General request (plea) regarding extensions

[brucewhealton]

Hello all,
Until I got into the extensions, I thought Joomla was about the best CMS that I have used. Everything makes sense, there is good documentation, books written about the application and much more. Of course, using Joomla in real life means using a variety of extensions. I have had people on the forum explain that many development sites like Joomla have extensions to the code that are not typically well documented.
This is why I am asking that developers please consider creating documentation for the developed extensions. I find many types of problems. One is to see an extension that has say 10 - 20 features and what little explanation that exists does not explain half of what is there. So, I'm left wondering what the other 10+ features do, what such and such means, what's it all about.
Then I find where it says Download, Homepage Documentation and clicking on Documentation takes me to a page that does not seem to have anything to do with documenting the extension. One place took me to a forum and there was a link to a "User's Manual" - a link that did nothing when clicking on it. Often the home page or the documentation page is in another language without any button to change to English, even though the link on Joomla did not indicate that I'd be taken to a site that is only in a foreign language. If I can read a partial overview of an extension in English at the Joomla site, then why would the homepage link take me to a site that is only in some other language? Many extensions are like that without a hint of how I might read something in English about the extension. From the joomla site for said extensions, someone knew enough english to briefly describe in some limited detail a few things about the extension.
Other confusing things... Links from http://extensions.joomla.org that include a demo page that doesn't seem to even mention the extension anywhere. I've seen this many times as I've seen other things many times, including a homepage that didn't give me any clue as to what the site has to do at all with the extension listed on joomla that I clicked on that got me there.

So, when I try to install an extension, by downloading from the site and then selecting Extensions> Install/Uninstall and it doesn't work what then? If it says it cannot find, locate or etc. such and such file, I think, "well maybe I forgot some step... maybe it requires that I install something else first." I then look for the home page for the extension - nothing. What about the Documentation, nope, nothing there. So, I unzip the file on my computer... no Readme.txt, no install.txt, maybe there is an instal.php file but there definitely isn't any directions there suggesting how to install the extension or configure it or use it.

Please, consider writing a little something to document things. Please link to that from the Documentation button on Joomla. Even if the documentation is to say, "just go to Extensions > Install/Uninstall and load up the file and you are all set." Telling us just that is going to be very helpful... in most cases there is some functionality that would require some documentation to be sure we are using the extension in the right way and taking advantage of all of its features.
Thanks so much,
Bruce