Why documentation deep links are broken?

Question

Since the Salesforce developer documentation was never the fastest UI ever made by man, I enjoyed the old FRAME layout which allowed me to create deep links to content I use frequently.

Now having stored hundreds of these links in my Firefox bookmarks, it helped me to save hours instead of slowmotion-clickwalking through to UI. They look like this:

• http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/dbcom_apex290/Content/apex_System_String_instance_methods.htm
• http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/dbcom_apex290/Content/apex_System_List_instance_methods.htm
• http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/dbcom_apex290/Content/apex_System_Map_instance_methods.htm

Now all these links just died and I get redirected onto a meaningless page. I figured out that the help-system was totally overhauled and the new links look more like:

• https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_methods_system_list.htm#apex_methods_system_list
• https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_methods_system_list.htm#apex_methods_system_list
• https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_methods_system_map.htm#apex_methods_system_map

The path changed too much to make a simple text-replace automatically for all my bookmarks, so I just want to know if anyone else might also be trapped by this change and if there is no other way than manually creating the new links?

It would have been very nice if the old links where either kept unchanged as they where to the old style and old content - or if there would have been an meaningful redirect to the new content coming close to what I'm expecting to see.

Also I think the handling and performance became even worse with the new style than before with the frame-style-documentation:

• The navigation is now a div with a max height and it's not high enough for big screens.
• If you use the new deep links, the navigation can't be hidden (since it's a frameless design).
• If you use the new deep links, the navigation doesn't match to the content you see, but shows all nodes collapsed
• The search rarely bring good results on top (e.g. search for "list" should bring up "List Class" topmost imho)
• distinction between static- and member-methods seems lost. All methods are now in one huge list.

So I would like to know:

• What is the best way to use the new help faster and more productive?
• Is there a better approach than my deep-link workaround (since the links will be fragile and might die again at the next overhaul)?

What I found usable was Google "salesforce apex list" ==> "List Class" topmost as expected, followed by meaningfull hits... But it's uncomfortable and I would bookmark the hit again to save the keystrokes...

Answer 1

I would suggest that at this point, given the updates that Docs have done, any links that continue to be broken should be considered as bugs. Since docs have committed to fixing this, any bugs should be filed as such with support, or through the documentation portal, which has a feedback widget running on it now on every page.