Macromedia.com: Support Pages

The people involved in the development of the current Macromedia.com have had a great deal of success producing an engaging experience, using a balanced mix of Macromedia's technologies to show the world what their products can do. However, and despite some skewed reviews like the one pointed out by CFGigolo in this blog post (in portuguese), there are still things that need to be improved.

I don't know about you, but sometimes I would use Google instead of diving into Macromedia's collections of Technotes. I usually will end up in a Technote, but saving the time (and confusion) of attempting to use the Technotes index and search. This is specially true for ColdFusion related documents; there are many orphan Technotes, meaning that you won't find them in the Coldfusion Technotes index. Funny thing, the Flash Technotes index is buried in the site, and is not accessible from the Flash Support homepage (or I just couldn't find the link).

The other big problem with the Technotes is their organization. Why are they divided by subject instead of product version? When you need information, it is about a particular version of the product, that's for sure.

I have to second CFGigolo when he says that one would think Harley Manning, the author of that report for Forrester, "never needed to use Macromedia's support pages".