Have you visited the MSDN Library lately? There’s a new default view applied to the Library content that is known as the “Lightweight view.” This is a slimmed down view that has the following features:
Flattened Table of Contents. Instead of having several levels of expansion with the + symbol, it now just shows two levels. The title in orange represents the topic you’re currently viewing.
You can also hold your mouse pointer over a title to see the full title
Tabbed Code Blocks. You can view the code examples for a particular language by clicking the appropriate language tab. After you’ve selected a language, your preference is saved for subsequent views within the Library.
Note that, by default, five language tabs are always present, but not all languages have code examples. For example, SharePoint doesn’t support C++, so that tab contains the following information:
The same information is displayed if you click a tab for a language where we haven’t yet provided a code example.
Faster Load Time for Content. Because there are fewer scripts and a simplified table of contents, content loads much faster than the “classic” view.
But there may be times when you want to view the content in the classic view. For example, you may prefer the nesting table of contents, or want to view side-by-side translated content (which requires classic view), etc.
1. Click Preferences in the upper right corner of the MSDN Library.
2. On the Choose View page, click Classic, and then click OK.
Now you can see the content in the familiar, classic view. In this view, you can easily change between classic, lightweight, and ScriptFree view by clicking the appropriate view in the upper right corner of the page.
There are a couple more changes I’d like to point out about the Lightweight view.
1. You can get to the community content section of a topic easily from the table of contents. Just click “More…”
If there are already some wiki entries, up to two entries will also be displayed in the table of contents.
Clicking More… in either case will take you to the bottom of the topic in the Community Content section.
Note that the Add link you see below will currently only appear when you’re already signed in with a Windows Live ID.
2. If you want to rate or give feedback on a topic, click the Feedback link in the footer of any topic:
Enjoy!
--Kathleen