In Visual Studio .NET 2003, the default was for the help system to appear within Visual Studio.  We’ve changed it in Whidbey to appear externally from Visual Studio.  This is extremely useful for multi-monitor setups.

If you want to get the help system back inside Visual Studio, go to Tools – Options – Help – General, and use the “Show Help using:” combo box to select how you want to view the help system.  Unfortunately, you’ll have to relaunch Visual Studio for the changes to take effect.

Happy Visual Studio’ing!

In Beta2 dexplorer, you’ll notice in an Ask a Question button on the standard toolbar.  Clicking this button takes you to a page that searches the MSDN Forums. 

You can also use the “Check Question Status” button located next to the Ask a Question button to check the status of your MSDN Forum questions.

And the last button in the group "Send Feedback" takes you to the Product Feedback Center.

Happy Visual Studio’ing!

Once you have created a set of help doc and search favorites, you can now share them among friends or share them across machines.

In Visual Studio, go to Tools – Import / Export Settings, and choose Export.  On the Choose Settings to Export page, expand “Help Filters and Favorites” and select “Favorites”. 

You’ll notice the warning icon that you could reveal information about yourself (read: you’re about to share URLs), so you might want to export just that category to a file, and open it in Visual Studio (file – open – File) to preview.  The VsSetting files are xml files, so you can use the “Format Document” command (Edit – Advanced – Format Document or Ctrl+K, Ctrl+D in general profile) to make the vssetting file easily readable.

Happy Visual Studio’ing!

In Visual Studio .NET 2003, your help docs were saved to your IE Favorites.  In Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2, your help docs are now saved to their own VS Help Topics Favorites. 

To save a topic:

1. Bring up your favorite help topic in dexplorer
2. On the standard toolbar, click the button for “Add to Help Favorites” – right next to Help Favorites button that brings up the tool window
3. You can view your help topics in the Help Favorites tool window

To save a search:

1. Create a search query in dexplorer
2. On the standard toolbar, click the button for “Save Search” – right next to “Add to Help Favorites”
3. You can view your help topics in the Help Favorites tool window

In the Help Favorites tool window, you can reorder your favorites and rename them to more meaningful things, than just what you’re searching for.

Happy Visual Studio’ing!

In Beta 2, on the Search page, you can sort by the following:

• Rank
• Source
• Contains Code
• Locale

The Sort By combo box is located on the center of the page, just above the search results.  There’s also toolbar button next to it that allows you view in ascending and descending order.

Happy Visual Studio’ing!

This tip comes from Elona on the Visual Studio User Education team.

http://blogs.msdn.com/vstsue/archive/2005/05.aspx

Highlights

• Use the Index
• There’s still too much in the Index?  Use a filter
• Use the advanced search of your favorite search engine to search MSDN
• Once you find a topic you like, see what’s around it
• Ask a blogger

Happy Visual Studio’ing!

In Visual Studio 2005 Help Search page, you’ll see a list of search provides listed on the right-hand side.  You can adjust this list by going to Tools – Options – Help – Online.  You can choose who they are ordered, which Codezone Communities to use, and which search providers to use.

Happy Visual Studio’ing!

What is a VPAT?
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1998 provides strict accessibility standards that any technology must strive to meet before the U.S. federal government can consider purchasing it. As such, federal IT purchasers must conduct market research about a product before it can be adopted by their agency. A VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) provides purchasers with detailed information about a product to help them conduct their market research. Other customers in the IT industry, as well as foreign governments, have also adopted aspects of Section 508 into their purchasing requirements. For more information about Microsoft’s commitment to Section 508, please see http://www.microsoft.com/enable/microsoft/section508essay.aspx.

Why Beta 2?
Typically we wait until RTM to publish a VPAT for a product. However, for Visual Studio 2005 we wanted to push the envelope and make this VPAT available for Beta 2. Since there is a Go Live! license for Beta 2, the availability of the VPAT can help our field establish early-adopter wins based on Visual Studio 2005 – especially in the government sector, which represents a very large portion of Microsoft’s customer base. By having the Beta 2 VPAT available it also allows us to solicit feedback about our accessibility story in Visual Studio 2005 and gives us a chance to make fixes in the product, or clarifications in the VPAT document, based on that customer feedback

Where can i view the Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 VPAT?
http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/2/3/c23bc250-5f80-4d0c-a29d-877355ff91e8/Visual%20Studio%202005%20Beta%202%20VPAT.doc

Thanks Brian for making my writing sound so much better than it really is <grins>

Under Edit – Bookmarks, you’ll see a disabled “Add Task List Shortcut” menu item.  This menu item becomes available whenever the task list is opened (and you’re in a project). 

Bring up the Task List – View – Other Windows – Task List  (or Ctrl+\, Ctrl+T in general development profile).  Now you can use Ctrl+K, Ctrl+H (in the general development profile) to create a task list shortcut. 

In the task list, you’ll find your task list shortcuts under “shortcuts” in the drop down.

Happy Visual Studio’ing!

Under Tools – Options – Environment – Document, there are the following options

• Show Miscellaneous files in Solution Explorer
• <n> items saved in the Miscellaneous Files project

Show Miscellaneous files in Solution Explorer

This option allows you to keep track of other files you’ve opened that are not a part of the project / solution.  These files will be listed in Solution Explorer – so you can navigate to them easily

<n> items saved in the Miscellaneous Files project

This option keeps track of how many files to persist in the Miscellaneous Folder even if they are no longer open in an editor.  For example, suppose I have 10 miscellaneous files opened, and I have this option set to 5.  If I close all 10 files, the first 5 will still be shown in the Miscellaneous Files.

Happy Visual Studio’ing!