Microsoft Answers NNTP Bridge support is ending

On February 25, 2011, the Microsoft Answers team is releasing a major upgrade to the web forums. This update addresses consumer, influencer, and business needs to enable a better experience for all.

Upon the initial release, there will be no integration with an NNTP reader. We deeply appreciate all contributions that have been made via the bridge in the past, and hope that you will continue to participate in Microsoft Answers through the website as we evaluate future integration with offline readers.

NNTP Bridge Handoff to Forum Platform Teams

Please read the following article on continued support and enhancement for the NNTP Bridges.

What is the NNTP Bridge?

The NNTP Bridge application serves as a channel that enables access for NNTP newsreaders to read and write content to Microsoft Forums. The NNTP Bridge is a custom implementation that understands sufficient NNTP protocol commands from supported NNTP newsreaders. It is not to be treated as a fully functional NNTP server.

In developing this application, our team's goal is to enable a way for our customers who want to participate in the Microsoft Forum communities, but do not yet find themselves comfortable with the transition from the newsreader interface to the Forums Web interface.

• The Microsoft Forums NNTP Bridge can be used to participate in MSDN, TechNet, Expression, and General Microsoft forums.
• The Microsoft Answers NNTP Bridge is no longer supported after Februrary 25, 2011. To participate in Microsoft Answers forums, please go to the Answers website.

We are delivering these NNTP Bridge applications to support the fundamental read and write capabilities only. You may find additional forum features and functionalities by using the Forums Web interface.

How should I use the NNTP Bridge?

As an end user, while you are still interacting with a NNTP newsreader, please read this section because our recommendation of the usage of the newsreader with the NNTP Bridge may differ from your personal taste.

Officially, we intend for the end user to use one of the following NNTP newsreaders to connect to the Bridge at a time: Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird, or Forte Agent. At the same time, our primary scenario is for the end user to subscribe to multiple forums that they wish to participate in, and sync new content for these forums (both headers and bodies) on a daily basis.

Secondarily, we realize that users may wish to download and locally store past forum contents. With the V1.1 release of the Bridge, we highly recommend the user to download both headers and bodies at the same time, rather than headers only. There are two reasons why we recommend so. First, the NNTP Bridge has built-in features to speed up downloading post bodies when they are fetched immediately after the headers. Secondly, localy caching only the headers may result in missing or mismatched data at a future point in time when you decide to download the bodies. This may be caused by moving posts as the Microsoft Forums are governed by diligent moderators.

Lastly, please read the Installation Guide available below.

Please following these instructions to sign up for the download.

Note: the Microsoft Answers forums no longer support the NNTP Bridge. The following instructions is to obtain the NNTP Bridge for MSDN, TechNet, and Expression forums only.

If this is your first time using Microsoft Connect, please follow the instruction steps in the guide "Screenshot Illustrations on Registration and Accessing Downloads" in the Articles section at the bottom of this page.

1. Sign in to Microsoft Connect by clicking on the "Sign In" link at the top right corner of this website.
2. Complete the registration process on Connect. If you have chosen a display name on Connect, then you are already a registered users. Otherwise, you can click on "Profile" link at the top right corner of the screen to begin the short registration process.
3. After you have registered, click here to sign up for the download. You only have to do this once.
4. Click "Download" link on the left navigation bar to retrieve the latest build of the NNTP Bridge. To participate in other forums including MSDN, TechNet, Expression, please download the Microsoft Forums NNTP Bridge.

Thank you for using the NNTP Bridge. It's our team's pleasure to be able to empower you to participate in Microsoft's forum communities!

Microsoft Forums NNTP Bridge Team