Visual Studio 2010 offline help experience is inferior to the Visual Studio 2008 offline help experience by Eric in NL

Hello Eric & Maximilian,
Thank you for your supportive comments! We do have a team committed to continue to develop the offline help experience. We currently do not have any plans to ship another update between now and the next version of VS. I wouldn't rule that out as a possibility, but it's probably not likely.

Maximilian - thank you for suggestions. I'm not sure whether we'll be able to address all of those in the next planned release at this time, but I will add them to the backlog. I'd like to follow up with you more regarding your comment about the System.* namespaces. At this time we are closing out the Connect bugs in this particular database as focus has switched primarily to Dev11 at this time. If you could contact me via my blog below I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

Sincerely,
Paul O'Rear
http://blogs.msdn.com/TheHelpGuy

The new Help Viewer is great! Thanks for bringing it back. The navigation is responsive, the index is great (welcome back!), the content is displayed responsively as well, the Sync ToC feature is fast, and in overall I feel it's lot snappier than previous Help Viewer in VS2008.

Still however, I do have some suggestions:
- There should be option to disable splash screen. I personally don't think it's necessarily shown.
- I think the Search feature should preferably return class/struct/interface items first before their related members (methods, event, fields, properties, etc.). For example, if I search CommandManager (in WPF), the CommanManager class returned in the result as sixth position when it should be in first position.
- There should a Search feature in History and Favorites to filter things out. It would be especially helpful when the list is so long.
- .NET Framework Class Libray in navigation pane seems to have been reordered to have System.* namespaces displayed first. However, in the content pane, System.* namespaces still being put at the bottom of the page. Thus, I think they both should be displayed in a consistent manner.
- The font in Navigation pane and some other UI areas (such as Options window, toolbar, etc.) look blurry. I've reported it in a separate Connect report (https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/643028/additional-vs2010-font-rendering-issue), but I'd just like to re-point it out here.
- I agree with Eric in NL that this should be continuously and actively developed over time.

So, thanks again and I really appreciate MS effort on this.

The SP1 help viewer is definitely a big step forward, but I hope that it will continue to be actively developed. In its current state, it still doesn't live up to the usability standard set by dexplorer. Can we expect more improvements for SP1 RTM? Can we expect an interim update before dev11?

Hello AlLomax - please try out the VS 2010 SP1 Beta (or wait for the official release shortly). It contains a local help viewer with Content and Index support. Back in October we posted the following:

We have just posted a short video and a series of blog posts regarding how we got to where we are today, and what we're planning to ship in SP1 in response to many of the concerns that have raised on this bug and elsewhere. You can find the blog posts and video here:

Complete Story:
http://thirdblogfromthesun.com/2010/10/the-story-of-help-in-visual-studio-2010/

SP1 specific updates:
http://thirdblogfromthesun.com/2010/10/the-story-of-help-in-visual-studio-2010-part-3/

VSIP Partner related:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/thehelpguy/archive/2010/10/27/help-viewer-1-1-preview-video.aspx

Video only:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/gg288980.aspx

Sincerely,
Paul O'Rear
Library Experience
http://blogs.msdn.com/TheHelpGuy

I have to agree with Eric here. I've struggled to both use and like the help system in VS2010.

It needs a decent indexing system. The search facility is sporadic in returning the stuff you were really looking for. It also needs a decent contents list as others have suggested. Sorry, but I have to give it a thumbs down.

Hello Eric,

Thank you for your feedback. You're right that C++/CLI F1 Help doesn't resolve the string to its full resolution, therefore gets poor hits in the topics. In our future release, we are planning to make C++/CLI F1 Help on par with native C++ from the editor.

Thanks,
Ulzii Luvsanbat
Windows C++ Team

I would like a bit of clarification on how well the upcoming F1 help system will integrate with C++/CLI. At the moment, it appears to be a simple text search which is next to useless. I have seen (and commented on) the channel 9 video (http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/kmcgrath/Microsoft-Help-Viewer-Updates-Planned-for-Visual-Studio-SP1), and the new version of the help system looks quite a positive move in the right direction. We just need that little bit more support for C++/CLI - it doesn't need to be full intellisense driven, just a bit more context aware.

One thing I've noticed w/ the new VS2010 help is that many of the links are either incorrect (wrong context) or outright broken. For example, I was trying to get help on MIDL keywords, and the VS2010 help kept linking me to help for C++ keywords, whereas the VS2008 help was correct. At this point I've pretty much given up trying to use the VS2010 help, and am instead reverting back to the VS2008 help because it was so much more useful. :-(

We have just posted a short video and a series of blog posts regarding how we got to where we are today, and what we're planning to ship in SP1 in response to many of the concerns that have raised on this bug and elsewhere. You can find the blog posts and video here:

Complete Story:
http://thirdblogfromthesun.com/2010/10/the-story-of-help-in-visual-studio-2010/

SP1 specific updates:
http://thirdblogfromthesun.com/2010/10/the-story-of-help-in-visual-studio-2010-part-3/

VSIP Partner related:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/thehelpguy/archive/2010/10/27/help-viewer-1-1-preview-video.aspx

Video only:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/gg288980.aspx

We'd love to hear your feedback!

Sincerely,
Paul O'Rear
Library Experience
http://blogs.msdn.com/TheHelpGuy

Here's a simple test that anyone can try at home!

I was trying to recall if &= could be used for logical bool assignment so I did a search on &= in online help.
Nowhere in the first 120 results was there any mention of &= and I decided I didn't really want to look through all nineteen million results so I went to VS2008 help and via the index went straight to &=.

I did get this really helpful information though: "Results 101-120 of about 19,300,000 for: &= (0.3 seconds)"

Search is not a solution for technical documentation. We don't need nineteen million results in 0.3 seconds, we just need one correct result, or an index that gets us to the right neighborhood, and search cannot do that.

The help / development documentation in VS 2008 and earlier was great. I could find everything quickly. I could filter by the development language (C++, C#, etc.). This new documentation is horrible. I can't find a damn thing!

Thanks again to the many contributors on this thread. Many of the issues mentioned throughout have been taken very seriously and we are looking at addressing them as part of our SP1 release. Thank you for your feedback - keep it coming!

Sincerely,
Paul O'Rear
Library Experience
http://blogs.msdn.com/TheHelpGuy

I just want to echo all the other comments here. The Index and collapsible TOC are absolute must-haves in the help system. And there is absolutely no reason the offline help should be run in a web browser. Those of us who use offline help do it for the speed, ease of navigation, and Visual Studio integration. Those are things that are best handled in an offline viewer. If I want an online experience, I'll stick to navigating with google...

Help is absolutely horrid, in every way. Without Rob Chandler, we'd be nowhere. Simple as that.

Agree: the help system is poor, compared to VS 2008
And yes: consistency between ofline and online is a big mistake, expecially when it means to tear down ofline so that it can appear as worse (on usability) as online.
Also bring back *Dynamic Help*

Amen to all the previous comments.

I'm also sorely missing "Print Topic" and "Print Topic and Subtopics".

I cannot believe how bad the help system is with VS 2010 - it is basically useless, even with the power tool. I am leaving VS 2008 installed and will use that, other than just using google.

Please bring back the VS2008 and previous style help system!

I definitely miss the index. It was without doubt my primary method of help access.

I much preferred the internal help viewer, it was faster and convienent.

I have known for sometime that the reason I don't care for on-line help is the loss of browsing and accidental finds that one experiences with a book. However, I noticed recently that the Amazon suggestions, references to what others browsed/purchased, and comments provide much of the book browsing experience. I'm not sure how this would appear in a help system, but if you can figure it out I think it improve the experience greatly.

In the meantime, I have to vote with the others who ask for the old system back.

Please bring back some level of sanity to the offline help experience. At the moment it is still a mess, despite the power tool.

What a bad help system in vs 2010!

Bring back the VS 2008 Help System. Even the so-called "Power Tool" is out of question.

There's nothing more to say, everything's been said here.

Very well said Barry. I hope DevDiv recognizes the value of your suggestions.

To my former friends and collegues at Microsoft,
There are three things that a good help system should provide 1. Tutorial, 2. Reference, and 3. Background.

1. Tutorial: Includes the "How to" and Sample information, and you do a fair job with that, although your quality bar is not as high as it could be, especially when it comes to accuracy, completeness, and clarity (IMHO of course). One suggestion: don't hire burned out C developers to write VB and C# samples.

2. Reference: Index, Index, Index. Rather than memorize all language syntax details (that go beyond intellisense) most developers rely on the ability to go directly to specific API documentation. What bright bulb thought it was a good idea to leave this out? Reference also includes a collapsible table of contents that is easy to navigate to get directly to a specific area and to get a "high level" view of the available information. Most importantly, reference material is not tutorial or background. It should be scannable with exemplary samples that add clarity (not obfuscate), and not samples linked from elsewhere just because they happen to contain the particular API. Reference should also include clear descriptions (and prferably examples) of all parameters and their required arguments. In general, tables and bulleted lists are better than paragraphs for reference material.

3. Background: This is the information that describes the "intent" of an API (where, when to use it, what it's for etc). This has always been an overlooked part of the documentation, although I know from working with them that there are (or used to be) many smart people in UE who had great ideas for incorporating this information and providing context to get to it. Burried in there somewhere are bits and pieces of background information but most of this must come from outside sources and the few good books on the market.

If I've missed something and your real goal is to increase the barriers to adoption and access to Microsoft technologies, then ignore all of this and keep doing what your're doing.

One final thought. Recognize that the product is not complete until its documentation is complete. Change the SDLC to put Documentation at the final phase before RTM and put the dev teams to work fixing bugs and building samples for the last few weeks after the code is golden and while the help system is completed. Your customers will appreciate it.

Thanks to WHawke for the link http://mshcmigrate.helpmvp.com/viewer
2010... and no usable helpviewer available from microsoft!
The current VS2010 HTML-Help-Viewer is like the java help viewer I have used 10 years ago....

Just bring back the old and good help explorer!!!!!

Please also bring back Dynamic Help, an invaluable tool for my developement. Hopefully it will be included in VS 2010sp1, so I can upgrade from 2008, if not then maybe sp2? I never use the online help as it is too clunky, always use offline. Even now the F1 help does not function, cant F1 in code and get help on which I have selected, just general window. So, 2008 will still be my developement IDE.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Web browser only help is absolutely terrible! PLEASE bring back the old help viewer. I cannot believe that MS is taking such a step backwards. You know, back in 1990's I used JavaDoc which was all web browser based and I HATED IT. This *new* help is just the same, 10+ year old technology.

A help viewer "power tool" is not the answer. You cannot release BARE MINIMUM features in a "power tool" and pat yourself on the back. Whoever designed this "new" version of help should be ashamed of their work.

Seriously -- who wants a consistent experience between online and offline? NO ONE!!!! Don't you get it? The whole point of offline is that you don't need to use the web browser. The local/offline help viewer is able to be way better than the online one and it should be.

Its never too late to turn back. Please bring the "new" help viewer to AT LEAST parity with the old version. This is a minimum requirement for any product re-write. Please, PLEASE!!!

Could the next major release please just bring back Document Explorer?

Thank you everyone for your comments. The keyword index is definitely in process to be included as part of our upcoming SP1 release. In the meantime we are continuing to collect feedback both on the Help Viewer in the VS 2010 RTM release as well as on the Help Viewer Power Tool releases to help guide our efforts.

Regarding Eric's original comments, I don't believe we will be able to address all of your concerns in the VS 2010 timeframe as we will need to mostly allocate our resources for the next major release. However, I will keep this bug open for the time being if anyone would like to contribute more feedback.

Sincerely,
Paul O'Rear
Library Experience (LEX)
http://blogs.msdn.com/TheHelpGuy

Another important point is that the content mixes: if one installs the references for the .Net Framework 4.0, .Net Framework 3.5 and Silverlight together, it can happen that the table of contents shows as many as three entries with the same title, but only one parent (e.g. .Net Framework 4.0, even though all three versions of a class are shown).

There is no indication whatsoever in the table of contents to help one decide which is which, and it is very difficult to decide this from the content of the help topic itself, too.

thanks for the "power tools", even which is not so powerful.

I have tried it but found that the results for the same word are different with traditional document explorer.

We have used it for years, so we are familiar with what should appear when typing a word.

I'm not sure whether it's too rigit that to ask for the whole traditional experience of INDEX.

But if you respect our work experience and user experience, please try to bring it back, Thanks !

The new VS 2010 help system is horrible. The new "power" viewer is only slightly better.

I would like to see MS provide an extension for VS 2010 which can provide the functionality that was available in 2008.

* Provide real IDE integration so help can be viewed in the IDE alongside code
* Provide a fast and filterable help index that can be placed within any of the ide's tab groups
* View help content within the IDE

Also:
- No + expansion marks display beside topics, so you can't tell which ones can be expanded
- Only the current topic tree is shown, so you can't see where else content exists
- Impossible to navigate TOC with keyboard, because merely navigating to certain entries causes them to activate
- No keyboard shortcuts for jumping to tabs or panes
- Moving back via Ctrl+Left doesn't work if you've jumped from an index entry
- Once you've typed in the index search, there's no easy way to reset it to show all entries
- You can't see adjacent index entries to catch the right name if you've misspelled the prefix
- Consumes more memory (50MB + 50MB for agent + viewer, vs ~40MB for dexplore.exe)

I agree that the current power tool beta is still not a sufficient substitute for the previous help system.

Thank you for your feedback, we are currently reviewing the issue you have submitted. If this issue is urgent, please contact support directly(http://support.microsoft.com)