It looks like this forum section is dead but documentation is one area that should always be a work in progress and I think community feedback on this topic is important.
The doc pages are painfully slow. Why aren't they using Telerik controls and dynamic page updates instead of full refreshes of a massive amount of content on every click? They also need major updates. Here is one simple example:
http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/tooltip_serverprogramming.html
- No reference to HideEvent
- No indication that ModalEvent is deprecated
- Link to an example is bad
- Neither RadToolTip nor RadToolTipManager are listed in the API docs for Telerik.Web.UI
Take a look at the "documentation" for the ToolTipShowEvent Enumeration:
http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/telerik.web.ui-telerik.web.ui.tooltipshowevent.html
There's nothing there except for empty place markers.
That's typical of the entire documentation area - basic XML documentation is published but often there is no content in the XML doc tags in the product. So Telerik can claim to have product documentation and the doc pages certainly look impressive but for someone actually looking for details what's there is painfully inadequate.
There's not enough help in Visual Studio property pages or Intellisense tooltips, so I come here to look for information. I don't find much more info in online docs - which is no surprise of course because the docs are generated off of the product. I struggle to enter the proper keywords in the hope of finding a prior discussion on some topic. Because this site is slow, my searches in docs and forums take a very long time. (Average wait time is about 10 to 40 seconds per link.) Put in a support ticket? That's another day of turnaround time. Pay for help? At $195/hour that option is limited.
Why is this such a big deal? We're out here writing applications but we're wasting time looking at inadequate documentation and posting notes in forums. When we get stuck we should be able to open a doc, get all the information available on a class member (plus links to related blogs, demos, and (here's some technical wizardry) forum postings), and move on. There is a great community here and this forum area is much better than it used to be, but "out here" we should be spending time writing app code instead of posting help requests in tool forums or emailing Support. That lowers productivity and increases overall development costs and delivery time.
Rather than just answering questions in the forum, Telerik technicians should also look at the docs to see if they need the information which they've just posted in the forum for the third/fourth time. Just add a link in the doc to your forum posting and it might save you from having to write another one. Extra work? Well, update the doc once and save yourself time later in reading and answering questions - it's a tradeoff with long-term benefits.
I don't want to go overboard here (too late?). The product is vast and yes there is a lot of good documentation for most components. But someone needs to be nominated as the "Documentation Czar" to flag pages that require changes. Just look around for missing details and say "we need to get more info in there". This person doesn't need to write content all of the content, but they do need the authority to find people with expertise and to get time scheduled for people to write doc content.
All of this dove-tails with the notes I've written here about getting a wiki and doing other things to get more content from the community. I understand that "documentation" is low on the list of priorities for many companies, so I've provided suggestions that allow Telerik to get material from the field rather than putting the burden entirely on the company. In short, the more material that's available, the less of a burden it is on the company, and the more the company will sell because of higher levels of satisfaction. It's all related.
OK, nuff outta me. Thanks for your time. :)