How many times do you wish navigating the Table of Contents on http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/ was easier?  How should we expose the visualization of navigation a tree?  Is this even the right layout?  How does the user find common searches that might solve their problem?  How do we expose code snippets? 

What does the world look like when there a collision of Microsoft Virtual Earth and Microsoft .NET APIs?  There is ability to override tiles in Microsoft Virtual Earth, allowing any type of information visualization to occur.  Imagine this - you go to a web site with an image of your car - you can click into the car, zoom in/out, pan around, etc.  The first layer is the image of the entire vehicle.  As you zoom in, you see the parts of the vehicle.  Add mash-up data, and now you've got car parts...  Sure - there are lots of different controls out there that do this - but thats the point - why download another control to the user?  And of course, someone has to know how to use the control, add the data, etc.. etc..  Why isn't it easy?

So, instead of the automobile example - we are rendering APIs instead.  Here is a screenshot from a prototype,

The problem around navigating the table contents might not be solved but here is a different approach, which will be coming out soon on http://labs.msdn.microsoft.com/.  This information was presented at CSCW 2006, at the Mash-ups Workshop.  Here is a link to that presentation.

Help us build a better experience. In the upcoming weeks, we release a limited version of the application on our lab site. Send us comments through our blog.