So...How do you like the 10.3 Help Docs?

[JohnDye]

ESRI's10.3 Help Documentation is out and wow, it is...different.

I myself preferred the legacy format over the new one but I'm interested to hear what others think about it. If you haven't seen it yet, hop on over to Help | ArcGIS Resources and click on the product for 10.3 you're interested in. Do you think the new design is an improvement?

Personally, I'm finding it to be a little less detailed than the legacy documentation format and I'm having trouble finding things. Hopefully though, that's just because I'm not really familiar with this new document structure yet.

[DanPatterson_Retired]

They have just repackaged the basic layout, in some instances it provides too much information for me, so I found this landing page which I bookmark as ArcMap 10.3 Help so I have the basic access that I had in the previous version.

[XanderBakker]

I do like the table of content at the top of each page to jump to the section I'm interested in... For the rest it will take some time to get used to, but that's OK, as long as each release doesn't mean a complete restyle of the Help...

[ChrisDonohue__GISP]

It definitely is different that the previous help.  Much more context for how processes work.  However, more to wade through compared to the old when already knows the process and is just trying to find one specific setting.  But that's a minor drawback.

Chris Donohue, GISP

[IainStuart]

Well of course like most computer programs the term "Help" is somewhat debatable, however ESRI is better than most. Typically I google the question and then enter ESRI Help that way. You get all different versions of Help and it seems that the new version contains much of the old version of help just slightly reorganised and made to look "cool". 

Iain

[JonMorris2]

I quite like the new layout, and it seems to be mostly the same content, but navigation is a little harder. Some of the categories have changed and there is a bit of a lag when you click on each section. Sometimes I'm trying to find an item from 10.0 or 10.1 help and browsing to the same section doesn't always help as the content has been moved.

Having said that, the search function usually takes me straight to where I need to be, so that seems to be the best approach. As Dan Patterson​ suggested in this discussion, having one tab for each help version and searching within it tends to be more successful than using Google.

[BenLeslie1]

I've never built up trust in the search, never seemed very good with partial words or "misspellings" (colour, neighbour, metre etc.) but having seen this thread I thought I'd take a look at the new pages...

Currently, whatever I search, it just keeps saying "please try again later"............ later?!? does this mean there's a technical problem with the help?......... google can still find the page I want.

(Having said that google seems to be becoming less reliable - keeps offering me german or spanish versions)