How can the "help" be sooo broken in VS2008? Congratulations's you have lost a developer who started with VS4!

Question

Congratulations, you have succeded in breaking the help in VS2008 sooo badly I had to return to 2005 (and it's help is pretty broken too but at least I can get work done)

1) takes forever - faster to use google - but I miss my F1
2) filters for C++ do not filter, get uselesss stuff for other things like C#, etc
3) seaching for simple things fail:
        namespace: fails all together
        struct: get C# and other stuff, despite C++ only filter settings
        CPoint: - fails..and it's your own legacy MFC class!
4) Can't work offline even with MSDN installed - some of us have to work off-line on a regular basis you know.

Oh, and don't get me started on crashes of VS, the find being slower than a check in the mail, and the class designer still not working for C++

It is obvious you no longer want to support those of us using C++, but you could at least have left it no more broken than it already was...

I had considered a move to C#, but with the crappy product in VS2008 I'll be damend if i want to bother.

How the hell does your own programmers manage to get any work done with the ____ you sell ?
I guess they don't have to eat their own dogfood.

Once this project is done I'm switching away from your environment / product all together - just glad I told my boss we should wait and see on purchasing Team Edition for the team!

(yes, everything is up-dated, service pack 1 etc)


    A disgruntled, formerly loyal, customer who finally was wise eough to walk away.

Answer 1

I guess languages like C# have been the focus. From what you are saying maybe C needs more
attention? I've been using C# only and have been delighted with the improvements in intellisense etc.

VS Help - We are all frustrated with it. We all use Google instead. I don't usually speak for others but
in this case I think I'm pretty safe. MS know the situation and have formed a new help team with
the purpose of the replacing the current VS help. Hopefully we will see that in a future VS version ...
Something simple and fast that is actually helpful :-)
http://www.helpmvp.com/webblog
Rob

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Rob Chandler http://Helpware.net

Answer 2

Thanks Rob - interesting, but too little too late I think.
If they fix it as fast as Class Designer for C++ (5 years and counting I think) I'll be retired before "F1" works.

CK

Answer 3

Sorry to hear about your experience. Could you please elaborate on 4) - inability to work with MSDN in the offline mode?

Thanks
Maria

Answer 4

Sure Maria...going from memory (since I uninstalled 2008)

Changed help setting so only local, not on-line search
 (for 2005 it's in the help viewer, Tools | Option, help-online stub, i changed "when loading help content" radio to try local not online)
 
At this point highlighting command in code and pressing F1 gave no results at all - not even useless / irellevant non-C++ ones like before. I do not recall, but it may have worked (badly - but some results atleast) if i searched from within the help viewer...but if I have to open an application, and type command to search for...I'll open google and get relevant answers instead.

CK

Answer 5

 i just upgraded help to SP1 and the number of broken links is ridiculous.  i have no idea what went wrong.

any ideas?

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Duane Douglas, MCAD | Please mark the post(s) that answered your question.