1st Rant of the year

O.K…. Happy New Year!

Now to my 1^st rant of the year.  It seems that this time of the year is when all the new web sites for existing business are uploaded and supposed to be for our benefit. I say for lack of a better word and to keep the site clean, this is “JUNK”.  It might be me, but I’m a fan of keeping things simple and the phrase “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it”.

Please don’t get me wrong here. I think we are all in agreement for making things easier and better to work with. In fact I believe those of us that are in some type of technical field are all for innovative ways to make things easier and better. That’s why we read through the magazines, books, blogs and forum sites. That’s why we go to training sessions and seminars “To learn or understand how to be more proficient”

So, when it comes to “Web Sites”, just like software if or when you make a big change, it really should make sense. If not, there should be a way to go back to a classic setting. The best example I can give is the MapQuest web site. For awhile there was the “Classic” version of the web site and the existing site which was in beta form. Now the beta seems to be the standard.

To me and a lot of other people that use Autodesk products, this must have been the week to implement more new changes to the web site. Most of us that were at Autodesk University, sort of got a preview of the New when they came out with the new logo:

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Well this week was the 1^st time for me getting onto the Discussions Group page since coming back from Autodesk University  and it was a problem. I’m not going to get into the details other than to say I recommended to one of my co-workers to use the site to get the answer to a problem and they were cursing me out. That’s when I found out that the site had changed. Not only did I have issues with logging in, the site just was very confusing. It took about 24 hours to get the login problem straighten out (BTW, I’m still having some issues), and another 4 to 6 hours of reviewing the site to find where everything moved to. By the way, that’s 4 hours I really didn’t have to spare.

Once I got a handle of how much the site changed I started to read through a bunch of post that seemed to support my rant. For information about those problems please read, or surf to the following:

FORUM CHANGES

Bells and Whistles             

General Autodesk Account Setting

Redesign Feedback Update - 12/8

Hopefully someone will review the other Autodesk users and my comments to make meaningful changes or updates. Otherwise I’d say we were better off with the old site.

Take Care,

Milt