Microsoft Expression Media - New FORUM

iviewadmin · Site Admin Joined: 18 Mar 2004 Posts: 50

Dear iView Forum members,

Microsoft have just launched their Expression Studio Forums. The Expression Media Forum is now live. We invite you to visit and participate;
Expression Media Forum

Information regarding the iView User Forums will be made soon, the current plan is to offer these for some time yet.

Kind regards
Simon Street
iView Multimedia Ltd.

roberte · Joined: 18 Jun 2004 Posts: 2147 Location: Sydney, Australia

Hi Simon,

Already there mate and I see some familar names. When it comes time to close these forums I hope there will be a way of migrating the posts to a new home. Even the original iView forums are still accessible.
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-- Robert
Expression Media 2 / Windows 8 / Mac OS X 10.10

Dierk · Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 630 Location: Hamburg (Germany)

1. A site admin who is unable to create a live URL in this forum?!
2. The Microsoft forum is abysmally bad to llok at and to negotiate.
3. The new forum needs Internet Explorer [probably even v7]; I am unable to sign in using Opera 9.20.

Looks like my place to discuss Expression Media will not be with Microsoft. this has nothing to do with the usual MS bashing - my track record will show that I am one of the MS defenders - but with me not being able to access the forum using my preferred browser. The very bad design, from a usability perspective, adds to my dismay.
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xMedia v2 on Windows XP/SP2; 3.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, loads of storage space.
Other: Nikon D2x, Nikon D200, Breeze DownloaderPro, Capture NX, Adobe CS3 Design Premium

wildpicture · Joined: 01 May 2005 Posts: 100 Location: The Netherlands

The new forum seems to work with Firefox. But I agree that the design is awfull and much harder to read than this (PhpBB) forum.
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Hans Martens

Wildpicture, Wildlife photography www.wildpicture.com
Dell 9150 4GB RAM, XP SP2, IVMP 3.1.3

drmrbrewer · Joined: 24 Sep 2005 Posts: 510 Location: UK

Works OK with IE6.

But I agree; not so easy to navigate.

For example, is there any way of displaying a whole thread for quick scanning of the replies, or is it a case of clicking on each reply separately?

And the Expression Media forum seems a little lost in a whole sea of other forums (or fora?). I guess that's what comes from being gobbled up by the likes of MS.

Mike

DJWebb · Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 95 Location: southampton, UK

Not wanting to jump on the band wagon but Yuck!...

Those new forums are not nice. I thought the whole "expression" package was about web design and such like and they want the users of said package to discuss it on that POS.

There are many many free forum installs that look and work better than the one Microsoft has rolled out.

I think I'll stick here until were forced over there and then i'll decide if its worth signing up.
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Hannibal · Joined: 01 Oct 2005 Posts: 29 Location: New York

Nine threads there and only one relates to media pro. (the one with no replies) hmmm

ifonline · Joined: 23 Jul 2006 Posts: 89

Yeah. I took a survey when I went to the Microsoft site, and one of the things I hit them on was the design of their forums. They are terrible. I may be stupid, but I can't even find a way to subscribe to topics. I can't even find a way to quickly see new posts. What a mess...
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Ian

Windows XP SP2, Core 2 Duo 2.4, 4 GB RAM, 250/320/320 GB HDs, Lightroom 1.0 (Waiting for 1.1)

John Bean · Joined: 24 Jun 2006 Posts: 245 Location: Lancashire

johnbeardy · Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 2:14 pm Post subject:

ifonline · Joined: 23 Jul 2006 Posts: 89

John Bean · Joined: 24 Jun 2006 Posts: 245 Location: Lancashire

ojaste · Joined: 23 Dec 2005 Posts: 60 Location: Toronto, Ontario

Please save us from this!!! That forum will now be useless.

As least provide a RSS feed so we can see if it worth suffering the pain of bad design.

Ironic that a design tool forum (Expression series) is supported by something that a poster child of bad design. What a way to sell a design product.

Can some please post a way how we can direct access to the newserver and we can use our own newreader. The web version is so hard to read and follow.
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\marty
www.perspectva.com

Dierk · Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 630 Location: Hamburg (Germany)

John Bean · Joined: 24 Jun 2006 Posts: 245 Location: Lancashire

Dierk · Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 630 Location: Hamburg (Germany)

Well, it's rather easy to obtain an Adobe ID for anybody - not like having to be 'part of the family' or secret handshakes or such. It's as easy to get onto Adobe's news servers as it is to get into their Web forum. Not even as hard as to get into an alphy or beta testing group.
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xMedia v2 on Windows XP/SP2; 3.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, loads of storage space.
Other: Nikon D2x, Nikon D200, Breeze DownloaderPro, Capture NX, Adobe CS3 Design Premium

John Bean · Joined: 24 Jun 2006 Posts: 245 Location: Lancashire

I think we are at cross purposes about my ambiguous use of "private" in this context, I meant the groups/articles rather than the server are "private" in the Usenet sense because they don't propagate to other servers as "public" groups do. My preferred server also requires login credentials but carries only public groups.

My main gripe with Adobe is that their newsserver has terrible performance and is often completely broken. This makes me wish I could use a reliable server of my choice just as I can with the Microsoft groups.

drmrbrewer · Joined: 24 Sep 2005 Posts: 510 Location: UK

For those of us who are rather challenged in this department, how does one go about reading MS forum posts without having to endure MS's own forum interface?

Thanks,

Mike

Dierk · Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 630 Location: Hamburg (Germany)

You need a newsreader [Agent, Outlook Express], a news server address [for Microsoft a public, probably free, server will do]. Set the newsreader up with the server's address, download the group directory, search for 'microsoft', look through the groups being shown, select the ones you want.

News reader: http://www.forteinc.com/
News server: nntp.aioe.org [more here: http://www.aioe.org/]
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xMedia v2 on Windows XP/SP2; 3.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, loads of storage space.
Other: Nikon D2x, Nikon D200, Breeze DownloaderPro, Capture NX, Adobe CS3 Design Premium

johnbeardy · Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2007 10:03 pm Post subject:

Mozilla Thunderbird is another handy newsreader.

John
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PC and Mac too
iView scripts & utilities

Dierk · Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 630 Location: Hamburg (Germany)

To plug my favourite browser for a change: Opera, too.

Eventually it all depends upon your needs, browsers [and I guess OE] are on-line readers, a viable alternative in the days of DSL and flat rates. Agent, I believe, is the last of a dying breed of off-line readers. Since it is a specialised news reader it offers a lot more than most afterthoughts incorporated into browsers and e-mail clients or PIMs; the afterthought in Agent are the e-mail capabilities.

So much for two of my most and longest used programs ...
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xMedia v2 on Windows XP/SP2; 3.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, loads of storage space.
Other: Nikon D2x, Nikon D200, Breeze DownloaderPro, Capture NX, Adobe CS3 Design Premium

John Bean · Joined: 24 Jun 2006 Posts: 245 Location: Lancashire

I think maybe OE is actually offline as well, but I could be wrong since I don't use #shudder# OE at all.

I use Agent, but I've used mail clients from time to time instead - most of them seem to have newsreader capabilities as an afterthought just like Agent has mail as an afterthought. The ones I've used treat Usenet articles more or less like mail (no surprise there) so they tend to be offline readers.

Sadly Free Agent no longer exists, and although I would recommend even a casual user to use a proper newsreader rather than a mail program it seems a bit OTT to have to buy one, so many people fall back on OE since it's "free". Happily there are better free options; my second choice (after Agent) is the excellent free 40tude Dialog, a sort of "Agent lookalike" that works rather well.

drmrbrewer · Joined: 24 Sep 2005 Posts: 510 Location: UK

I don't suppose Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader) is any good? At least, not yet? Can it be set up to read groups like those on the MS forums?

Mike

Dierk · Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 630 Location: Hamburg (Germany)

Dierk · Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 630 Location: Hamburg (Germany)

Looks like it is a aggregator, not a newsreader*. Newsreaders are about newsgroups in Usenet [the second oldest part of the Internet], aggregators collect news as newspapers understand the term.

Since you have to use a browser to get Google services, and I am quite sure IE is not your [only] choice, and several other browser come with newsreader capabilities as pointed out above, why not just set your browser to a free server - the one I mentioned is quite good if not premium -, gather around a bit? If you like it, you can always go one step further, i.e. get a dedicated newsreader.

BTW, can someone tell me why there are already discussions in Media Expression's group? The program is not even on the market.

*I know, I am being sloppy about the spelling of the program category.
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xMedia v2 on Windows XP/SP2; 3.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, loads of storage space.
Other: Nikon D2x, Nikon D200, Breeze DownloaderPro, Capture NX, Adobe CS3 Design Premium

John Bean · Joined: 24 Jun 2006 Posts: 245 Location: Lancashire

Dierk · Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 630 Location: Hamburg (Germany)

OK, this just went by me. Just looked into their FAQs - never done that before - and found you are right: 30 days and then nothing [or pay up].
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xMedia v2 on Windows XP/SP2; 3.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, loads of storage space.
Other: Nikon D2x, Nikon D200, Breeze DownloaderPro, Capture NX, Adobe CS3 Design Premium

Photo_Op · Joined: 01 Jul 2006 Posts: 6

OK! So almost everyone said don't be quick to judge what MS will do to IVMP. Well, if their proposed movement of the Forum is any indication, I'd get the life jackets ready. Five days after the thread goes up and we have everyone searching for workarounds.

Dave
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MacPro, 2.66GHz, 3 GB ram, Os X 10.4.8, iView 3.1.3 Beta

CTYankee · Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 81

free1000 · Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 12 Location: UK

Ah well... although its far more limited, I bought Lightroom and intend to make that my DAM solution now...

IView was a great idea, and by far the best software of its type. But some key issues were never fixed in my view (eg: access to network drives) and I have a feeling that in the long term Adobe will get Lightroom to do all the things I need it to.

When a new Adobe product comes out, I do get a frisson of excitement (and fear for my bank balance). I'm afraid that MS products just make me yawn.

ifonline · Joined: 23 Jul 2006 Posts: 89

I did the same thing. iView MediaPro was, what I considered, the best in its class. It had issues that never got address, unfortunately, and now with Microsoft at the helm, things have gotten even worse. Lightroom is now my choice as well, and I too expect it to become bigger and better as time moves forward.
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Ian

Windows XP SP2, Core 2 Duo 2.4, 4 GB RAM, 250/320/320 GB HDs, Lightroom 1.0 (Waiting for 1.1)

wcameron · Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 12:09 am Post subject:

AAAAARRRGH!

I can't believe that MS has not published ANY form of migration path. Expression merely installs new software (ignoring the iView installation) without any of the vocabularies such as keywords.txt, people.txt, etc. If I try to copy the files into the vocabulary directory my entire computer goes crazy. Every key on my computer provides wierd results (as if I were depressing the ALT key). The only solution is a reboot. AND yes, I have posted on the useless MS forum.

I have lightroom but it has an inferior catalog. Lightroom was my catalog and Lightroom was my raw processor, etc. If I could figure a good way to get my vocabulary into LR, I may just dump Expression - unless some support appears.
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Chigmaroff · Joined: 18 Dec 2004 Posts: 28

I read all the posts disappointed with the direction iView has taken. I still use it but have not migrated to the EM version. I must say anything with the Microsoft moniker on it gives me the heebee-geebeez. I do expect LR to produce a very useful DAM solution within LR.
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