General re beginners help

[StrandElectric]

Hi all

Rather than pester you with questions that may seem inane, I do experiment
for a lengthy time and I try to use the help system. Unfortunately the 2008
Express I downloaded (to play with until I decide to buy) comes with its
help system very poor. Frequently, it tells me 'No help available for this
topic' or similar. I have already intimated that the MSDN references are too
deatils and abstract for me to understand. Is there some alternative?

 

[StrandElectric]

Am 13.01.2011 01:32, schrieb StrandElectric:

I don't think so. I was also using VB 2008 Express before buying the
Professional version. IIRC, I installed the full VS 2008 MSDN library that
was available as a separate download. It's still MSDN and you don't like
it that much, but in opposite to the Express help, it's complete.

....here it is: (2205 MB!)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...da-5062-4ebb-83c7-d3c5ff92a373&displaylang=en

I don't remember if it integrated into the VB 2008 Express system
so that context sensitive help is available. I guess you already
know that a not-context-sensitive version is also online:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa187919.aspx

We can be glad about the 2008 help system because 2010 help is a
catastrophe
IMO. (Why do they make every help system version worse??? HTML help is
still the best, honestly.)

Thanks Armin, but each reference seems to offer a choice of several
downloads so once again I am stumped! Why do MS make everything so
*complicated*?

 

[Cor]

Strand,

The help in Visual Studio is over engineered, in past we saw here often the
message from Armin as answer.

Use F1.

He stopped with that, the helps has now an help, how to use Help, which has
an help, how to use that one, which has an help how to use that one again.

It is impossible to tell to the Microsoft organization, that help has to be
something for finding things in a glance, it is detailed like you and me
don't want.

If they start optimizing it again, we get again an extra Help how to use
Help.

I use simply the MSDN website and its search engine, it is also bad because
it over filling with Data and it takes time to become used to it, but for
years the best I know.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx

If you use it then use keywords like "keyword" and "member" and more of
those that spares you to get all kind of blogs or other help pages.

Success

Cor




"StrandElectric" wrote in message
Hi all

Rather than pester you with questions that may seem inane, I do experiment
for a lengthy time and I try to use the help system. Unfortunately the 2008
Express I downloaded (to play with until I decide to buy) comes with its
help system very poor. Frequently, it tells me 'No help available for this
topic' or similar. I have already intimated that the MSDN references are too
deatils and abstract for me to understand. Is there some alternative?

 

[Armin Zingler]

Am 13.01.2011 07:11, schrieb StrandElectric:

Thanks Armin, but each reference seems to offer a choice of several
downloads so once again I am stumped! Why do MS make everything so
*complicated*?

I only see one 2205 MB download on the page. Looking at the size of
the other downloads (700 MB), it looks as they were meant to be burned
on a CD. And if a download is broken, you may not have to download
everything but only a part. A nice service that they also split it for
us.

 

[Nobody]

Thanks Armin, but each reference seems to offer a choice of several
downloads so once again I am stumped! Why do MS make everything so
*complicated*?

Download only the ISO file. You don't need to burn it on a DVD or have a DVD
drive, just download this freeware(the last one in the list of files to
download).

http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

This will create a virtual drive that points to the ISO file. You can also
right click the ISO file in WinZip/7-Zip, and extract the files as if it
were a ZIP file, but there is a possibility that the installer will complain
about the volume label.

 

[StrandElectric]

Am 13.01.2011 07:11, schrieb StrandElectric:


I only see one 2205 MB download on the page. Looking at the size of
the other downloads (700 MB), it looks as they were meant to be burned
on a CD. And if a download is broken, you may not have to download
everything but only a part. A nice service that they also split it for
us.

So what exctly do I do to make this help available while I am working in the
IDE, as it sensibly should

 

[Armin Zingler]

Am 13.01.2011 18:34, schrieb StrandElectric:

So what exctly do I do to make this help available while I am working in the
IDE, as it sensibly should

As I said, I don't remember if it integrates into VB Express.
If you want to try it:
1. Download the 2205 MB ISO image and do as "Nobody" described:

Either
2. Use "7-zip" (as I do) to extract the files from the ISO file.
3. Start the Setup.

- Or -
2. Burn the ISO image on a DVD. Use the "burn image" function.
Do NOT burn the image as a file.
3. Start the Setup from the burned DVD

- Or -
3. Install a virtual DVD drive
4. Insert the ISO image into the virtual drive
5. Start Setup

 

[mp]

[....]

So what exctly do I do to make this help available while I am working in
the IDE, as it sensibly should

Strand,
I can feel your pain. I wish i could remember exactly what steps I took
when I started with c# express.
I think you just have to install the help and the ide will find it.
There's also a setting in the ide for whether to do local help search or
also online searches.
Click on the help menu item in the ide.
after a half hour(just kidding - but it takes a long time)
the help window will appear
On the menu bar click Tools | Options |
The options dialog comes up.
in the left pane click the plus sign next to Help
select the online menu item
options appear for using local and or online help sources
a great addition is the Codezone community options
leads to lots of great info and tutorials

I find the online sometimes gives quicker help and lots more sources
one nice thing about the builtin help system is the "help favorites" to
bookmark pages for easy revisiting later.

also recently i asked a similar question...i could rarely find the answer i
wanted from help
someone recommended just googling the question
I've been amazed that even though it's not targeted to the exact ide and
language,
the pages that come up in google are almost always right on target and
faster than going through the painfully slow ide help system
..
You'll get both the msdn pages showing up as well as other wonderful forums
it also helps to find all these other forums out there also that I didn't
know about previously(lots of extra bookmarks)

good luck and keep at it!

mark
ps
it's so nice to see there's one person actually older than me here (61)
)))

 

[StrandElectric]

[....]

So what exctly do I do to make this help available while I am working in
the IDE, as it sensibly should

Strand,
I can feel your pain. I wish i could remember exactly what steps I took
when I started with c# express.
I think you just have to install the help and the ide will find it.
There's also a setting in the ide for whether to do local help search or
also online searches.
Click on the help menu item in the ide.
after a half hour(just kidding - but it takes a long time)
the help window will appear
On the menu bar click Tools | Options |
The options dialog comes up.
in the left pane click the plus sign next to Help
select the online menu item
options appear for using local and or online help sources
a great addition is the Codezone community options
leads to lots of great info and tutorials

I find the online sometimes gives quicker help and lots more sources
one nice thing about the builtin help system is the "help favorites" to
bookmark pages for easy revisiting later.

also recently i asked a similar question...i could rarely find the answer
i wanted from help
someone recommended just googling the question
I've been amazed that even though it's not targeted to the exact ide and
language,
the pages that come up in google are almost always right on target and
faster than going through the painfully slow ide help system
.
You'll get both the msdn pages showing up as well as other wonderful
forums
it also helps to find all these other forums out there also that I didn't
know about previously(lots of extra bookmarks)

good luck and keep at it!

mark
ps
it's so nice to see there's one person actually older than me here (61)
)))

Mark, I don't feel my age when I'm mowing the lawn, working on my Jaguar
XJ40 (including on my back under it (a tight queeze!)), quaffing wine,
writing my second book, doing on-line student support and writing
educational papers in another discipline (needless to say!), making merry
with my wife, making curries, coding in vb6, *some* coding in vb.net...
ONLY when trying to access vb.net help or understanding Armin or Cor's kind
attempts to help me!

I am also finding as suspected that although it may be 'correct' to lay a
thorough foundation and go into great abstract depth in vb.net, the way for
me is to struggle through coding an actual application (the business rules
in which I understand well), learning as I go. I've got a lot of it working
well now. I learn fast from simple specific answers such as produced by
Dennis. But thanks all who try to help me.