Adobe Stupefied Dreamweaver

When I loaded the ColdFusion 8 docs into CFQuickDocs, I used the docs from the Dreamweaver ColdFusion 8 update which was on Adobe's Labs site (ColdFusion 8 was still beta at the time). This worked really well, because all of the tags/functions were in separate .htm files. However, now that CF 8 has been released, I need to update my CFQD docs to the final release docs of CF 8. So I went and downloaded the final Dreamweaver update from the CF downloads site, but I found that Adobe changed the docs for the final release. "Changed" isn't the right word, "stupefied" would be more accurate.

For every doc page that had an "Attributes" table (here's an example, look under the "History" section), Adobe removed those attribute tables for the final release of the Dreamweaver docs. Why would they do that?! The only reason I can think of is that they wanted to simplify the docs. But why would you EVER want to "simplify" documentation? I mean, we ARE developers, aren't we? Don't we need to know how to use ColdFusion? I am astounded at the software decisions big corporations make sometimes. <shakes head>

Honestly, I don't really care what Adobe does with Dreamweaver, because I use CFEclipse. But I was hoping to use the updated Dreamweaver CF tag library to load CFQD, but it now is evident that I need to find another source for my CF 8 docs.

UPDATE: I just tried the HomeSite CF 8 update, and it's CF docs have been emasculated, just like the Dreamweaver docs.

UPDATE 2: The CF 8 LiveDocs has the "full" documentation for each tag/function, so I might need to screen scrape those if I decide to update CFQD (that's a LOT of work, though).

UPDATE 3: Thanks to a suggestion by Charlie Arehart (see comments), I tried the CF 8 docs from the Eclipse docs plugin that Adobe produced. This file contained all of the tags/function doc pages, including all of the attributes table. So I was finally able to update CFQD with the final CF 8 docs.

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Comments
And Jake, what did you find in the Adobe CF8 help for Eclipse? (also listed, like the DW and HS help, at http://www.adobe.com/support/coldfusion/downloads....). It is a shame to hear that any detail has been removed from the help within the editors (hadn't noticed yet). Very curious. I'll ask some folks I know to see if they have a thought.
# Posted By Charlie Arehart | 8/17/07 4:42 PM
I guess all my warnings about DW help files during beta went unnoticed. I mentioned they were no longer packing the CHM file along with the usual culprit. Everything points to live docs now.
# Posted By Todd Rafferty | 8/17/07 6:08 PM
Todd,

That is true, but you can still click Insert->Tag and then select any tag or function, click More Info (I think) and it will show you docs for the tag. Those docs are local .htm files on your machine. The CF 8 beta DW update had the full version of the CF 8 docs, but the final version has been stripped down, for some reason.
# Posted By Jacob Munson | 8/17/07 6:22 PM
I think it is erroneous to assume that everyone will always be online when developing. They should offer a CHM download of the ColdFusion documentation, surely there's a tool to automate the create of a chm from html.
# Posted By Calvin | 8/20/07 1:09 AM
Hi Jake, My name is Randy Nielsen and I manage the ColdFusion and Flex doc teams. There were a couple of reasons we took out the attributes tables, but in the end, we convinced ourselves that they weren't useful in the context of the Dreamweave tag dialog box, which displays the docs in the little window at the bottom. We were thinking that develooers looking for attribute descriptions would be more likely to look in LiveDocs or the local help. In any case, I love CFQuickDocs, have admired it's, well... quickness for a long time, and would be glad to help you get a set of CF8 docs that meet your needs. I'll contact you offline, but figured I should post here to take my lumps for a dumb decision.
-Randy
# Posted By Randy Nielsen | 8/20/07 7:01 AM
Randy,

Thanks for the offline email. I just replied to you offline, but I want to continue the discussion here.

In my opinion you can never have too much documentation. In removing parts of the docs for the DreamWeaver extension, I think you are leaving some folks in the dark. There is a lot of valuable information in those attributes tables, and some people will assume that they won't find better documentation elsewhere. I work with a person that never uses livedocs, they get ALL their CF help from DreamWeaver. If they can't find what they need from the built-in docs, they ask one of the other developers for help.

Anyway, you guys can handle the docs in whatever manner you feel is best. These are just my opinions.
# Posted By Jake Munson | 8/20/07 9:13 AM
As I sent you offline, I do have a way to parse the CF docs and will send it to you.
# Posted By Brian Rinaldi | 8/20/07 4:21 PM
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