Microsoft Help Viewer - New Help System in Visual Studio 2010 | kmcgrath

terrajobst

Awesome video, thanks!

Will the help be still extensible for 3rd parties? In the past you could provide installers that integrate into the VSIP help namespace for that purpose.

In addition, is it possible to provide an intranet help? For example, in our company we have many shared components that are updated quite frequently. We would like to centralize the help so that the updates of the intranet help could be done by a nightly build. This way, nobody needs to install anything but just press F1.

chrisnz

The updating and downloading of new content looks better than VS2008.

However the lack of an index that you can drill down into as you type each character is a big negative. Why create a new system if right off the bat you don't have a feature that many people use. Same as intellisense provides discoverability when you get a up-to-date list as you type each character, I find the help index provides the same analogue rather than doing a search for most help lookups.

I'd probably stay with VS2008 until this feature is available for VS2010.

rhm

Help in the web browser - seriously? Are we running Linux here? Who'd have thought regressing 15 years was the way forward.

terrajobst

In reply to rhm

#Nov 7th, 2009 @ 5:43 AM

I thought the same when I heard it the first time. Now I think it is actually not that bad:

When you are using help chances are that you also the web browser to investigate further (such as googling/binging for additional information.
CHM and HXS always used the browser to render the HTML content anyway.
According to the video the new help is way faster than the old doc explorer.

What are your concerns?

wkempf

In reply to rhm

#Nov 7th, 2009 @ 5:43 AM

In what way is help in the browser a step back? Help is documentation, and that's EXACTLY what the browser was designed for (unlike web applications that are all the rage and yet rarely are worth a darn). The old help system was nothing more than an embedded browser... which buys you nothing, and costs you a lot (lack of plugins for FF users, for instance). It's actually about darn time they stopped using an embedded browser and started using open standards.

nektar

How horrible!
1. The browser is not a rich controls application. No tree-view control. No tabs and property sheets. No easy to use keyboard shortcuts.
(A) Can I use the table of contents to navigate the documentation using the cursors in the browser? Most probably not. It is all a set of links and links and more links.
(B) Can I press ctrl+alt+f1, f2 and f3 to get the table of contents, the index and the search in your new browser-based viewer? Most probably not. By the way, in VS 2008 although it says that these shortcuts should work, they don't so that is a bug in VS 2008 too.
(C) Can I use alt+c and alt+n to get table contents and index in the browser?
(D) Can I browser the index using cursors and tab or is there no index in the browser?
(E) Is search its own floating window or every time I use it a new page would be navigated to in the browser? Of course the later. But in your previous viewer I could keep the search results and view them one by one without having to go back and forward.
(F) There is a reason why desktop applications are richer than the browser, even though everybody talks about the browser and the browser nowadays.
2. Can you at last decide on one help viewer for all your company? Windows has one, Office another, now you another. Where is the collaboration?
3. Your MSDN online search results page is not a simple as Google and it doesn't still work as good. Even after so many years. Especially the interface has too many links. So, now you are going to make that the default search experience?
4. You know how hard it is for me to navigate MSDN online? There is no Next and Previous link at the end of each help topic. And so every time I read a topic I have to go up to the table of contents again and again and find and click the next topic. Is hard, very hard. You go down to read, you finish and you go up and up to find the title of what you are reading in the TOC and then find and click the next and the next topic. All over and over. Whilst in your previous help viewer, one can easily press alt+down and alt+up to navigate through the topics. How easy. Can your "browser" do that?

inexus

I agree with the first post regarding help on the Intranet - that would be valuable when we got 100+ developers to support. Or even just at home if I have to rebuild my machine so I don't have to download all the help again.

Also, the online/offline modes - is it possible to get the settings to respect first to check for content offline and then online? It would be nice if this could be more seamless.

When I use offline help and click on a link to something I haven't downloaded I get a custom 404 screen asking if I want to go online and there is a link. Once I click on the link a new browser window opens.

wkempf

In reply to nektar

#Nov 7th, 2009 @ 11:26 AM

1. There's plenty of such "rich controls" on the web... most done through nothing but the DOM and JavaScript. Regardless, there's very little use for such controls when talking about reading documentation.

(A) Keyboard navigation in the browser works just fine. If they had a TOC, you'd be able to navigate it with the keyboard.

(B) Have you used GMail much? Keyboard shortcuts work just fine in the browser. You may not be able to keep the exact same short cuts... but that shouldn't matter.

(C) Rehash of (B).

(D) Again, keyboard navigation would work fine. As for an index... watch the video.

(E) Either could be done, but I'm sure the separate search window implementation wasn't done. I think most people wouldn't care, or might even prefer not to have a separate search window. Obviously you don't, and so you've got a legitimate complaint here, even if it's one you're likely to not get resolution to.

(F) Agreed... but that richness is pointless for documentation. After all, that is PRECISELY what the browser was designed for.

2. Valid point... though I'm not sure how important.

3. The online MSDN search is no worse than the existing offline MSDN search, so comparing it to Google, in this context at least, is a bit pointless.

4. The browser CAN do that... but I'm willing to bet they didn't implement it. Most people don't use the documentation that way either. It's a legitimate complaint, and one that should be considered, though. Just doesn't mean the browser isn't the right implementation.

SajuSathyan

Why should someone write the whole "xmlreader" to search for it ... I really want the search index back... just type three or four letters and I am there... the current way of showing table of contents confuses me, because there is no visual clue that where I am in the documentaion... convention of peer, child and parents doesn't quite make the cut here... you should have some kind of visual indication.