How do you get version information to display in the VS 2010 help 1.1 search bar

Question

Hi all,

Implementing custom help in VS 2010 Help 1.1 and have a small problem with the search functionality. I have a help page called button, when I do a search for my button, it displays in the search results with its description, along with every other button referenced in the standard MS Libraries. The problem I have is that all the MS references have a version tag in italics displayed below their description. e.g. Version: .NET Framework 4 . Is there a meta tag that I can apply to my Button page so it will display my custom version information.

Thanks in advance,

Kevin 

Answer 1

Oh I see.. Ha! I have never noticed that they did this.

I have done similar with my H3Viewer app in the Index ambiguator results since you would get a list of identical words. MS do the same in their index results. 

 

If you look at the URL for each page you will see it contain a topic version number.

So that first button link contains &topicversion=85  ... This becomes "Windows SDK"

http://127.0.0.1:47873/help/1-8668/ms.help?method=page&id=VS|DIRECTX9_M|~\DIRECTX\REF\NS\MICROSOFT.DIRECTX.DIRECTINPUT\E\BUTTON\BUTTON.HTM&product=VS&productversion=100&locale=en-US&topiclocale=EN-US&topicversion=85&SQM=2

So the bad news is there is no way to define your own text. They have taken the most common numbers and hardwired some text.

You can see what the various version numbers mean on Jeff's blog page..

• http://thirdblogfromthesun.com/msdn-url-cheatsheet/
   

• vs.60	Visual Studio 6.0	n/a
  vs.71	Visual Studio .NET(2002/2003)	.NET Framework 1.0 / 1.1
  vs.80	Visual Studio 2005	.NET Framework 2.0
  vs.85	Windows SDK / Scripting	.NET Framework 3.0
  vs.89	VSTO (targeting Office 2003)	-
  vs.90	Visual Studio 2008	.NET Framework 3.5
  vs.91	WCF RIA Services	-
  vs.92	Windows Phone 7	-
  vs.93	MS Solver Foundation	-
  vs.95	-	Silverlight (Released)
  vs.96	-	Silverlight (Pre-release)
  vs.100	Visual Studio 2010	.NET Framework 4

 

Sifting through the viewer code (reflector) they seem to support these 7 hard wired codes (leaving others blank)

 

        internal static string topicVersion_VS_100

        internal static string topicVersion_VS_71

        internal static string topicVersion_VS_80

        internal static string topicVersion_VS_85

        internal static string topicVersion_VS_90

        internal static string topicVersion_VS_95

        internal static string topicVersion_VS_96

 

 

Suggest you do what Microsoft does. 

That is modify our title to include it's origin in brackets..

EG. The button class for office is declared like this. 

<title>Button Class (DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Office2010.CustomUI)</title>

They also include this tag.. But I think you will find that <title> is all you need to do.

<meta name="Title" content="Button Class (DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Office2010.CustomUI)"></meta>

 

Hope it helps

Rob

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Rob Chandler Help MVP http://Helpware.net/ http://mshcmigrate.helpmvp.com/

Answer 2

I'll ask one of the help team to comment in case I missed something.

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Rob Chandler Help MVP http://Helpware.net/ http://mshcmigrate.helpmvp.com/

Answer 3

Thanks Rob,

Will folow your suggestion re modifying the Title.

Cheers,

Kev

Answer 4

Rob's answers are correct. We are updating this in the next release to be more flexible. The version data to display will be retrieved from a 'DisplayVersion' attribute in the topics.

Sincerely,

Paul O'Rear

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

Answer 5

Thanks Paul for the helpful tip!

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Rob Chandler Help MVP http://Helpware.net/ http://mshcmigrate.helpmvp.com/