VS 2005 Help, SQL 2005 Help,and .NET 2.0 Help is very UNhelpful and poorly tested.....completely CRA

[dret]

Have any of you really used the Help of SQL2005, VS 2005 and .NET 2.0? It's
a different interface but I still can't find what I want. Lots of
properties and methods name but hardly any explanation or examples.....
The REMARKS section is buried somewhere in the middle and you have to train
yourself to look for it.

Trying to get to a contructor or overload method is completely confusing .

Furthermore, the SQL 2005 Help completely SUCKS... Because of the addition
of the CLR in SQL Server when you do a help for something, your search
results are interwoven with .NET CLR stuff instead of more Transact -
SQL....and SQL Server 2000

Secondly if you attempt to filter it, you get essentially no results....not
to mention you have uncheck a dozen boxes just to get there..and it's only
for one search...say if you close the window...you AGAIN have to do this...

This is really bad.....


------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are an MVP and want to defend this new Help....think twice before
trying to say something nice about it in order to get noticed by Microsoft
so you can get hired by them as a "yes" man programmer. If you are always
going to close your eyes to the truth...why not try the marketing
department? you are obviously not a good enough programmer to get a job or
keep a job anyway and that's why you have all this time to be an MVP....

 

[Christopher Reed]

While I have only dealt with the VS 2005 using the Express products,
overall, I like some of the changes that have been made. For the most part,
the organization is different and takes some getting used to.

Now, so that you don't take me for a Kool-Aid drinker, I will say that
filtering has always been difficult to get it to work the way that's
intuitive; the VS 2005 help when installed with the Express products can be
very unpredictable about what you get (when installing VWD Express on one
computer, it also installed with VB 2005 help even though I never installed
VB 2005); and the navigation is still goofy to the point where if you use
the links within the articles that it turns off the navigation altogether.
An additional point about the navigation is that the next and previous
toolbar buttons are not there by default, so I had to add them. I also have
been frustrated by the language boxes, but this has been a problem even with
the last help system.

With the above said, overall, I truly like the new look of the Help system.
Personally, I would recommend that you spend more time with it and try to
adjust to the changes. It can be frustrating at first, especially since
it's different, but eventually, long term use should make easier to get
around.

As for your MVP comment, if you have to write that along with complaining
about a new help system that's not ever 6 months old in production usage,
maybe you need to look into the mirror first when looking for programmers
who are not good enough. Personally, I think the first rule of good
programming is flexibility and the second is having an open mind to
change...but that's only my opinion. (No, I'm not an MVP....yet.)

Moving forward, I would suggest that you look at the .NET SDK documentation.
I have used this extensively with 1.x and as well with 2.0. While I'm still
getting used to the new outline for 2.0, I have found it to be very helpful,
even more so when compared to the 1.x SDK. (I think the examples have
improved from version to version.)

 

[dret]

Nonsense....Microsoft had 3+ years to make changes and do Quality Assurance
and all this work results in a,
"It takes a little to get used to?"

Did Google Search or Maps take a little to get used to? No.

MS Help and Search is not working as it seems NO one really used it to
actually get some real programming work done.

SUGGESTION to MICROSOFT:
Before you write another overload method, or add another property, or add
anytyhing else for that matter to HELP, why not add an example or even 2 or
3 for each method and EXPLAIN IN DETAIL why you had to have another overload
method to begin with? Like what is the history and problem to be solved for
this method....

Heck, you should go back and do it for every overload method in Help to
begin with.

A lot of the search results start of with Win CE!!!!! Come on, what is the
percentage of people who need that to come up with that at the top of the
all the search results!!!!

 

[Frans Bouma [C# MVP]]

Have any of you really used the Help of SQL2005, VS 2005 and .NET
2.0? It's a different interface but I still can't find what I want.
Lots of properties and methods name but hardly any explanation or
examples..... The REMARKS section is buried somewhere in the middle
and you have to train yourself to look for it.

Trying to get to a contructor or overload method is completely
confusing .

Furthermore, the SQL 2005 Help completely SUCKS... Because of the
addition of the CLR in SQL Server when you do a help for something,
your search results are interwoven with .NET CLR stuff instead of
more Transact - SQL....and SQL Server 2000

Secondly if you attempt to filter it, you get essentially no
results....not to mention you have uncheck a dozen boxes just to get
there..and it's only for one search...say if you close the
window...you AGAIN have to do this...

This is really bad.....

----------------------------------------------------------------------
-- If you are an MVP and want to defend this new Help....think twice
before trying to say something nice about it in order to get noticed
by Microsoft so you can get hired by them as a "yes" man programmer.
If you are always going to close your eyes to the truth...why not try
the marketing department? you are obviously not a good enough
programmer to get a job or keep a job anyway and that's why you have
all this time to be an MVP....

First: anyone who thinks I say something because it will get me
freebees or a contract is stupid and should read up.

Second: the last paragraph didn't help you. Apparently you have
something against MVPs.

Third: I think the new help is better in the examples/explanations
department and worse in the search department. There are more examples
(or I should actually say: useful examples) and more explanations,
however some interfaces/methods/properties have no documentation except
1 sentence which is pretty lame and I agree with that.

The search in the help now is simply useless. I regularly get 500 hits
and I can't sort them on section / source nor can I quickly browse
through them like in previous versions. Also, the search always does an
OR search for me, I can't search with multiple terms and want all to be
in the articles found... incredible how this could have passed QA.

One mitigating factor: the index is good so it's often not needed to
search, and if you have to search, there's always google.

I'm thinking of filing a bug report about the search in vs.net as it's
useless.

What also bugs me is the slowness of the help when you first open it
in vs.net. Every session it has to do a lot of disk activity before the
darn index is visualized (20-30 seconds, and that on my raid 0 scsi
system) After that it's fast but the next day, same problem.

FB

--

 

[Frans Bouma [C# MVP]]

The search in the help now is simply useless. I regularly get 500
hits and I can't sort them on section / source nor can I quickly
browse through them like in previous versions. Also, the search
always does an OR search for me, I can't search with multiple terms
and want all to be in the articles found... incredible how this could
have passed QA.

I found a way to turn off the abstracts, yay! this now gives the view
I wanted with 100 results on one page. it now also does AND searches if
I specify AND, though not with a string with a space (a AND "foo bar" )

FB

--