The Windows Driver Kit (WDK) documentation for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 (SP1) includes the following features:

• Monthly documentation downloads available from Windows Hardware Developer Central (WHDC)
• Documentation topic filtering in Document Explorer
• Quick access to requirements information on reference topics
• Wiki for the WDK on Microsoft Development Network (MSDN) pages

Some of these features were released independently of the WDK documentation for Windows Server 2008.

Documentation Downloads on WHDC

The WDK documentation set is now separately published and updated monthly on the WHDC Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/DevTools/WDK/WDKdocs.mspx. This documentation set is the same as that published on MSDN each month. By using this download, you can view the WDK documentation locally without a continuous connection to the Internet.

Documentation Topic Filtering in Document Explorer

You can now use the Document Explorer viewer to filter the WDK documentation to view only the topics, index entries, or search results for specific categories.

To filter topics

1)      Click the Contents tab in the lower-left section of the Document Explorer window. In the Contents pane, click the drop-down box under Filtered by, and then click a content category. For example, to filter the installable file system (IFS) topics, click Installable file system drivers. 

2)      As you open nodes in the Windows Driver Kit tree, only those topics that correspond to the filter topic that you selected are displayed. To remove the filter, select (unfiltered) in the Filtered by drop-down box.

To filter index entries

1)      Click the Index tab in the lower-left section of the Document Explorer window. In the Index pane, type a text string that corresponds to the topic of interest.

2)      Next, click the drop-down box under Filtered by, and then click a content category. The topics that are listed correspond to the index text string and the content filter category. For example, to view only the Rtl topics from the IFS portion of the WDK, type Rtl as the index search string and select the Installable file system drivers filter category.

To filter search results

1)      Click Search on the toolbar, type your search string, and then click Search. Click Local Help on the Search tab to confine the results to the local WDK documentation.

2)      Next, click the WDK Documentation: All drop-down box and select or clear the appropriate content categories. For example, to filter the existing search results for just IFS topics, clear all check boxes except for Installable file system drivers. To return to the WDK Documentation: All state, either clear or select all of the content categories.

For additional information, see Filtering the WDK Documentation.

Quick Access to Requirements Information on Reference Topics

Reference topics for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista in Document Explorer have a new “!” button at the top of the topic to help you display information in the Requirements section quickly. The Requirements section can contain information about the following:

• The versions of Windows to which the reference topic applies
• The interrupt request level (IRQL)
• The header files in which the topic is defined
• The header files in which the topic is declared
• The library file that contains the routine described in the topic

For an example, see the topic titled “RtlDecompressBuffer.”

Wiki for the WDK on MSDN Pages

The WDK documentation set on MSDN features Wiki functionality so that driver developers outside of Microsoft can add their tips, tricks, and best practices to WDK topics. For each topic, a Community Content section at the end of the topic displays content that is submitted by the driver developer community. To add content to a topic, click the Add link.

For an example of a topic that has Wiki content, see IoBuildSynchronousFsdRequest.

For more information, see New Wiki.

Be aware that the MSDN Wiki is not the appropriate venue to provide feedback or report errors on a WDK documentation topic.

Joe Davies [MSFT]

WDK Writing Lead
http://blogs.msdn.com/wdkdocs
 
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.