The developer story: What's new, and why is it a .chm?

I wish I could change the title so it's in big bold bright letters like a Tide box. New! Content is live as part of our Windows Vista Developer Story. "Data: Search, Organize, Sharing" is the newest posting for the Developer Story. Be sure to send us feedback on the content you read there because we want to know how you're using the Developer Story.

Reader Stuart Ballard asked this morning why we post these docs as part of a .chm format, embedded within an .exe instead of publishing them out to the web through MSDN or another site. The short answer is that we'd like to do that but it will take longer. We, of course, have limited resources, and given a decision between publishing lots of content on a biweekly schedule with the requirement to download a .chm, or publihing a smaller amount of content through MSDN, we opted to ask you to get the .chm.

Stuart sets forth a good argument against the download - that it forces users to switch contexts (web browser to HTMLHelp Workshop, VS internal help to web browser), which is a minor inconvenience but an inconvenience nonetheless. We had an internal discussion about it, and my manager stated "I would agree with him. :-) and you can feel free to say that.

"The real story is that our internal production systems can support a number of formats (.CHM. .HXS, HTML to name a couple), We chose the one that was more expediant in getting the content out to our customers. And it has some things that are valuable: it is universally viewable, it is searchable and the toc's work etc. We will once this content is included in our SDK, then it will be available in HTML."

Does that make sense? Is there any way we can help you with this frustration?