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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Expressions TUTORIAL MAKEOVER. BOOOOOO!

  • TUTORIAL MAKEOVER. BOOOOOO!

    Posted by Paul Whishaw on April 5, 2005 at 9:18 pm

    What the heck did the Cow do to the tutorial section? It used to have the tutorials all in one place so you could scroll down the page and find what you were looking for. Now there seems to be some odd search parameters that is making it pretty much impossible to find the tutorials that I want. What happened? Am I missing something?

    I don’t know the auther or how this tutorial would be classified. I don’t like it. No sir. It also takes away from a sort of serendipity of finding a tutorial you love but were not looking for. Is there a way to get to this kind of search?

    No sir. I don’t like it.

    Kathlyn Lindeboom replied 19 years, 7 months ago 9 Members · 14 Replies
  • 14 Replies
  • Mike Clasby

    April 5, 2005 at 9:41 pm

    Here, here!

    Gone are the “good old days”.

    I too can’t find many of those oldies but goodies. I have to end up Googling many different ways to find the now hidden Cow tuts. An example being , Dan Ebbert’s “The World’s Greatest Cameraman”. I challenge you to find it the new way.

    And Serendipity is dead.

    That said, I love the cow…

    I just miss those days of galloping through the Field of Tuts and discovering a wildflower when you least expected it. Or alas, your favorite wildflower has withered and is gone.

  • Mike Clasby

    April 5, 2005 at 9:51 pm

    Opps, I just found “Building the World’s Greatest Camerman”, by clicking Dan’s head.

  • Ron Lindeboom

    April 5, 2005 at 10:41 pm

    Let’s see…

    If you know the author, as is often the case when people suggest an article, then you can click on “View By Author,” and then select the author’s name to view all of their articles.

    Or…

    If you know what program you wish articles for, you can click on “Articles by Host Application” and then click on “After Effects” articles (if that were the program you were looking for).

    You can also select to view the articles by the “10 Newest Articles.”

    For the complete break-out, they can be viewed as

    • Newest 10 Articles (includes Tutorials, Reviews, Editorials, etc.)
    • Find Articles By Article Type (ex.: Tutorials, Reviews, Editorials, etc.)
    • Find Articles By Product Type (ex.: 3D, Books, Hardware, Plug-ins, etc.)
    • Find Articles By Host Application (ex.: After Effects, C4D, Combustion, Final Cut, etc.)
    • Find Articles By Category (ex.: Basics of Audio and Video, Business, Cameras, Legal, Health, etc.)
    • Find Articles By Author (ex.: Alex Alexzander, Walter Biscardi, etc.)
    • Find Articles By Title (First Letter of Title)

    For every article that was easy to find in the old schema, there were two that no one ever found and which became permanently buried as we have so many.

    Right now, there are hundreds of After Effects articles and we have broken After Effects in sub-categories as it seemed to make more sense than throwing 200 articles at you to sift through all at once.

    If you know the author, then that makes the most sense. Next, I’d recommend the Host App, then the Category and/or Type (AE has three just for itself) and then you can look all the way out clear to a “By Article Name” sort — which is at least at times, the least efficient way to search.

    We won’t be going back to the old mechanism as it required manual updates to many pages and was fine when we had a few articles but when you have over 500 articles in a library, changing out pages and gateways by hand is a ton of work for two people — and usually just one, Kathlyn (as I am often on other projects).

    So that’s the news and as always, people hate change — but it comes with the pasture.

    Best regards,

    Ron Lindeboom
    creativecow.net

  • Kathlyn Lindeboom

    April 5, 2005 at 10:54 pm

    [Paul Whishaw] “What the heck did the Cow do to the tutorial section? It used to have the tutorials all in one place so you could scroll down the page and find what you were looking for. Now there seems to be some odd search parameters that is making it pretty much impossible to find the tutorials that I want. What happened? Am I missing something?”

    The tutorials were never “all in one place” and there were links that you had to click to dig down and find many things which were two and three layers down in the hierarchy.

    You only thought that you were seeing all that was in the Cow Library — actually, there was and is three to four times what most people ever saw when sifting through the old gateway pages.

    As in most things in life, people get comfortable with what they know and as Ron pointed out, change makes people uncomfortable but it is inevitable — especially when we have so many articles and so few were ever found. (We know, because we can see what pages are clicked on and some articles were never clicked on.)

    You mention just wandering around in the articles interface before and finding things you weren’t even aware were there and weren’t looking for. What stops you from doing the same thing in the new interface? You still can. It just means that the buttons are a bit different but there is actually nearly double the articles now available than were available in the old interface.

    Oh well, you can’t please everyone and I had to do something as it was taking me hours a day just to maintain and update such a ponderous way of maintaining articles.

    Best regards,

    Kathlyn Lindeboom
    The Mistress of Mmmooooo!

  • Eric Bliss

    April 5, 2005 at 11:28 pm

    Ummmm…..

    Let’s see here. In under a minute…

    Click “Tutorials” (or “Features”)
    Click “Sort by Author”
    Scroll down to where it says “Dan Ebberts”, and click it. (Here’s a hint – They’re alphabetized by the author’s last name.)
    Scroll down half an inch (if you even need to) – click “Greatest Cameraman”

    Or…

    Click “Tutorials” (again, or “Features”)
    Click “Sort by Title”
    Click “B”
    To make it fast, open the browser’s “Find” function (usually ctrl-F on a PC.)
    type in “Cameraman” or “Ebberts” – hit “Find on page”
    Click the link. Read the article.

    Or… (since you’ve already read it, and know it’s about AE’s expressions tools)

    Click “Sort by Category”
    Click “Adobe After Effects: Expressions”
    You know it wasn’t a video, so that only leaves one option – Click “Tutorial”
    Scroll down half an inch (again, if you need to) – Click “Building the Cameraman”

    So, let’s see here – that’s by Author Name (which you knew), Article Title (which you also knew) and by Category (which you probably could have guessed – like I did).

    And that’s all in less than a minute for any of those.

    Now, maybe I’m just being bitchy, but if you’ve ever been to a library or a book store, chances are you’re doing one of those searchs without even thinking about it. After all, I just write computer programs – I don’t know diddly squat about After Effects, but I still managed to find your article in under a minute.

    So, when WAS the last time you found something at the library? (Sorry, but I just couldn’t help myself)

    Eric Bliss

    systems design and integration
    CreativeCow.Net

    int main(void) {
       printf(“Hello World!\n”);
    }

  • Kieran

    April 6, 2005 at 12:45 am

    I just spotted that if you’re in thread view (as I was when reading this very thread) and you click on tutorials or features in the lefthand bar, you get linked to the old tutorial and features pages..

  • Yoondo

    April 6, 2005 at 1:31 am

    Complaints, complaints, complaints.
    My personal opinion; shouldn’t we all be appreciative of the fact that we benefit
    from the COW no matter how it is layed out?

    I am always thankful of your efforts, Creative Cow !!

  • Kathlyn Lindeboom

    April 6, 2005 at 1:32 am

    I think that’s a bug. We’ll have to fix it. You can also still get to the AE tutorials page by clicking on the After Effects COW title banner at the top of the page.

    Unfortunately, I am no longer updating the old pages — that was the problem. For every article, I usually had 5 or 6 pages that I had to update. This way, all I have to do is worry about getting the article formatted and uploaded.

    Kathlyn Lindeboom
    The Mistress of Mmmooooo!

  • Serge Hamad

    April 6, 2005 at 2:53 am

    Yep!
    Dave said it all!
    IMO the new layout is more powerful. It’s just a change but a good one and soon everyone will get familiar with.

    Salut.
    Serge

  • Mike Clasby

    April 6, 2005 at 7:31 am

    I say we string up those hombres that posted number one and two!

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