vs2005 online help... [modified]
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Yeah but they now include CP articles in the MSDN search results :-) Search for Marc Clifton or Christian Graus or Michael Dunn :-)
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
Currently working on C++/CLI in Action for Manning Publications. Also visit the Ultimate Toolbox blog -
what in gods name did they do to it?? i press F1 and so much stuff flashes on the screen i almost had an epileptic attack windows fly open and then go away ... lists and trees draw themselves and then disappear ... 25seconds later i get a help page that frankly looks like my friends dog designed it shame cos i was really enjoying doing some c++ coding again *sigh*
"there is no spoon"
{some projects} {about me}It's actually quicker to hook up F1 to a Google (or Windows Live) search and have the results returned in the Help tab in IE, as described here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000428.html[^] Someone did say a while back that each iteration of the VS online help is worse than before!
Kevin
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Anyone that has used Visual Studio for a long time knows that with every major release, MS dicks with the help system and ends up pissing everyone off.
Kicking squealing Gucci little piggy.
Yep. They've done a "Visual Studio 97" on us all over again. :doh:
Anna :rose: Currently working mostly on: Visual Lint :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "Be yourself - not what others think you should be" - Marcia Graesch "Anna's just a sexy-looking lesbian tart" - A friend, trying to wind me up. It didn't work.
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The good You can now avoid local helpfiles by jumping directly to the online MSDN page for whatever you're looking up. The bad There are three separate windows for help. Two are those damn sliding panels that hide when you need them and show up when you don't. The third is a browser that shows up in a tab. You can redirect help requests to the stand-alone help viewer, but i've yet to have this work reliably. The ugly Loading MSDN webpages loads the topic text first. Into a 1.5 inch column on the right. Then you wait 'till the huge TOC downloads into the left pane, and it finally collapses. :sigh:
---- Scripts i’ve known... CPhog 1.8.2 - make CP better. Forum Bookmark 0.2.5 - bookmark forum posts on Pensieve Print forum 0.1.2 - printer-friendly forums Expand all 1.0 - Expand all messages In-place Delete 1.0 - AJAX-style post delete Syntax 0.1 - Syntax highlighting for code blocks in the forums
Shog9 wrote:
Loading MSDN webpages loads the topic text first. Into a 1.5 inch column on the right. Then you wait 'till the huge TOC downloads into the left pane, and it finally collapses.
That's MSDN2, where the left-hand column is an enormous nested ASP.NET repeater control which loads all the content before becoming usable. It works OK if there are a few nodes at the same level, but for MFC, where there are about a thousand classes shown at the same logical level, it's completely unusable. It generates something like 400 bytes of HTML per node. It's obscene. The old MSDN had - still has - an AJAX left-hand frame which actually loaded in the background. A bit sluggish but a lot more usable - and with a lot less data transferred.
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
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what in gods name did they do to it?? i press F1 and so much stuff flashes on the screen i almost had an epileptic attack windows fly open and then go away ... lists and trees draw themselves and then disappear ... 25seconds later i get a help page that frankly looks like my friends dog designed it shame cos i was really enjoying doing some c++ coding again *sigh*
"there is no spoon"
{some projects} {about me} -
Vikram A Punathambekar wrote:
C# support is awesome though.
Too bad my experiance has been the opposite. :( I have killer machine with lots and lots of ram and I don't run IIS or SQL localy so I don't have to pay for them running on my box. But, until MS allowed us to download a Super Secret Patch (SSP :) ) it (the IDE and Compiler) crashed almost once an hour when working with a very large solution. After the SSP it only crashed a few times a day. The odd thing was the same solution did not crash in VS.net 2003. Color me unimpressed with 2005 thus far.
Hey don't worry, I can handle it. I took something. I can see things no one else can see. Why are you dressed like that? - Jack Burton
Chris Austin wrote:
But, until MS allowed us to download a Super Secret Patch (SSP ) it (the IDE and Compiler) crashed almost once an hour when working with a very large solution. After the SSP it only crashed a few times a day. The odd thing was the same solution did not crash in VS.net 2003. Color me unimpressed with 2005 thus far.
What and where is this SSP for download?
Michael ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ\|/ ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ^O^O^ ——o00o—0—o00o—— If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? --Albert Einstein
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l a u r e n wrote:
i press F1 and so much stuff flashes on the screen i almost had an epileptic attack windows fly open and then go away ... lists and trees draw themselves and then disappear ... 25seconds later i get a help page that frankly looks like my friends dog designed it
Impressive.
Most Impressive but you are not a fully funtional help page yet.
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Shog9 wrote:
Loading MSDN webpages loads the topic text first. Into a 1.5 inch column on the right. Then you wait 'till the huge TOC downloads into the left pane, and it finally collapses.
That's MSDN2, where the left-hand column is an enormous nested ASP.NET repeater control which loads all the content before becoming usable. It works OK if there are a few nodes at the same level, but for MFC, where there are about a thousand classes shown at the same logical level, it's completely unusable. It generates something like 400 bytes of HTML per node. It's obscene. The old MSDN had - still has - an AJAX left-hand frame which actually loaded in the background. A bit sluggish but a lot more usable - and with a lot less data transferred.
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
This is even worse: I use a virtual, remote server that I cannot install Firefox on, and IE has restricted rights. So I have to come back to my desktop, paste anything I want to search for in Google, and take the results back to the virtual server. This, because "help" has been absolutely wrong every time. E.g., at one point I had forgotten the usage for C# "switch" command (how many languages have this different?), and - follishly - pressed F1. So I never did find the answer, and waded, instead, through the WhatevaSense until I got it right. And, of course, if I do end up in the MS class definitions area, in Firefox the entire left menu tree reloads every time I click on a leaf or branch Microsoft - you'll get what they give you.
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The good You can now avoid local helpfiles by jumping directly to the online MSDN page for whatever you're looking up. The bad There are three separate windows for help. Two are those damn sliding panels that hide when you need them and show up when you don't. The third is a browser that shows up in a tab. You can redirect help requests to the stand-alone help viewer, but i've yet to have this work reliably. The ugly Loading MSDN webpages loads the topic text first. Into a 1.5 inch column on the right. Then you wait 'till the huge TOC downloads into the left pane, and it finally collapses. :sigh:
---- Scripts i’ve known... CPhog 1.8.2 - make CP better. Forum Bookmark 0.2.5 - bookmark forum posts on Pensieve Print forum 0.1.2 - printer-friendly forums Expand all 1.0 - Expand all messages In-place Delete 1.0 - AJAX-style post delete Syntax 0.1 - Syntax highlighting for code blocks in the forums
And God help you if all you can have is a slodem connection, which is the case here. {Praying Verizon or Sprint wireless broadband hits this hick farm town sometime before the next millenium.}
-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"
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Chris Austin wrote:
But, until MS allowed us to download a Super Secret Patch (SSP ) it (the IDE and Compiler) crashed almost once an hour when working with a very large solution. After the SSP it only crashed a few times a day. The odd thing was the same solution did not crash in VS.net 2003. Color me unimpressed with 2005 thus far.
What and where is this SSP for download?
Michael ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ\|/ ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ^O^O^ ——o00o—0—o00o—— If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? --Albert Einstein
It was a link given to us from MS Tech support. I had to spend hours on the phone whith them just to get a patch. I am on leave currently from my job, I am a stay at home daddy for the time being, so I couldn't supply you with the link. Also, it had a special downloader/installer that expired after some numer of days. This was months ago so I can't say if it still works. Sorry.
Hey don't worry, I can handle it. I took something. I can see things no one else can see. Why are you dressed like that? - Jack Burton
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It was a link given to us from MS Tech support. I had to spend hours on the phone whith them just to get a patch. I am on leave currently from my job, I am a stay at home daddy for the time being, so I couldn't supply you with the link. Also, it had a special downloader/installer that expired after some numer of days. This was months ago so I can't say if it still works. Sorry.
Hey don't worry, I can handle it. I took something. I can see things no one else can see. Why are you dressed like that? - Jack Burton
Thanks. You would not happen to know what I could search for, would you? [Edit] I will look in my MSDN subscription and see if they have a patch.
Michael ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ\|/ ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ^O^O^ ——o00o—0—o00o—— If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? --Albert Einstein
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Marc Clifton wrote:
Now THAT's scary.
I wonder if MS is willing to start paying royalties to the CP article authors for each time an article is hit via MSDN... :rolleyes: Seriously though, your articles are better than lots of the MS documentation I've read. :tip_of_the_hat:
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
I just wish they could actually make the Help files helpful!! I don't care about the IDE, I just want to content to actually help me!! I think the best Help files VS has is Code Project!! I tried to get SQL2000 debugging activated on VS 2005! I gave up in the end, The help files just didn't help me, they just sent me round and round in circles, all of them just link to each other and don't actually give you the information you need!!!
"a fool will not learn from a wise man, but a wise man will learn from a fool" "It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed." - Theodore Roosevelt "Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill