Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 has a new help system/viewer, a clear harbinger of the demise of dexplore. You can see a video from the Library Experience Team on Channel 9 here: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/kmcgrath/Help-30-New-Help-System-in-Visual-Studio-2010/

If you''ve used the Lightweight Beta view on MSDN, the new browser-based viewer will look very familiar.

I encourage you to watch the video. It's a safe bet that we'll hook up the WDK docs to work in the new viewer in the near future.

One of the more interesting "features" is that the new viewer has no index. As Ryan states, the LEX team is considering options for bringing in an index, but that of course is no guarantee that this feature will be available.

Let me know what you think of the lightweight MSDN experience and of the features that Ryan describes in the video. I'm particularly interested in what you think of this sort of help viewer when compared to the venerable CHM technology. If you've had a chance to use the beta, how's the help viewer working for you? Which browser(s) have you tried it with?

Thanks,

Jim Travis -> Senior Content Publishing Manager ->  Microsoft Corporation

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