Something that I missed with the Express editions was the lack of Program Menu shortcuts linking directly to Help documentation. Cases where this may be relevant is when you want to read some without opening VS first, or juggle several instances of VS and closing one takes the open Help down with it. And what if one have full version and loose this shortcut, reinstall the full Suite to recreate the shortcut? Finding out how these shortcuts work isn't easy, but once the application used is discovered it's starting to nest. Microsoft Document Explorer is it (DExplore.exe) and it is documented, but doesn't reveal much detail. Some research on internet also didn't give much until some clues at The Helpware Group. The key switch is HelpCol and the value to use can be found in registry following this pattern:
A standard 2008 installation put DExplore.exe in folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help 9
Note that "Program Files" and "Common Files" might be localized for your OS language version.
This gives us a valid shortcut:
For VB 2008 Express it's:
In that key there is a NameValue pair where name starts with protocol string "ms-help://", for example "ms-help://MS.VSCC.v90", this is the HelpCol value.
A standard 2008 installation put DExplore.exe in folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help 9
Note that "Program Files" and "Common Files" might be localized for your OS language version.
This gives us a valid shortcut:
Further, when viewing help you might have noticed the filter used, the default for VB2008 Express is "Visual Basic Express Edition". This filter in 2008 Express compared to 2005 Express has the incredibly annoying effect of hiding all Framework documentation! You have to select filter ".Net Framework" or (Unfiltered) every time to find the useful stuff. For Standard edition and up it is possibly to set a default filter to use from Studio configuration, but not with Express. For this Document Explorer has the Filter switch that is set simply to the same text string displayed when using it. Not setting this switch displays (Unfiltered) in VB 2008. Here is a sample shortcut string for Framework:
For VB 2005 Express:
Happy reading!
