The problem with LiveDocs
Ever wonder why Adobe LiveDocs (sample page) is so slow? It takes, on average, a single use of LiveDocs to give up on it forever. I remember doing so many moons ago when I found it so slow that it was unusable. Nowadays, if a Google search brings up LiveDocs and I mistakenly click on it, my series of reactions is to (a) frown, (b) sigh, and (c) hit the back button as quickly as possible before that mother of a beast chokes up my browser.
I'd actually conveniently forgotten about LiveDocs for a while now. We had evolved a zen-like calm in our relationship where we stayed out of each other's way and no one got hurt. It's only on my radar this morning because someone who goes by the moniker of Spender sent a link to a discussion thread titled Adobe Livedocs: A World of WTF to the FlashBrighton mailing list and it reminded me of just how unusable LiveDocs is.
But why exactly is it so slow? Well, someone on that thread actually captured the behind-the-scenes traffic on LiveDocs and published it as a SWF movie. You have to see this -- it's actually quite humorous (well, as much as an animated traffic graph can be, I guess!) 
Adobe, please do something about LiveDocs. They really are completely unusable in their current form.
The The problem with LiveDocs article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
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arsen
Sandip Saini
Melatonina Melatonine
Ken Simpson
Gabriela Portilla
spender
hehe… it’s funny. randy’s apology really made me laugh.
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:16 amJohn Barrett
Hi,
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:24 amYep I agree:)
For flash 8 there is XASH (http://mabblog.com/xash.html), well for the mac anyway! It is wonderful, and fast. I never look at the LiveDocs for Flash on-line anymore. Now if only somebody would make something like this for the rest of Adobe products:)
aral
Thanks for posting the link, spender. John: XASH — cool — will check it out
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:27 amAhmet
Not only livedocs is slow, the whole Adobe website is slow, and the shop may be the slowest part…
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:22 pmZarate
Yep Adobe LiveDocs suck, they really do. Would love to see them improved.
Cheers!
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:53 pmRyan Pieszak
Anybody know what program is used in that video? Seems like a great tool to have.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:59 pmpaddy
it’s a firefox add-on ‘Firebug’. http://www.getfirebug.com/ p;)
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:17 pmRandy Nielsen
Hi Aral,
We hear you. Obviously, we’re aware of the problem and have been working to make it better. The Flex 2/2.0.1 LiveDocs are better than Flash 8 and the CS3 LiveDocs should be a lot better. And, to be fair to Adobe, before the Adobe-Macromedia merger I was concerned about how the “Adobe” people would respond to LiveDocs and I have to say that they have been very supportive and are working to improve and extend the system, as the CS3 LiveDocs should prove.
Also, I want to clarify one thing that some people missed in the WTF thread: It’s the WebWorks Publisher-generated JavaScript we use that causes the problem. The LiveDocs architecture itself is, I think, pretty clever.
Spender, I hope someday to make you laugh at how fast and useful you find LiveDocs.
Randy Nielsen
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:31 pmFlex and ColdFusion Learning Resources Manager
Adobe Systems Incorporated
Jensa
Randy: “I have to say that they have been very supportive”
Jensa: This really makes me sad…
Randy: “The LiveDocs architecture itself is, I think, pretty clever”
Jensa: this makes me even more sad to hear that the docs team actually believes that
Speed is just one of the problems with LiveDocs. Truth is the whole system sucks. Here is something I wrote about that: http://www.flashmagazine.com/1127.htm We’ve even discussed this with Jeremy Allaire while he (still) was head of tech at Macromedia.
There are so many doing this right already, why can’t Adobe just copy their success? We developers have no need for fancy javascript menus - we just want the reference and the gold that is contained deep within it. Just give us something without fancy design, framesets or Javscript. Why not make static pages with pre-parsed menus that always stay in context and some really good search functionality?
J
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:55 pmTink
Sometimes they don’t work at all for me in Safari.
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:02 pmKelvin Luck
I use http://gotapi.com/ which pulls in the pages from livedocs but seems to somehow be responsive…
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:16 pmLEE
Yeah, heaven forbid you attempt to access LiveDocs twice in Safari. The first load MIGHT work, the second probably not before you move onto something else, and completely forget why you opened LiveDocs.
It’s odd to me that developers of such powerful software don’t have a super fast loading documentation page. It’s just wierd. Wierd!!
= }-
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:30 pmCharlie
At least ColdFusion developers have the AJAX-ified CFQuickDocs: http://www.cfquickdocs.com/
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:58 pmCozmo
I have the CF docs I need installed on my local machine. I used Xampp as the http server. http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
Takes about 5 min to get it up and running.
You can get the Flash docs in PDF format and that has a good search interface.
Granted these are all workarounds and does not address the issue that Live Docs do indeed suck. I believe the only other interface with a suckitude value greater than Live Docs is the MM/Adobe’s Developers Exchange. It has usability of a greased weasel.
March 23rd, 2007 at 4:15 pmPhilippe
I’ve got a good tip too:
- use: http://start.gotapi.com/
- with Firefox and this AdBlock filter: http://livedocs.adobe.com/*.js
And enjoy fast doc browsing
March 23rd, 2007 at 4:38 pmDustin Senos
Man live docs is such a bumber. I made a little site to search it as well as a few other sites. Check it out:
http://noirgle.com
March 23rd, 2007 at 7:19 pmDustin Senos
( I am always looking for suggestions to add. For any of the languages listed. Please let me know )
March 23rd, 2007 at 7:24 pmLEE
Oh hey, I neglected to mention, LiveDocs work pretty good for me in Firefox. Or was I just happy that they worked….
March 24th, 2007 at 6:36 amMike Britton
How about exposing the livedocs as REST web services? Let different users consume them the way they want. Provide a basic Apollo-driven UI. Build the same connectivity into all the products, with the ability to fetch all of the docs and save them down as XML?
There are so many possibilities in this area.
March 24th, 2007 at 7:24 pmaral
Great suggestion, Mike — love it! REST would rock.
March 25th, 2007 at 12:20 amRob
Yeah I hear that, a perfect example of when help isn’t helpful
March 28th, 2007 at 10:20 amMichael Kaufman
I’m very glad to read Adobe is trying to remedy the problem. Really, not to point blame at anyone, but I remember attending a user group meeting shortly before the release of Flash 8 and personally asked Mike Downey, “are there any plans to fix Live Docs when you release Flash 8?” His answer was, not sarcastically, “Live Docs… what is that?”
I was just kind of shocked by the answer. Obviously, there was a corporate/end-user disconnect with this part of the platform that we’re still bitching about today.
March 31st, 2007 at 12:23 amBill Shirley
#3 google hit on “adobe livedocs problem”
To make matters worse, it’s now not even returning the correct documents.
For the past week, I haven’t been able to get consistent results.
My daily routine is now
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/
click DataGrid, and then traverse the inheritance hierarcy,
today: failed on first click, RadioButton in Chinese for DataGrid
I commented on one of the pages when it was working last week and got a response that they’re aware of it, but can’t get it to fail in a consistent way, but are working on it. We’ll see.
But, why can’t I download a copy of the API docs? That’s the ridiculous part.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:03 pmmatt schick
If adobe wants as3 to be taken seriously and move away from the image of actionscript being a buggy language they should really fix their documentation, something which many developers including myself look at as a representation of how solid and refined the language is.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:44 am