tracker issue : CF-4203969

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Title:

Docs for CF Mobile feature have a phantom first link that fails

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Status/Resolution/Reason: Closed/Fixed/BugVerified

Reporter/Name(from Bugbase): Charlie A. / ()

Created: 01/23/2019

Components: Documentation

Versions: 2018

Failure Type: Others

Found In Build/Fixed In Build: n/a / docs

Priority/Frequency: Normal /

Locale/System: / Platforms All

Vote Count: 0

In the docs for the CF Mobile feature, in the Developing Apps guide, there’s a problem with the first sub-section of that mobile apps section. Let me explain the problem, and some possible solutions and related issues.

1) First, check out this page, one of the many in the section on mobile development:

https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/mobile-application-development/building-mobile-applications.html

If you click the dropdown at the top (“select an article”), and choose the first, “mobile application development”, it does not take you to any such page. Instead, it takes you to the front of the whole Developing Apps manual. That’s quite unfortunate and may discourage people trying to get started. (And yes, some would argue it's best to discourage people from using the mobile development features. But let's let them read the docs and decide that for themselves.)

2) As bad as that is, the same problem happens when one may instead go to the Developing Apps guide (https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/developing-applications/user-guide.html) and from there drill down to the Mobile apps section. 

Choose “develop mobile applications” on the left, and note that on the page that takes one to (whose URL I can’t offer for some reason, given the docs UI), the first link on THAT page also says “mobile application development” and if you click it, it also goes to the front page of the entire guide again. Doh!

3) I wondered first if I could figure out what the right URL should be. The URL it’s trying to go to (in both cases) is this:

https://helpx.adobe.com/content/help/en/coldfusion/mobile-application-development.html

Again, the one for “building mobile apps” (which does work) is this:

https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/mobile-application-development/building-mobile-applications.html

I tried to follow that pattern and change “building mobile applications” to “mobile application development, as in:

https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/mobile-application-development.hml

But that gets a 404. Same with: 

helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/mobile-application-development/mobile-application-development.hml

Or simply (leaving off the file name in either type of URL listed so far above):

helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/mobile-application-development/
or
https://helpx.adobe.com/content/help/en/coldfusion/mobile-application-development/ 

4) As I look at the PDF for this manual in CF11, I see that in fact the “building mobile apps” is in fact the first section that should be shown. So it seems this “mobile application development” link should actually be removed! This IS the top page, itself (when on the page listing sections, in point 2 above). And as for the drop down in point 1 above, this “mobile application development” option should be removed, as there is no such page.

Instead, the first link (on that page and in that drop down) should be this “building mobile apps” page (https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/mobile-application-development/building-mobile-applications.html).

5) Finally, the order of the pages (on the page in point 2, and in the drop down of point 1) is also wrong. From the PDF of CF11, the order should be:

Building Mobile Applications
Debugging Mobile Applications
Inspecting Mobile Applications
Packaging Mobile Applications
Troubleshooting Mobile Applications
Device Detection
Client-side CFML
Mobile Templates
Getting Started Examples
Using the Accelerometer

6) Speaking of the PDFs of the docs, when (oh when!) will we get PDFs for the CF docs again?

Attachments:

Comments:

Hi, folks. I got notification of the plan for this to be fixed in "alpha". Can anyone elaborate on that? Alpha of what? I hope not CF2020. This is an issue in the current docs, and just requires a change to a couple of lines in the docs, it seems (not awaiting some new version of anything). But perhaps you can clarify what you mean. Thanks.
Comment by Charlie A.
30198 | February 06, 2019 12:53:56 AM GMT
Charlie, The issues with the links have been fixed. Please verify. As far as PDFs are concerned, there is no time frame, as of now, for the pages to be published as PDFs.
Comment by Saurav G.
30199 | February 06, 2019 06:23:39 AM GMT
Great to see the changes, Saurav. Thanks so much. Such a bummer about the loss of PDFs, though.
Comment by Charlie A.
30200 | February 06, 2019 06:33:28 AM GMT