MSDN ... ?

[Michael Haephrati]

I remember the days MSDN was all packed in Visual Studio Disk 2

[peterchen]

Yeah, they should. In practive it's the maturity of the documentaiotn, that is limited by the maturity of the technology itself. And I still maintain that compared to the median or average state of documentation, MSDN is stellar.

ORDER BY what user wants

[CPallini]

Yes, I'm really using it.

Veni, vidi, vici.

[Lost User]

Nothing wrong with MSDN, I use it all the time and find it very useful. I did prefer the old "classic view" though. :sigh:

Use the best guess

[Matthew Faithfull]

To use MSDN even in its older and more useful forms you really first have to understand the rules and ways of Microsoft. Otherwise you're always in danger of dying of frustration before you find what you need. 1. Microsoft don't understand full-text-search. It's a kind of religious thing, they just don't believe in it. So all Search means search of the index which they've created based on their assumptions about what's important to you. 2. New always trumps old. If you are looking for anything where there's a .Net thing of that name and a pre-.Net thing of the same name you will have to dig through all the .Net results before you find anything pre-.Net. 3. Most importantly Microsoft never admit when they suck. As a general rule the less detail in the documentation of a particular item the higher the probability that it is bugged, flawed, broken or in some way Microsoft wish they had never created it. Converserly APIs with loads of detail and samples are usually the ones that just work anyway, are robust and consistent and could possibly do without much of the detail as a result. 4. Almost all Microsoft sample code is terrible. In order to make use of it you generally have to be knowledgable enough not to need it and skilled enough to be utterly revolted by how insecure, poorly structured, badly written, badly commented and non reusable it is. This is of course 'recognized' by Microsoft in the only way they ever do by providing you with a disclaimer essentially telling you not to reuse it, believe it or learn from it. This also explains to some extent the lack of accumulated sample code. Once you've understood that this is what you're going to get MSDN becomes as useful as it can be. A fairly comprehensive list of entry points into Microsoft's operating system provided code with a fairly accurate description of the types needed to call those entry points and hints about how you might like to secure your code against the potentially explosive results of doing so. If you expect from it anything more you're going to be disappointed. All of this should not be taken as an attack on Microsoft so much as a reality check for what to expect. If we were talking about the interface to the Linux operating system kernel then a comprehensive list of entry points with hints as to what they're for, divided into categories would be so revolutionary as to have half the Linux Kernel hacking community in total appoplexy.

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."

[Mass Nerder]

Yes I am using this every day. But you are right, just due to its monstrous size, it is sometimes difficult to find things. So when i've finally found what I was looking for, I am going the hierarchy up to the more general topic an bookmark it. Like this: DOM Reference Cheers

[Marco Bertschi]

viaducting wrote:

I only ever enter MSDN's portals via Google searches. Trying to navigate around it directly is a recipe for madness.

Same here.

cheers Marco Bertschi

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Software Developer & Founder SMGT Web-Portal CP Profile | My Articles | Twitter | Facebook | SMGT Web-Portal UI experts know best, especially more than a mere user. - Wizzar

[Nicholas Marty]

Is this tool free? Where can I download it? ;P

[Nicholas Marty]

If I remember correctly I got a printed version at home :-D (don't remember exactly the scope of it. I think it's mostly around VB6...)

[Michael Haephrati]

Not only tool free, but TOLL FREE (when you connect your 56K Modem...)

[Matthew Dennis]

One nice thing about the MSDN Library search is that it includes a select few external sites recognized for great content, including CodeProject.

[Albert Holguin]

I mostly do the same... the MSDN searches seem to be very unhelpful most of the time.

[Albert Holguin]

I use it all the time as well... but I will say that searching for what you're looking for isn't easy.

[Albert Holguin]

That's a good idea... I never bookmark anything but if I had a dime for every time I've searched for the same thing well.... I'd be rather wealthy by now. :)