Scott's Blog

Fix for Help not working in May 2004 Community Technology Preview

2004-06-01T23:37:00Z

After installing the May Community Technology Preview of Visual Studio 2005, you will quickly discover that the Help system does not work. You'll see a message that says, “Downloading...”

Rob Caron has posted a message on his Blog which explains how to fix the Help system.

http://blogs.msdn.com/robcaron/archive/2004/05/27/143485.aspx

TechEd 2004 in San Diego

2004-05-24T07:09:00Z

I arrived in San Diego this afternoon for TechEd 2004. Today was the conference start. The main conference gets under way tomorrow; Monday May 24th and runs until Friday May 28. Many members of the Visual Studio Core Help and Community teams are here at the conference. We will be at the Developer Cabana as well as the Visual Studio IDE booths in the Exhibit Hall every day. We would very much like talk with anyone who has been using the Help system in the Visual Studio 2005 Community Technonogy Previews - or anyone who would like to talk about Visual Studio Help in general. This is a great opportunity to get your questions answered and give us your feedback in person!

The Visual Studio 2005 Help system offers new extensibilty mechanisms for those who wish to extend and customize the Visual Studio Help system. If you are at Tech Ed and would like to learn more about extending the Visual Studio 2005 Help system, find me at the booth. Or, you can email me directly at scottsw@microsoft.com to set up a specific meeting time.

Also, if you are attending TechEd, check out the nightly jam sessions. These run every night of the conference from 9:00pm to 1:00am. I stopped by tonight for a couple of hours and heard some very talented musicians playing lots of different music. If you play an instrument, hop on stage and join in. If you don't play, stop by to listen and support those who do. Its great fun!

How much Help content should Visual Studio install by default?

2004-05-05T20:46:00Z

In Visual Studio Whidbey, the Help system will have the ability to perform a “scoped” install. Scoped install only installs content that is optimized for particular user types; Visual Basic developer, VC++ Developer, etc. Scoped install has the benefits of copying less content to your hard disk, reducing installation time, and removing potentially unneeded content from the Index and Table of Contents windows. On the down side, if you do a scoped install of Help content, its possible that later, if you add additional Visual Studio installation features, you might not have Help content installed for them. In that case, you would need to go back to MSDN setup and install the additional help content for the features you just installed. Is this a good thing? Is having a faster install time and reduced clutter in the Index and Table of contents a good trade off for not having all Visual Studio content on your machine?

Learn more about the Visual Studio 2005 (a.k.a Whidbey) Help System

2004-04-22T18:42:00Z

Want to learn more about the new Help system in Visual Studio 2005? Check out my interviews with Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) on the cool new web site Channel9. New segments of the interview will be appearing over the coming weeks.

So far two segments have been posted:

-Scott

Whats with the weird keyboard navigation in the Help Index and Table of Contents tool windows?

2004-04-22T00:39:00Z

Do you ever navigate the Index or Table of contents using the keyboard with just a little mouse clicking? If so, you might have noticed that the only way to keep the selection focus on an item in the Index or TOC is to first give focus to the tool window. You give focus the tool window by clicking on it's title bar, or <ctrl><alt><F1> for the Table of Contents or <ctrl><alt><F2> for the Index. Navigating the items in the tool windows is another story...

If you click on an item in the Index with your mouse, one of two things happens:

If the Index entry has multiple help topics, the Index Results tool window is opened, focus and selection are set to the first item in the Index Results list and the selected topic is shown. The user can then navigate the Index Results list using the up/down arrow keys.
If only a single help topic is associated with the Index entry, that topic is shown and focus is set to the topic window so you can navigate the topic using the arrow keys.

If you set focus to the Index window via <ctrl><alt><f2> the following behavior occurs:

Focus is set to the “Look For“ box by default. And you must hit <tab> twice to get to the Index list. We are fixing this in Whidbey. The filter combo will be moved to the top of the tool window out of the tab order so you can easily tab between the “Look For“ box and the Index list.
Now that you have tabbed to the Index list, you can move up/down the list via the arrow keys. To select and index entry, you press <enter> and are taken to the Index results list. As described above, focus is set to the first item in the Index Results list, and the associated topic is displayed.

This behavior has been in place since Visual Studio .NET 2002. The designers at the time thought that while this keyboard navigation was non-standard, it made the most sense for users navigating Help via the keyboard. Now that you've had two versions to use this model, what do you think? Should we change the behavior and keep the focus and select in the Index tool window, and force you to change windows in order to change focus? Or, is the auto focus switching a good thing that makes your lives easier?

If you click on an item in the Table of Contents, the topic you clicked on is displayed and focus is transferred to the topic window.
If you set focus to the TOC window using <ctrl><alt><F1> and then navigate the tree, you must press <enter> on a selected item to display that topic. Once you press <enter> the topic is loaded and focus is set to the topic.

This behavior has shipped for two versions now. Do you like the current behavior? If we changed the behavior in Whidbey to be the conventional focus/selection model rather than automatically changing focus to the topic, would this make your VS experience better or worse?

As we comb through Visual Studio looking for user model inconsistencies, questions such as this become very important. There is no automatic answer. If we leave things the way they are, then the Index and TOC navigation models will not be consistent with Windows and might confuse some users. However, now that we have shipped this behavior in two versions, it could be that people like this non-standard focus shifting model and find it beneficial.

The most important opinions on questions such as this is yours - the Visual Studio user.

Tell us what you think!

-Scott

How to fix Help Search in the March Community Technology Preview

2004-04-12T18:26:00Z

People who attended VSLive and the Mobile Devices Conference in San Francisco two weeks ago received a copy of the Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey) March Community Technology Preview. This Alpha release shipped with a configuration error that keeps local Help Search from working properly. I have posted an article here which explains how to fix this problem and enable local Help Search and F1 in this release. Note: this fix applies to the March Community Technology Preview only.

Fixing Help Search in the Visual Studio 2005 March 2004 Community Technology Preview Release

2004-04-12T18:21:00Z

The March 2004 CTP release of Whidbey shipped with a configuration error that keeps local help search from working correctly. Here is the necessary info to fix the problem and enable local help search and local F1 functionality. Note: Online F1 and Online Search are not working in this release. Online Search and F1 will be enabled in the next CPT release.

**This fix applies to the March 2004 Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey) Community Technology Preview Only.**

Create the file “OnlineProviders.xml“

Select the xml text below
Copy and paste it into Notepad
Save the file as “OnlineProviders.xml“

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xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema">1A8884D5-38C0-46f4-918A-DC4AAF8D50A5</ResourceId><Url xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema">http://www.aspalliance.com</Url><Name xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema">ASP Alliance</Name><Cultures xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema"><Culture>en</Culture></Cultures><Abstract xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema">Become an ASP Alliance columnist and share your knowledge with the developer community.</Abstract><Attribute Name="ResourceType" Value="WebSite" xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /><Attribute Name="CommunityType" Value="CodeWise" xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /><Attribute Name="Product" Value="VS" xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /><Attribute Name="ProductVers" Value="kbVS800" xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /></Resource><Resource><ResourceId xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema">328CDA79-180E-4257-B405-4B30F8034E27</ResourceId><Url xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema">http://www.developmentor.com</Url><Name xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema">developmentor</Name><Cultures 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.NET discussion forum, sign up for a newsletter or download cutting-edge resources about training and consulting.</Abstract><Attribute Name="ResourceType" Value="WebSite" xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /><Attribute Name="CommunityType" Value="CodeWise" xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /><Attribute Name="Product" Value="VS" xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /><Attribute Name="ProductVers" Value="kbVS800" xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /></Resource><Resource><ResourceId xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema">1E177E8A-05F0-4b0b-8FEA-C9C8B239CCA5</ResourceId><Url xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema">http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/howtobuy/</Url><Name xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema">How To Buy Visual Studio</Name><Cultures xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema"><Culture>en</Culture></Cultures><Abstract xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /><Attribute Name="ResourceType" Value="WebSite" xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /><Attribute Name="Product" Value="VS" xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /><Attribute Name="ProductVers" Value="kbVS800" xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /><Attribute Name="ResourceType" Value="PurchaseInfo" xmlns="urn:Resources-Schema" /></Resource></ArrayOfResource>

Copy the “OnlineProviders.xml” file to the proper locations

1. Copy the file OnlineProviders.xml to C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Help\OnlineProviders.xml
2. Copy the file OnlineProviders.xml to C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\MSDN\8.0\Help\OnlineProviders.xml
3. Open the Visual Studio IDE
4. Go to the Tools/Options/Help/Online dialog
5. Verify that "Use Online Help" is *unchecked*
6. Verify that only "Local Help" is checked in the Online Sources list.
7. Verify that only "Local Help" is checked in the Search Providers list.
8. Click <ok> to exit from the tools/options dialog.
9. Shut down and restart Visual Studio and/or MSDN.

Local Help search should now work properly. Online F1 and Online Search do not work in this release.

Please report any problems in Beta place or post questions here.

Have you tried the new help system in Whidbey?

2004-04-12T06:33:00Z

It's been about 2 weeks now since we gave out the March Community Tech Preview of Visual Studio 2005 (a.k.a Whidbey) release at VS Live and the Mobile Devices Conferences in San Francisco. How many people have installed the bits and tried the new Whidbey Help system?

-Scott

The Mariners win their first game of the 2004 season!

2004-04-12T06:17:00Z

You won't see me post a lot of non work related content to this Blog. But as a huge Seattle Mariners fan, I have to post a congratulations message to the Mariners for winning their first game of the 2004 season today against Oakland 9 to 4 in 10 innings. Yikes, going 0 and 5 is a scary way to start the season! Get all of the loosing out of your systems now...

Results of the screen resolution survey

2004-04-12T06:08:00Z

Wow, last week was a busy week! I spent the beginning of the week attending much of the annual MVP Summit. And Thursday and Friday catching up from the beginning of the week. It was great to talk to so many MVPs from around the world and get their feedback on the Whidbey product. Several people sent me email asking when I'd be responding to posts on my Blog. Sorry for taking so long to do this. I haven't forgotten about you all.

After two weeks of responses to the question of screen resolution, I have collected and summarized the results in this article.

In summary:

147 people posted responses about 247 monitor configurations.
That averages out to approximately 1.7 monitors per person.

The most common resolutions were: 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1024x768.

The most common monitor sizes were: 19”, 17”, 15”.

The next question is:

Multiple Monitors (a.k.a multi-mon). Are you using multiple monitors on the same machine?

A big Thank You to everyone who posts feedback! It's great to hear how people are using Visual Studio.