Terrible documentation

[Christopher]

Hi Telerik,

At what point are you going to completely rewrite your documentation rather than providing documentation that appears to be more aimed at selling your products rather than providing detailed ordered explainations of your component functionality rather than selective uncommented code snippets? Clear concise step by step examples covering full implementation of each component would be nice as well.

Given the cost of your components I have to say it's some of the poorest documentation I've seen.

I find myself spending more time trying to work through your confused and often inadequate documentation than I do actually developing with the controls.

Cheers,

CW

[Georgi Tunev]

Hello Christopher,

I am sorry to hear about your negative experience with our documentation. Could you please explain what were the main problems that you faced with it? Our products' help resources are constantly evolving and we always try to satisfy our customer's requirements, so your feedback will be highly appreciated.


 
Greetings,
Georgi Tunev
the Telerik team

Instantly find answers to your questions on the new Telerik Support Portal.
Watch a video on how to optimize your support resource searches and check out more tips on the blogs.

[David]

The biggest problem I have is that the documentation is so spread out. I know you have this (http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/introduction.html), but a lot of times when I'm having a problem it ends up being more productive to just google the component name and the problem I'm having. Usually, the answer is somewhere on a forum or some small snippet in some example code you guys have written. The information is there, but it can be very tedious to find it.

I don't know how I'd recommend fixing this other than possibly finding a way to organize it better and keep the documentation updated. I mean, your demos pages are of great help in the Application Scenarios, but that information is not listed in the Documentation, which makes the developer have to search in two locations. If it's not in the demos or documentation, it may be somewhere hidden in the forum, so yet another place to look.

I won't say that it's terrible, but I do admit that it could be better organized...

[Kevin Cabritit]

I was on my way to the forum to comment on this issue when I noticed an existing thread.

The remark I'd like to make is that most of the code examples in the Demonstration area are really poorly commented. At the moment, I'm looking into drag and drop of grid items, and the aspx.cs file has only 2 comments within the entire code file.

It would be much easier to read and decipher what's going on if there were some more useful comments within.

In my opinion, the purpose of these coding examples should be to showcase the abilities of the controls as well as explain how the code works, and why.

It's such a waste of time trying to figure out all the little bits and pieces that go into implementing some features. The examples should take the guess work out, and explain exactly WHY each step is taking place, as well as some "gotchas" if necessary.

Every hour we spend working through your terrible examples and documentation is like throwing money out the window. I bought this control suite to save time, not re-learn everything again.

Wasting my time!

[Sebastian]

Hello guys,

@David:
You bring valid points and steps in this direction are made as we speak (by adding cross-links in the Description tabs of the demos to help topics, KB articles or code library threads and vice versa). I can assure you that we will continue to optimize the support resources on our site and search for a centralized means to browse and drill-down in them. At this point you can take advantage of the tips linked in the bottom part of my message or use Google to find the answers/resources you need.

@Alex:
I am sorry to hear that you are having such bad experience while exploring our online samples and documentation. We are doing our best to include comments in the code snippets of the demos (where necessary) to summarize what the particular code slice does. If you need more details concerning the presented grid feature, you can refer to the example's description and the corresponding help topic linked in it.

Kind regards,
Sebastian
the Telerik team

Instantly find answers to your questions on the new Telerik Support Portal.
Watch a video on how to optimize your support resource searches and check out more tips on the blogs.

[David]

Thank you Sabastian. Telerik can always get better. What's important is that you guys make the sweetest components! I love programming against Telerik components!

[Christopher]

Well nearly 12 months on your components are terrific but your documentation appears to still be as awful as ever.

[Georgi Tunev]

Hello again Christopher,

Could you please let us know what exactly are the difficulties that you encountered with our documentation? If there is an inadequate or wrong information somewhere in our resources, please let us know and we will fix it right away.



Sincerely yours,
Georgi Tunev
the Telerik team