Re: Adobe Magazine and FM

[Bill Briggs <web@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dan,

I completely agree with your assessment of the situation. I also fail to
understand why Adobe keeps this product invisible. Frame is such a great
tool they should be promoting the dickens out of it. I've wondered at times
if they were afraid of backlash from the evil empire if they promoted it to
the detriment of Word. But I don't expect that anyone from Adobe will ever
utter the real reason in this forum. It's an odd state of affairs.

- web


>NOTE: This is being posted only to the Free Framers list because my posting
>privileges were permanently suspended on the BradFramers list because of
>Adobe-critical postings such as this one. If anyone wants to post it to Brad
>Framers, with or without attribution to me, you have my permission.
>=======================================================================
>If the product were slighted in Adobe Magazine but promoted/supported
>elsewhere, we wouldn't have much to complain about, but the problem is
>systemic, and its systemic because Frame does not fit tidily into Adobe's
>business model, which, from a marketing standpoint in particular, is
>consumer-product oriented.
>
>WHEN FRAME TECHOLOGY HAD THE PRODUCT
>
>1. Awareness of the product in the publishing industry steadily grew. The
>marketing department and the sales force had increased product awareness as
>one of its major goals. Each sales office had its own tech support staff to
>help the salespeople in closing sales. Ads placed by Frame Technology in the
>media were designed primarily to increase product awareness. Frame
>Technology had a presence at virtually any trade show relating to the
>publishing industry. The Frame of Reference magazine (and its precedessors)
>was frequently mailed to all license holders.
>
>2. The Value-Added Reseller (VAR) program was robust, supplementing the
>Frame sales force, and providing additional technical support capabilities.
>There was also a vigorous effort to support aftermarket software vendors
>whose products extended Frame's capabilities. A 2-1/2-inch-thick book
>listing and describing 3rd-party products was published semi-annually, and
>was also available on-line.
>
>3. The company had an excellent training organization devoted exclusively to
>Frame products. FrameMaker training classes, conducted at the home office
>and elsewhere at freqwuent intervals, created a nucleus of competent Frame
>professionals who spread the word about Frame's advantages and capabilities.
>
>4. The tech support staff was one of the best. The email address,
>comments@frame.com, allowed anyone with a sticky problem, a suspected bug,
>or a proposed enhancement to get the company's attention, and a prompt,
>helpful reply by a competent expert was virtually assured. Resolution of
>problems via an exchange of emails was an efficient way to resolve most
>issues, avoiding those interminable waits on a hotline. You usually didn't
>need a support subscription to obtain these tech support services, and there
>was no limit on receiving them.
>
>5. The user manuals and on-line help were comprehensive and well-designed.
>
>6. When a confirmed bug was logged, it was almost always fixed in the next
>release.
>
>
>SINCE ADOBE TOOK OVER
>
>1. Product awareness is steadily diminishing, despite the virtual
>disappearance of competing products (e.g., Interleaf). The opportunities to
>exploit the vast deficiencies of the main competitor, MS-Word, are missed.
>
>2. The sales and marketing efforts have been homogenized, and few of the
>salespeople consider Frame products to be a major source of income. Sales
>offices do not have tech support people who are knowledgeable about Frame
>products. The VAR program is in shambles. When Adobe shows up at a trade
>show, Frame products are invisible, and, when someone asks an Adobe rep in
>the booth about FrameMaker, it's suggested that they ought to be using
>PageMaker instead. There is zero promotion of Frame products in the media.
>
>3. Adobe promotion and support for 3rd-party software products that enhance
>Frame's capabilities is now nil. The last time I looked, there was no
>comprehensive listing of 3rd-party enhancements to Frame on the Adobe website
>
>4. The tech support for Frame products has been gutted. You can't even
>report a bug unless it causes a crash, or you have a support contract.
>
>5. Commencing with release 5.5, the first one that was entirely Adobe's
>responsibility, quality assurance declined significantly. The product became
>much less stable. Other than the buggy HTML capability and support for
>double-byte languages, few significant new features were added, which
>explains why it was not given a major new release number (6.0). Yet, new
>bugs popped up in many features that were unmodified from the 5.1.x release,
>and many bugs and some deficiencies that existed in 5.1.x remained. Although
>some of these problems were fixed in V5.5.6, many of the bugs that first
>emerged in 5.5.1 still remain, two years later. On top of that, the
>comprehensiveness and quality of the user manuals and on-line help was gutted.
>
>6. Frame 5.0 was originally released, as I recall, in late 1996 or early
>1997. Release 6.0 is not expected until the spring or summer of 2000. That
>means it will be 3-1/2 years between major releases, whereas when Frame
>Technology had the product, a major release was produced about once every 18
>months.
>
>7. The Frame in-house training organization was aboished, including the
>development of high-quality training materials. Independent trainers and
>train-yourself books have not filled the gap left by the discontinuance of
>in-house training classes.
>
>8. Frame of Reference was discontinued, and, as this thread has made
>painfully clear, Frame products are ignored in Adobe Magazine. When it was
>discontinued, the Adobe person in charge of Frame of Reference claimed that
>the main reason for its discontinuance was that people wanted to get their
>information from the Web, not from a printed magazine, and promised that
>coverage of FrameMaker in Adobe magazine and on the Adobe website would be
>expanded to fill the void left by the discontinuance of Frame of Reference.
>One year later, those promises remain completely unfulfilled.
>
>9. Go the Adobe web site. Click on almost any link and look for information
>about Frame products. About 80% of those links provide information about
>almost every Adobe product except FrameMaker.
>
>CONCLUSIONS:
>
>1. Frame Technology fully understood what it took to market and support a
>complex, high-end, niche software product. Adobe does not, and probably
>never will.
>
>2. Having abolished the entire Frame Technology infrastructure that made
>FrameMaker a rising star in the publishing industry, Adobe has effectively
>pre-determined its demise. I continue to puzzle over whether this is a
>deliberate srategy, or whether it's simply that Adobe just doesn't get it.
>
>
>     ====================
>     | Nullius in Verba |
>     ====================
>Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
>FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
>Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
>10044 Adams Ave. #208, Huntington Beach, CA 92646
>---Subscribe to the "Free Framers" list by sending a message to
>   majordomo@omsys.com with "subscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.
>
>
>** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@omsys.com **
>** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **




** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@omsys.com **
** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **