AprilR's WebLog

I would like to see a class' inheritence chain upon each page of help, not just the namespace. This chain need only go deep enough to reveal a common root that may be shared. An example is the OleDb and ODBC connection classes. They both share a common ancestor, and that is too hard to locate -- I would want it graphically displayed on each page or in a popup legend, somewhere consistently found on the help page.
More graphically illustrated maps of inheritence trees to locate classes. I used the class trees for delphi when they were posters to great effect. Why isn't this a navigation tool for help, anyway? I am a genius; please send David Platt a postcard and say hi to Eugenio. Later, April.

This is actually something I've wondered about myself, coming into this job, why isn't there a little visual that says where the heck you are in the heirarchy.  I'm glad to get an actual customer request for it!

april

I like how the Help System has those tabs on the right hand side that link to different modes (Tech Forums, etc..) That's pretty nifty.

What I dont like is that the results "density" is too sparse. In 2003 help, I can scan the various results a lot faster because they were tightly compacted into a littel one-line grid.

Now I feel like it takes forever to scan through the results.

Plus, the check boxes in the three parts at the top.. PLEASE add some sort of (un)check all.  Do you know how asinine it is to ahve to deselect a million (:)) categories cuz you only want to search one? :)

Hope that helps :)

oh my comments were about the Search feature

- Tell me what you love
That the information grows... Like blogs, channe9 ...

- Tell me what you hate
This supid new MSDN Help System. With online/offline etc. It´s too slow and have you seen where it stores it´s files? They are everywhere... If the new VC++ IDE would not rock that much i swear i would still do all my work with VC6.

- Tell me what you use for getting unstuck in your work - from content, to features, from blogs to code sites
In Order of usage: PSDK, Codeproject/MSDN forums,Google, Blogs and than my local MSDN(which goes online sometimes...)

- Tell me about your dream assistance scenario
Our company is platin partner, so i would prefer to get direct contact to the guys that wrote the piece of code that makes me stuck...
A small list like:
DUN-Stuff: Mr. X, x@ms.com, 555-Shoe
NDIS & Network (WLAN...): Mrs. N, n@ms.com, 555-wpa

- Tell me about your most frustrating experience
Did you ever call MSDN Support Hotline?!?
It´s not that the guys who help you when it becomes technical are stupid, but you have to repeat your problem 5 times before you get in contact with the techies...
And you should hope that the isssue can be clearly assigend to an team. It will took some time if you issue is moved between DUN Team, Network Team and Driver Team and than back...

- Tell me about the best help you ever found
The well commented code that ships with Windows CE PB. I would like to see that for Shared Source of Windows...

- Tell me what you think about the MSDN wiki project
Thats an amazing project!