Kathleen McGrath's Weblog

Microsoft Help Viewer 1.1: See the planned updates for Visual Studio 2010 SP1

Kathleen McGrath - MSFT — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:13:42 GMT

I recently videotaped Paul O’Rear, Program Manager on the Library Experience team, as he described the changes to the Microsoft Help Viewer planned for Visual Studio SP1. He demonstrates the new functionality of the viewer in an early build of Help Viewer 1.1.

See Microsoft Help Viewer – Updates Planned for Visual Studio 2010 SP1

You can learn more in The Story of Help in Visual Studio 2010

--Kathleen

Getting Started Tutorials

Kathleen McGrath - MSFT — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 21:40:23 GMT

Mick Alberts and I have created a series of getting started videos for Visual Basic and C#. The first set of videos correspond to the getting started tutorial: Tutorial 1: Create a Picture Viewer. If you’re new to Visual Basic or C# development, these tutorials give you a great start. You will learn how to create a program that loads a picture from a file and displays it in a window. There is a separate video for C# and Visual Basic.

See How Do I: Create a Picture Viewer in C#

See How Do I: Create a Picture Viewer in Visual Basic

If you have any feedback on these videos, please let me know.

--Kathleen

Hey! What Happened to the Version Selector in the MSDN Library?

Kathleen McGrath - MSFT — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:10:33 GMT

When the Lightweight view of the MSDN Library was first released, there wasn’t a version selector as there was in classic view.

The MSDN Library Experience team recently released a new version selector in the Lightweight view of the MSDN Library. The current version of the topic is listed in bold, and other avaialble versions are listed in a dropdown. This control enables you to easily switch between versions of Visual Studio (or the .NET Framework).

See Jeff Braaten’s blog post to learn more.

--Kathleen

Hey! Why Can’t I Switch Between Code Tabs in the MSDN Library?

Kathleen McGrath - MSFT — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 02:32:11 GMT

If you’ve used the Help content in the MSDN Library using Lightweight view, you’re probably familiar with the tabbed code block interface. These tabbed code blocks enable you to easily switch between code examples in various programming languages by clicking on the appropriate tab.

We got feedback from some customers that they were unable to switch from one language to another, even though they had enabled cookies in the internet browser. The issue was identified and a fix was just released.

Tabbed code blocks require cookies in order to function correctly. If you’re still unable to switch between code tabs, you need to make sure you have cookies enabled in your browser; or you can add www.microsoft.com to the exception list if you don’t want to enable cookies everywhere.

To add Microsoft.com to the list of managed sites In IE8

1. On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.

2. On the Privacy tab, click Sites.

3. Add www.microsoft.com to the Per Site Privacy Actions dialog box, click Allow, and then click OK.

4. Click OK in the Internet Options dialog box to close it.

To add Microsoft.com to the Exceptions List In Firefox

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.

2. Click the Privacy tab, and then click the Exceptions button.

3. Add www.microsoft.com to the address box, and then click Allow.

4. Click Close to close the Exceptions – Cookies dialog box; then click OK to close the Options dialog box.

Now you can change code the tabbed code blocks of any topic in MSDN.

--Kathleen

Hey! What happened to the Visual Studio 2010 Help Index?

Kathleen McGrath - MSFT — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:09:12 GMT

If you’ve installed the Visual Studio 2010 help content locally on your computer, you may have noticed that there is no Index. Visual Studio 2010 Help is a browser-based Help system that enables you to navigate to the help content through the table of contents and search.

However, the Help Experience team recently released the Help Viewer Power Tool for Visual Studio 2010. You can find this Beta tool on MSDN Code Gallery (go to the Downloads tab to download it). This power tool can be used in-browser or standalone. The in-browser experience gives you an additional Search Results and Index tab in the left navigation pane. The standalone experience gives you three resizable tabs for navigating content: Contents, Search Results, and Index.

By default, you’ll be in the in-browser mode:

But you can switch to standalone mode by running the following command from an elevated command prompt (right-click the command prompt, and click “Run as Administrator”):

cd \program files\microsoft help viewer\v1.0

hlpvwpt.exe standaloneviewer=true

Be sure to shut down any instances of the Help Library Agent after you run the command. To do this, right-click on the Help Library Agent icon in the taskbar, and click Exit.

Now when you open Visual Studio help, you’ll have the standalone Help Viewer that includes an Index tab:

You can switch back to in-browser mode by running the following command from an elevated command prompt:

cd \program files\microsoft help viewer\v1.0

hlpvwpt.exe standaloneviewer=false

Be sure to shut down any instances of the Help Library Agent after the command is run.

Note: This power tool only works for the offline help; there is no Index available for online help.

To change these settings, go to the Help menu in Visual Studio 2010, and click Manage Help Settings. Click I want to use local help, and then click OK.

--Kathleen

Visual Studio 2010 Documentation Feedback

Kathleen McGrath - MSFT — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:55:02 GMT

I'm at Tech-Ed this week collecting feedback on the Visual Studio 2010 documentation. Stop by and see us near the Visual Studio (or p&p) booth and tell us what you think! You can also give feedback about earlier versions of the documentation, or take the online Visual Studio and .NET Framework Content Survey.

--Kathleen

Hey! What happened to the old MSDN Library?

Kathleen McGrath - MSFT — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 06:44:55 GMT

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.

To change the Library view

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

Creating Coded UI Tests with Visual Studio 2010

Kathleen McGrath - MSFT — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 06:50:00 GMT

In this introductory video, you will learn about the Visual Studio 2010 code generation features that enable testers to create coded UI tests.

Watch the video: Introduction to Creating Coded UI Tests with Visual Studio 2010

This video is based on a a step-by-step Hands-on Lab. See the Instructions for downloading HOLs and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Virtual Machines.

--Kathleen

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2: Application Lifecycle Management Videos

Kathleen McGrath - MSFT — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:51:00 GMT

Brian Keller has posted information on downloading a virtual machine containing Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2, along with sample data and a series of hands-on labs (HOLs) to get you started with the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) capabilities of Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.

I’m going to be creating a series of video demos based on these HOLs. The first two videos are about test case management in Visual Studio 2010 using Microsoft Test and Lab Manager.

Introduction to Test Case Management in Visual Studio 2010 with Microsoft Test and Lab Manager

Authoring and Running Manual Tests in Visual Studio 2010 using Microsoft Test and Lab Manager

-- Kathleen

Binding Silverlight Controls in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

Kathleen McGrath - MSFT — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:16:43 GMT

In the following videos, programming writer Steve Stein demonstrates the new drag and drop data binding features in Visual Studio 2010 for working with Silverlight applications.

See the video: Silverlight Object Binding in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

and the corresponding blog post that you can follow step-by-step.

See the video: Binding Silverlight Controls to a Data Service in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

--Kathleen