MSDN Library Home Mockup to Simplify Finding the Product Docs

The MSDN Library is the primary showcase of our Microsoft product documentation.  It’s a treasure trove of gems.  The problem is, if you don’t know where to look, sometimes finding the documentation you’re looking for can be a challenge.   Part of your success hinges on finding the right information, so let’s see what we can do about that.

I put together a mockup of the MSDN Library Home for the MSDN Library team as an example of one way to showcase some key starting points for some popular technologies on the MSDN Library Home.   Here is the model:

Category

Items

Cloud

Desktop

Games

Phone

Services

Web

Data

Here are some key points about the model:

  1. App Hubs / Pillars.  The model is organized around higher-level buckets: Cloud, Desktop, Games, Phone, Services, Web, and Data.
  2. Key Technologies.   The App Hubs/Pillars group key technologies.  For example, Cloud includes Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio.
  3. Home Page, API Reference, How Tos, and Walkthroughs.  Rather than exhaustive, it’s a focus on a subset of the content.  In this case, it’s optimized around helping you find the starting point in the product documentation as well as some of the most popular content, including the API reference and code samples.

Special Thanks …
Special thanks to the following people for helping me find the main starting points and put the frame together:  Alik Levin, Eric Peterson, Jesse Liberty, Joe Stagner, Jon Galloway, Paul Enfield, Pete Brown, Rey Bango, Rob Boucher, Sam Landstrom, Scott Hanselman, Tim Teebken, Wade Pickett 

If you have thoughts on the model, send my way.