What's new with Adobe Community Help

ALERT (5/11/12): CS6 Help PDF files will not be available until June.

Adobe Community Help for Creative Suite 6 has changed:

• A Help article can document multiple versions of the product (CS6, CS5.5, or CS5). The applicable versions are indicated in the article sidebar and in the topic titles. There is no separate help for each product version.
• The table of contents has changed. Help now integrates contributions from across Adobe and our community. It displays content for CS5, CS5.5 and CS6. Think of Community Help as collections of related items rather than structured books. Adobe continually curates and adds to the collections.
• When you access Help from your product using F1 or the Help menu, a topic browsing page now opens in a web browser. The web page combines community contributions and Adobe content. Browse the content by topic categories. Click the More link in a category to see a complete list of related items.
• Offline Help is a PDF instead of HTML in the Community Help browser. If you want to access Help when you're offline, a PDF is available for download.

The Adobe Help manager is an AIR-based content installation utility that downloads offline help content and notifies you when new updates are available, ensuring that you always have the most up-to-date and accurate reference information from Adobe.

This utility, previously known as the Community Help application, features the following major changes:

• Online help content will be displayed in your default web browser (Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Firefox, etc.).
• The Help Manager will download either HTML or PDF reference content, depending on which file is the most recent.
• You can then view this content offline, either via your web browser or via Adobe Acrobat Reader (or similar PDF viewing software).
• You can dismiss or disable notifications entirely via the Help Manager preferences.

• When you launch help from any CS6 application, the default web browser will launch with the appropriate product help content displayed.
• You can then use your browser’s native functionality to search, bookmark, comment, or rate the content.

• The first time you launch Help from your Adobe CS6 application, the Adobe Help manager launches in the background and checks for the availability of new or updated content.
• If no new content is available, the application will shut down until the next time you select Help.
• If new content is found, a small pop-up notification will be displayed on your desktop, usually in the lower-right corner of your screen.
• When you click on the notification message, the Help Manager will launch and show you all of the help content that is available for download in the Local Content preferences.
• You can select individual packages by highlighting the desired product or help package title and clicking on the Update button.
• To update all of the content that is available, select the ‘Download’ button on the General preferences pane. Note: The total download size for all of the applicable content is displayed – large updates may take several minutes or more to download.
• During this download, you may continue to browse and search Help content with your web browser.
• If you prefer to have your Adobe applications use the local, installed help files by default, select “Display local help content only’ in the General preferences tab.
• Or you can simply choose to continue viewing online content and the Help Manager will automatically switch to offline help if Internet access is no longer available.