Visual Studio 2010 offline client help viewer

The Visual Studio “Help” team have been hard at work over the last several months since Visual Studio 2010 was released. Over the beta period prior to release and since the release, we have had a significant amount of feedback driving for a more familiar Help experience to what we shipped in previous versions of Visual Studio. To that end, we have been developing an offline client help viewer - similar in some respects to Document Explorer (Dexplore.exe) that shipped with previous versions of Visual Studio.

Jeff Braaten, Director of Program Management for the Library Experience team which owns the Visual Studio Help Experience, has drafted some blog posts that both tell the story of how we got to where we are today and highlight some of the changes that you should expect to see in SP1. Part 1 offers a behind-the-scenes look at the evolution of our new help system. Part 2 is an overview of the help experience delivered with Visual Studio 2010. Part 3 offers a sneak preview of changes coming to the help experience in Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Paul O’Rear, a Program Manager that owns the Partner Engagement story for the Library Experience team, has also drafted a blog post that outlines what the impact is for Visual Studio Industry Partners (VSIP).

In addition, both blogs point to a short video that Paul recorded which demonstrates the new features in the Help viewer that you can expect in SP1.

As always, the Library Experience team would very much welcome your feedback. You can feel free to send feedback either directly to Paul O’Rear (paorear@microsoft.com), the Help Feedback alias (hlpfdbk@microsoft.com), or to simply leave comments on the various blog posts.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Terry Clancy