hari's WebLog

Keep with the idea of responsive. Traditionally there have been major issues with the SDK viewer and quickly pulling up information. In general the problem I can be classified in the following user case:

Index: Find: ToString

Now in this case I'm looking for a particular ToString, so I could have typed DateTime.ToString and gotten there, but when I accidentally make the mistake of doing this today, what I get is a non-responsive UI while the search results pane is loading.

Ideally this would be a really responsive asynchronouslly loaded pane so that as parts start jumping in I can start scrolling through to look for them. Or I can realize I did the wrong darn thing and go back to type in DateTime.ToString.

I generally use the Index feature a lot over the full search engine, so this is where the major optimizations would need to be in my perspective.

In regards to Intuitive, you really need to make sure all input fields have a shortcut focus key to get there. I often find myself using my mouse to nagivate the SDK. Here is an example:

Contents - MouseClick to Index - MouseClick to LookFor (I could Alt+L to get there, but intuitively this control should always get focus by default, but instead the filter drop down gets focus sometimes, doh) - Find a Topic - Click on the Topic - Wait for the Index Results to load and the help pane to load with my help - Sync Contents so I can go look at that branch.

What this describes is a method for finding a class based on a known method name, but where you might not know the class name or namespace. The same thing happens when you do know the class, but are working with one of it's methods and you need to quickly get Contents access so you can navigate the document tree.

For me intuitive and adaptive means that the UI will notify me of hot-keys and have hot-keys for all changes to the UI I could also do with the mouse, while still adapting to basic things like auto-syncing the contents pane for me (user settable?) or allowing me to work only within specific namespaces (sub-indexed view of the entire documentation set) and the ability to have multiple help views active so I can quickly jump between them. (most often I'm doing WinForms stuff so I have one copy of the Help SDK Viewer open to WinForms contents with stuff expanded, with another copy open for something like System.IO so I don't have to worry about screwing up my Contents window too badly).

Darnit, do some user testing!