a validator can quickly locate unclosed tags, syntax issues and other potential problems.
10. Start over: It’s tough to abandon several hours of work and start over or revert to a backup but, if you’ve spent several hours trying to solve a problem and haven’t, then you’ve probably spent those hours making it worse. The second time through the process you’ll know the issue (if not the solution) and, by working methodically and checking for the problem after each step, you’ll be able to pinpoint the problem if it happens again.
11. Break something else: Sometimes it’s simpler just to accept that you can’t fix every issue and adapt your design accordingly. For instance, if you can’t get rid of a pesky border on the left, try adding one on the right.
12. Write it down: When you learn a new bit of code, develop a new technique or discover a new resource, write it down. That way, the next time you fall off the CSS wagon at least at least the answer will be close at hand.

Last year I wrote that it is still possible (although not recommended) to use the deprecated <font> tag in Dreamweaver CS4. I recently got an email in response to that post asking how to remove the font tag from existing, older documents using CS4.

The writer noted that it was relatively easy in CS3 "all you have to do is highlight the block of text you want to edit and select "default" in the font selector box and "none" in font size and instantly the code is removed."

The good news is it's also very easy in CS4. All you need to do is right+click the offending <font> (or other) tag in the Status Bar at the bottom of the Document Window and select Remove Tag from the pop-up menu.

Viola, no <font> tag.