'Browse' Feature for Help?

[Libbya]

It seems that the new help is missing the 'Browse' feature.  Is there a way to access it?  I found it extremely helpful.  Instead it seems that it now only has 'Search' or 'Favorites'...

[pendean]

'new' to you is what version for everyone here? And from which version did you come from (for a perspective)?

[Libbya]

2012 and earlier have the Browse feature.  2013 and later do not appear to.  

[pendean]

That's gone: you are expected to start a topic first before browsing.
There is a how-to link in HELP that explains this concept: yeah, we know, it's terrible. You are two years into complaints about it already.

[Libbya]

I'm not sure I understand.  Are you saying that once you search for a topic you can browse through a tree view of the help topics?  After searching for a topic, I do not find any tree view so that does not seem to be the case.  Or are you saying that the tree view has been eliminated?  Bizarre, if that's the case.  

You say there is a Help topic that explains?  Do you have a link?  I have tried to use the search feature to find the how-to you describe but that seems to less than useful...  

[David_W_Koch]

I am not certain, but I believe that Dean may have been referring to this page:

http://docs.autodesk.com/ARCHDESK/2014/ENU/files/GUID-60C67B97-FC11-4FCD-BE40-A16E82D55076.htm

The Contents tab is gone, and going to a topic first will not bring it back.  (Apparently, my repeated complaining about it to anyone at Autodesk who will listen has not done so, either - yet.)  I assume the browsing which Dean mentioned is the links to related commands and topics at the bottom of each page.  That may work for you, if you land on a really close page on the first selection.  I have had much greater success with the old Help, where, after "getting close", I would switch to the Contents tab and be able to scan through the nearby topics, where the one I needed to see often (but not always) was found.

The current search seems to return way too many topics and seems to prioritize them in ways that make it hard to find the topic or page that I want to find.  I guess I am just bad at entering search terms (although Google does not seem to find my search terms a problem, most of the time).  I have had particular trouble with searching for System Variables - unless the entire name is entered, it either does not return the value or buries it several pages worth of search results deep.  One thing others have suggested to me here is to use wildcards (like an asterisk for any string) and to use the Filter button to restrict results to just System Variables.

I would still like to see the Contents tab (or an equivalent tree-based table of contents) put back into the Help, but as Dean noted, I and others have done so for two years so far.

[Libbya]

Ok.  Thanks for the info.  Since I'm new to griping about it I'll just say I can't see why the tree view would be eliminated.  Even if few people used it, it certainly wasn't hurting anyone...  Removing features from software seems like the wrong way to go about it.  Alright, nuff said...

The best way I've come up with to find the info I want is to use the 2012 help which has the tree view.  Read the various pertinent topics and then use the titles of the topics in the search for 2013 or 14 and compare to see if changes were made.

[dgorsman]

Leaving things in when "they aren't hurting anybody" can lead to problems over time.  The most basic is "bloat", referencing extra code, information, etc. which has to be moved around.  More in depth are problems associated with keeping the extra content up to date, which can be particularly problematic to support for new releases of operating systems.  And it creates extra complexity when trying to track down bugs.  One of the big tech-y things about the original Mac hardware was they used RISC (reduced instruction set computing) processors.  Unlike Intel processors of the time, they didn't carry forward a lot of older instructions which meant leaner, faster computing.

Not to say I don't agree with the others in this specific instance.  A search-based-system is useful for those looking to solve problems but a tree or other graphically structured view of help contents is essential for reference use.