FYI: MSDN Doco Correction: System.Net.Mail AlternateView doc error...

mstehle — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 22:37:00 GMT

Ryan Rinaldi does a good job of pointing out an error in our MSDN documentation on the AlternateView class, part of System.Net.Mail. Our product documentation for the AlternateViews property in MSDN and in the SDK includes a sample for adding an HTML body to a MailMessage. The error is in the use of the AlternateView constructor…

AlternateView alternate = new AlternateView(body, MediaTypeNames.Text.Html);

While this use of the constructor does fit one of its signatures and the code will compile it is not correct in that the constructor is looking for a file path in the first string not the body text. In order to create an HTML AlternateView from an HTML string such as the body created in this example, use the static CreateAlternateViewFromString method as seen below…

AlternateView alternate = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(body, MediaTypeNames.Text.HTML);

…I wish it was as simple as firing up notepad and correcting the documentation but it isn’t. We will get this content corrected. I definitely appreciate Ryan and my customer for pointing out this error…

…NOTE: An important note about how Support Services works here at Microsoft as it relates to this issue. A customer brought this documentation error to my attention through a support case at Microsoft. Please note that in the case of reporting a bug with our products or documentation, you will be refunded any payment made to Microsoft for a support incident. If you are still hesitant to open a case for whatever reason please contact me using the email link or contact our newsgroups. We do listen and we do want to improve our products and their documentation…

FYI: System.Web.Mail is deprecated use System.Net.Mail

mstehle — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:22:00 GMT

While we are on the topic of System.Web.Mail, it is important to note a new namespace in version 2.0 of the .NET Framework. There is a brand new namespace for sending mail via managed code, it is called System.Net.Mail. Have no fear, System.Web.Mail is still accessible in v2.0 but it is deprecated. (Which means v2.0 won't break your code but you should strongly consider using System.Net.Mail in new development.) The documentation for System.Web.Mail is updated to reflect this.

This is more than an annoying namespace change. This is a reimplementation of the mail objects in .NET in order to seperate System.Net.Mail completely from CDOSYS therefore making it a completely managed solution. In the coming weeks I hope to investigate these new objects further, creating or linking to how-to's, and making sure to point out the major differences between the old and new objects.

...A great improvement of SNM over SWM is that there is not COM interop involved which should greatly improve performance. Additionally, SWM was merely a wrapper for CDOSYS and only exposed limited functionality available in CDOSYS. SNM is a complete implementation, I look forward to illustrating how to do things in SNM that weren't exposed by SWM. Stay tuned...

mstehle: The CDOs and CDONTS of Messaging Development : System.Net.Mail

FYI: MSDN Doco Correction: System.Net.Mail AlternateView doc error...

FYI: System.Web.Mail is deprecated use System.Net.Mail