Introducing docs.microsoft.com • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing docs.microsoft.com

#31

Post by koyote » Wed, May 04, 2016, 9:46 AM UTC

I think the main issue with documentation for Microsoft products/APIs is that the content is spread out on a large number of different Microsoft domains which makes it inherently difficult to find something. I have also often found (after using google to find the relevant article) that the content is either out of date or not relevant anymore.

Adding yet another site to the list of sites which might or might not have up-to-date content is not going to fix that issue. What they need is a central, properly searchable and well-maintained repository that spans all of their products.

Re: Introducing docs.microsoft.com

#32

Post by dantiberian » Wed, May 04, 2016, 9:49 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #17

Are they going to fix the page load times? MSDN is terrible for click-wait-scroll usage, especially if you're trying to use the left navigation drilldown.

From the article:

> Fundamentals like site performance are a key feature and something many customers have asked us to improve on UserVoice. Page load time on docs.microsoft.com are between 50-300% faster in terms of load time and we are better geo-distributed than ever before. We’ve also built on an architecture that is running 100% on Azure.

Re: Introducing docs.microsoft.com

#33

Post by realusername » Wed, May 04, 2016, 9:51 AM UTC

cmrx64 wrote: post #25

foota wrote: post #19

Maybe I'm just losing my eyesight, but does anyone else find that font impossible to read?

I also find it hard on my eyes. Looks like it's "Segoe UI" embedded via web fonts. If you compare their screenshot: https://docs.microsoft.com/teamblog/content/images/2016/05/D... To one of mine: https://imgur.com/rFwTqUW It's not even close. Edit: Seems the "blog" portion is very different than the actual docs: https://imgur.com/YKvFxCh

Mine looks similar to yours but even a bit lighter than your screenshot, it's really totaly unredable even when selecting the text.

Re: Introducing docs.microsoft.com

#34

Post by mavhc » Wed, May 04, 2016, 9:53 AM UTC

Jedd wrote: post #20

At $DAY_JOB we have various document (or rather, knowledge) repositories -- a mostly-abandoned-but-still-useful-often-enough-to-not-ignore wiki, the obligatory but overwhelming salesforce, personal (silo) collections of email lists/archives, a semi-public knowledge base, a half-hearted attempt at moving internal mail lists into yammer, various product guides (PDF's), a public-access user forum, an LMS, and probably a…

Situation: There are 14 competing information stores.

14?! Ridiculous! We need to develop one universal store that covers everyone's use cases.

Situation: There are 15 competing information stores.

Re: Introducing docs.microsoft.com

#35

Post by Zekio » Wed, May 04, 2016, 9:58 AM UTC

dsfuoi wrote: post #12

So, will I have to login into something to read the docs now?

Not from I've seen, but you can login with a variety of accounts to comment.

Re: Introducing docs.microsoft.com

#36

Post by Zekio » Wed, May 04, 2016, 10:00 AM UTC

sz4kerto wrote: post #3

Oh no. It pops up a quick menu when I select text, like Medium. The problem is that I'm constantly selecting the lines I'm reading. :( Edit: Also, it's extremely narrow. On my 32" 4K display, 70% of the screen is empty. And the font is too think. And stuff keeps moving/jumping when I'm moving the mouse cursor. I want 1998 back.

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Re: Introducing docs.microsoft.com

#37

Post by Iv » Wed, May 04, 2016, 10:04 AM UTC

I am glad to see they acknowledge MSDN is bad. I fear they will make it worse but well, we'll see. Microsoft has been surprising these times.

Re: Introducing docs.microsoft.com

#38

Post by daemin » Wed, May 04, 2016, 10:07 AM UTC

sleepychu wrote: post #30

jimjimjim wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've given up completely on landscape for monitors. I've rotated my two monitors to portrait. It works for websites, but it's also ideal for programming (no more looking through a letter box at the code), reading documentation and pdf pages.

I wish this worked for games, I'd totally be a portrait user.

Just run the games in windowed mode and you can generally change the size to however big you want.

Re: Introducing docs.microsoft.com

#39

Post by codecamper » Wed, May 04, 2016, 10:09 AM UTC

anyone here around when msdn would send out 70+ cdroms only to replace them 3 or 6 months later?

Re: Introducing docs.microsoft.com

#40

Post by PakG1 » Wed, May 04, 2016, 10:22 AM UTC

pandler wrote: post #8

sz4kerto wrote: post #3

Oh no. It pops up a quick menu when I select text, like Medium. The problem is that I'm constantly selecting the lines I'm reading. :( Edit: Also, it's extremely narrow. On my 32" 4K display, 70% of the screen is empty. And the font is too think. And stuff keeps moving/jumping when I'm moving the mouse cursor. I want 1998 back.

> The problem is that I'm constantly selecting the lines I'm reading I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one! I compulsively select random blocks of text: select up, select down, repeat. I definitely get annoyed with the popup-menu-on-select feature of Medium, but I feel I can hardly blame Medium for my random, compulsive habit.

I used to do this. Switching to using a MacBook full-time fixed that habit for me. Even when I connect to a big monitor, I use a trackpad, not a mouse. Harder to compulsively highlight with that thing.