What About Help?

[joep]

After spending some time with Visual Studio 2005 I have some issues with the Help. After migrating my first Windows app to VS 2005 one of the first items to be corrected concerned the Cursor class. I went to Help looking for the methodology to be used with VS 2005 and all I could find was references to Cursor.Current. Since VS 2005 did not seem to offer the Current property I thought maybe the Help had not been fully updated. So, I hacked around until I got the Cursor do act as I wanted. After many similar issues it finally occurred to me that I was getting info on versions 2002-2003 and not 2005. So I thought that maybe I hadn’t filtered the Help properly but no you can filter by Language but not by Version. In fact the only Help I have been able to find for Version 2005 is for items that were not available in 2002-03. This does not seem right to me.

Then it hit me, MSDN. When VB 5 became VB 6 then and at some point the VB 6 Help was replaced by MDSN it all went bad. Then came Visual Studio 2002 and the .Net framework and the Help was not MSDN and life was good again. There was actually code on most every page, you know just enough so you got the idea and could go on from there. Now we are back to MSDN and the code has disappeared. MSDN will circle you round about half a dozen pages concerning a topic and really get you no where. I mean really, were writing code so lets don’t offer any or at best bury it deep enough that you have to spend a lot of time looking for it. I am now getting my best help from a Google search. Yes, sometimes it takes me to a MSDN page that has the help I need but it is a page I had not been able to find through the VS 2005 Help itself.

So after everybody gets through dising me about this post, maybe someone will offer a solution, MSDN just stays in the problem. Like I didn’t install the Help correctly or there is a Help version available that is not MSDN or something else really wonderful.

 

[jmcilhinney]

I'm here to dis you about your post. You simply aren't using the help system properly. I've installed all the VS 2005 Express versions and the MSDN Express library with them. I've selected local help as my primary source but if there is no local help available it integrates the on-line MSDN library right into the help window. If you want help on the Cursor class you search for "cursor class" or "cursor members" (without quotes) or select an identifier of type Cursor in the code window and hit F1. When viewing the on-line MSDN library, any URLs that begin with "msdn2" are .NET 2.0-specific. Any that start with "msdn" are for 1.x. I've learned the bulk of what I know about .NET development from the local and on-line help so I know for a fact that anyone who isn't finding what they want most of the time is simply not looking properly.