My friend I did make suggestions many times. I had a huge problem last march; for unknown reasons I could not find my addons anymore. Everything was empty from what I had bought in the past. It took us 3 weeks with the support to find the problem. My libraries are all normally in my username directory under my documents. I found that suddenly all had been transferred in the Public username.Everything appeared as if 2 installation processes had occurred although I had not done any. I had to reinstall everything with the help of the support.

It seems I've been hacked and this would explain why sometimes one of my external drives where are stored all my downloaded programs sorted by types and companies, was being read although I was not accessing  the driver. There was a small led which was wiggling when it was.

The Public username should not be used by default it is a dangerous one which lets your computer seen everywhere! Another of those damn things created by Microsoft although declaring that confidentiality is their prime goal! HAHAHA! We can see how it will be now that updates on Win 10 are mandatory and not manageable by the user!

I decided also not to buy anymore NVIDIA graphic cards when I discovered by chance that a username was created on my disk, UPDATUSUSER, non manageable from the Win 7 user account manager and totally invisible in the list, to enable NViDIA make its automatic updates. Again it obliged me to switch to Win 7 pro to be able to erase the username.  Nvidia had a major attempt of hacking a few weeks before putting in place the system! And they pretend it is safe although you cant decide of its level of security! There's a long list of complaints and demands of help to get rid of it on the Microsoft website...

There's a big tendency to overrule the most elementary rights of the software users today. Privacy is the least of their concern whatever great declarations they make. It is scandalous to think that if you wish to be able to switch your program in different language Microsoft obliges you to upgrade to Win 7 Ultimate. Sorry guys but America is not the sole continent on the planet and English is NOT the most common used language in the world , it is probably Chinese.

The subject put forward at the beginning of this discussion goes far beyond the way DAZ forum is geared and restrains our right to criticize the way they develop their programs. This explains some of my remarks and examples during this discussion and which might not seem to be relevant although they are clearly part of it.

Users have too often let the bridle loose upon manufacturers of hardware and software companies and the result is that today we are their hostages and practically can't draw back. I could give numerous examples of the way some of the majors in the business go far beyond their right and unless you're a billionaire and have a bunch of lawyers to sue them you're with your hands handcuffed. I will not upgrade to WIN 10 and wont use anymore PayPal for those reasons. It's not Microsoft to decide how I should organize my life and PC and Laptop! 

RHaseltine you're right I gave an inexact explanation. What I consider a crash in this instance is the fact that you get an error message and that instead of opening the panel enabling you to set up the right path, nothing happens. Well we'll not discuss again and again on the way what I thought would have been a proper way of dealing with the matter. Each one has its own point of view.... 

Yes this a more general discussion, I gave examples but some relates too to Daz: the characters size, the help file too

But Razor the manual is already only. In adobe CC for instance there are entire pages of help files which are updated regularly and obviously the pdf file follows instantly. I don't know how they do it but that's a fact. In my case I could decide not to update my print and I don't in fact as the first print serves me as a base where I can find a first answer which I complete with videos tutorials. moreover I use my laptop as a second screen where I look at the help or videos tutorials while working, the other 2 screens of my pc being my workspaces, one with the program the other with the full screen of the timeline view port.

But that's a luxury which an amateur retired with a good plan could afford. This is not the case for everyone unless of course you belong to a company who can invest. I'd like to have Cinema4D or the Red Giant suite but can't afford to pays such prices and I'm not the kind of a user who hacks programs as even some of tutorial's makers on youtube had the nerve to suggest. I'm of a generation who still no what means the word Ethics!

Why should they stop what they are doing just to spend time to create a quick immediate fix to a small issue. It's easy to end up playing whack a mole and lose focus for the future development of the software going down that path.

Razor, the demand was done long before the new version CC2015 was released where they took into consideration other requests. There's a huge communication problem with Adobe staff and probably also in the company where at times you have the impression the right hand doesn't know what the left one does! When you consider the amount of posts included over the years in" the bugs and new features requests blog", it seems at times that they're never read by anyone and is more a garbage can than anything else....

Sorry Razor: for the color it could have been easy to include characters color choice in the preferences tab as it is already possible to change the color of the labels for bins which also affects the layers in the timeline.

As for the help Adobe has if I remember well (had to check for the actual CC2014 and CC2015) a page where you have the help files converted to pdf files printable and savable .

Moreover there are lots of very cheap software on the web enabling conversion of HTML files or similar to pdf or word ones.

The same goes with the size of characters unless I'm mistaken the option to change the size of characters to a certain limit of course exists in Blender why not in DAZ where they are so small you can't read them.Software are not conceived for people under 30 only or so I hope Where are we in the world of Soylent Green ???.

But of course if you forget to set up those options at the beginning of the development later it becomes more difficult because of the complexity of the software.

Horses are animals but all the animals are not  horses! It's not because 95% of users are satisfied that the 5% remaining should be considered, well I wont use the word, read my lips! Moreover a company cant win on all levels, to get a 100% return on investment is impossible and the higher the return the higher the risk of seeing the company going bankrupt that's what the investors have still not understood ie all the recent failures and dramatic consequences on investments made by gullible people who believed like god's word their banker's.  An industrial or service company should also keep that in mind.

The same goes when you release a software. The new CC2015 release by Adobe is bugged to the core. it has provoked great stress upon some of the users who thought perhaps without care to switch their cc2014 project to the new version cc2015 especially confident from Adobe declaration that you could keep the old version and switch back to it in case of a problem. Some guys on the forum had terrible consequences a few days before delivering their work to a client. Ok they should have been more careful. But no one will make me believe that the developers were not aware of the huge flaws of the new version. A friend of mine had huge memory leaks on his pc and it took nearly two weeks to find out from where the problem came! During that period his computer was unusable!

These situations are not acceptable especially at the price you pay per month for the CC suite. I'm not a professional and have no deadline to respect when I decide for a project but to think that because of a company's carelessness I could loose a project I've begun nearly 12 months ago would put me into rage. Thank god I'm cautious enough not to change my version before my project is completed which will take months as I'm not a confirmed user either of CC or DAZ studio.

For example I have a problem now with DAZ version 4.8 which I do not understand; when I'm in the animate2 panel it takes at least 20 to 50 seconds for a simple preview of an aniblock to show on the viewport? Why? I checked the use of memory and processors it's low. I have an Intel 4cores and 16GB ram plus a Asus HD7950 with 3GB memory with Windows 7 Ultimate. When I use CC I can have at the same time After Effects, Premiere and Photoshop opened as well as working in Element 3D where I transfer the 3D models from DAZ to create my scenes in Element 3D? It took me yesterday more than 3 hours to render the 77 frames in a sequence of OBJ files for Element 3D from DAZ! I'm not a hardware expert and have no idea what's going on here.... It drives me crazy. From what I read on other posts in the forum here it seems there are problems with this matter in the last version. How can I solve them.

Claude

I completely agree with Ointment about the lack of written documentation.Today screen resolutions makes it more and more difficult to read text because obviously developers tend to add more and more menus and options in the UI while maintaining sufficient room for the main window, the size of characters diminish. Not everyone can afford to have multiple screens as to put on one the documentation and tutorials and on the main screen the software. It is also very cumbersome to have to switch from one page to the other on a screen when trying to use a program's help.  If I can I always print  file on my shelf for each of the program I use regularly, After Effects, Premiere etc.

The real problem and I witnessed this when I was a salesman for financial products in a software company, the problem is that developers hate to write help files they find this boring and not adding value to their work. The same goes for the way they develop the program itself, they think and develop more from the point of view they have when working with a specific software and forget completely that there'll be in the end a user who probably will not have the same perspective for the same work, who may have eyesight problems which should be taken into account. They tend to add devices or options that most people will never use. I remember one of my programmers developing a treasury management software, it could do almost everything. It never had a single buyer because although developed with the counselling of a professional treasurer, most of the profession never worked like that or would ever.If you go on the After effects forum there's been for the last 2 or 3 years a constant discussion and demand by a majority of users for the color of the characters in the UI to return to yellow instead of the stupid blue used today which makes the titles and other written menus unreadable. The excuse of the team are either "it's not us who decided but the top executives", or "Yellow is not focused properly on the retina"! Both excuses are not acceptable. It's not to top management to decide for the ergonomic of a program, he has more important things to do which are to lead the way to the company from a global point of view and secondly it's a huge error to think that colors are dependent of the focal point where the text forms. There is a specific point on the retina I think called the yellow spot where all colors are converging and transformed into electrical signals sent to the brain which in return sends back information which is translated into colors we can see. The management and the staff refuse constantly to take into account the demands of the users; this is not tolerable. Whether we pay or not for a program our demands are priorities to the good will of the developers and their bosses. If we don't use the program and don't pay directly or indirectly like this is the case with DAZ Studio, at the end of the month the programmers will not get paid and they seem to forget that little detail!

Claude

Yes there is a message and when you click ok the program stops. Don't you instead of the blunt message redirecting the user to a question to reset the correct path would be more efficient? I don't know I have developed rather complex programs for financial analysis and such situation was always tested in my programs. And mind you I'm not a software developer by profession. I was primarily a financial analyst but in 1972 I realized all the possibilities programming could bring to my job. I first used Fortran IV an then APL+ a fantastic language based on the principals of modern algebra and Matrix operations. It was invented by Kenneth Iverson a professor at Harvard. If you're interested read this page by Eric Lescasse. Eric made me discover the language and taught it to me. A fantastic guy. he told me he used the language to make a simulation of the traffic of LAX airport for his thesis at the end of his college years. http://www.lescasse.com/lc/APLHistory.asp .He owns his company . So you see I do not talk in theory.

OK if this is so instead of leaving the installation crashing it would have been wise if not intelligent to have automatically a question asked to the user when he had not given the correct path before, to set it up then. That's what a responsible developer should do instead of letting the installation crash when the program tries to install bridge. But of course this requires to think a little and it's a bit exhausting!

Rhaseline I disagree when you use an installer with a product the same company has developed one should see the installer fully knowing where to install the different elements. DAZ has had to have contacts with Adobe to do their plugin which if not properly developed could cause problems in Photoshop, so they know where Photoshop plugins are located and this should be totally transparent for the user.

The problem is that this is the general attitude of DAZ; for instance we are now at version 4.8 and they have not corrected the bug in the installation of the bridge with Photoshop; IT still cant locate the plugin directory in Adobe although the plugin directory in Photoshop has been at the same place for years! I had the nerve to criticize this two days ago and my post was erased with the comment " unreasonable criticism"!!! this is democracy in the DAZ world!