Paul Cornell : Developer Documentation

MSDN Developer Center Resources

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:52:00 GMT

All MSDN Developer Centers: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/aa937802.aspx

Some featured MSDN Developer Centers:

.NET Framework: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework
ASP.NET: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net
Office: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office
SharePoint Server: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint
Silverlight: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/silverlight
SQL Server: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver
Visual Basic: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic
Visual C#: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp
Visual C++: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualc
Visual Studio: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio
Visual Studio Team System: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem

Tables of Contents in Help Systems

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 05:48:00 GMT

Just curious: to what degree do you rely on Tables of Contents (TOCs) in computer Help and documentation systems that are either installed on your local compter or available through web-based assistance sites like MSDN? Please let me know in the comments.

Your Feedback Wanted to Improve Visual Studio Help

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 01:59:00 GMT

Last week, I asked several customers who were visiting Microsoft to give me some feedback on the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 documentation and the Visual Studio 2005 SDK documentation. I'd like to give you the opportunity to participate also -- simply add a comment to this blog post containing your responses. Here are the four questions that I asked them:

If you use Visual Studio 2005, if you could vote for only *two* of the following types of Help pages/topics for us to improve in the documentation for future Visual Studio versions, what would they be?

More "Getting Started" or "Essentials" pages
More "Guided Tour" pages
More "How To" pages
More end-to-end "Walkthrough" pages
Deeper architectural coverage
More "Best Practices" pages

If you use the Visual Studio 2005 SDK to customize or extend Visual Studio 2005, and if you could vote for only *four* of the following areas for us to improve the documentation in future Visual Studio SDK releases, what would they be?

VSPackages
Services
Menu and Toolbar Extensibility
Tool Window Extensibility
Project Extensibility
Language Integration
Editor Extensibility
Debugging Extensibility
Help Integration and Extensibility (including HelpStudio Lite docs)
Source Code Control Extensibility
Testing Solutions and Testing Extensibility
Data Designer Extensibility
System Definition Model (SDM) Extensibility
Solution Deployment
Team Foundation Server (TFS) Extensibility
Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA)
Domain-Specific Language (DSL) Tools

Is there anything in the Visual Studio 2005 Help or Visual Studio 2005 SDK Help that you really like and you want us to continue investing our time in for future Visual Studio versions?
If you could see just *one* thing added to, changed, or removed from the Visual Studio documentation or Visual Studio SDK documentation, what would it be?

-- Paul

------------------------------------
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Video Tutorials

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 08:23:00 GMT

I recently viewed the new Microsoft Office user interface video tutorial and the new Microsoft Expression video tutorials. I created a similar video tutorial myself (although not quite as professional as these) over a year ago demonstrating how to use Help in Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office.

I've been thinking recently about how my documentation team could go about creating video tutorials and including them in the Microsoft Visual Studio documentation that is included in the product and the corresponding documentation that also appears on the MSDN Web site.

There are some obvious issues with doing this. First, how can my team of mostly native English speakers translate these videos into multiple languages (both audio and user interface) for others around the world for whom English is not their primary language? Another issue is disk space, as these video file sizes could be very large. Another issue is accessibility: how can we accomodate those who have special vision or hearing needs or who can't see at all or hear at all?

I'd be interested in your comments and ideas about how we could approach this.

And while you're at it, what types of video tutorials would you be interested in? My team documents the core Visual Studio integrated development environment, MSBuild, and the Visual Studio SDK. Suggestions for video tutorials in these areas would be appreciated.

-- Paul

-----
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.