| User Feedback Posted: 23 Sep 2009 12:10 PM PDT Hello! My name is Joshua Baxter, and I am a programming writer on the Microsoft team that produces Help content for Visual C++. I am writing this article to explain how Microsoft collects and handles user feedback. User feedback is an important part of our documentation improvement program. We maintain over 33,000 topics about C++, and we receive an average of 350 comments from Help users every month. Not only does your feedback help us to improve the quality of existing documentation, it also helps us improve the quality of future documentation. Most of the feedback we receive comes from ratings and comments that users submit through the MSDN Web site. At the top right corner of every topic is a link that you can use to send us feedback. 
We encourage you to leave feedback that describes specific sections in the topic that are wrong, misleading, or confusing so that we can better understand how to fix the topic. Perhaps it goes without saying, but we cannot address generic comments ("bad topic", "needs work", "unclear"). Occasionally, we receive user feedback from other sources. For example, Microsoft MVP Joseph Newcomer maintains MSDN Documentation Errors and Omissions, which at present contains more than 400 issues. Although we also address this kind of feedback regularly, we encourage you to submit your feedback on the MSDN Web site so that it gets to us faster. When we receive feedback that a topic is inaccurate, we verify whether the concern is valid for both Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010. Verification might involve testing the reported inaccuracy by using a code sample or by contacting a member of the development team. If a concern is verified, we revise the documentation as appropriate. Sometimes the topic is actually technically accurate, but it requires clarification or additional information. Note: We do not maintain versions of the documentation that are earlier than Visual Studio 2008. If we receive feedback about earlier versions, we determine whether it also applies to Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010, and then revise the documentation for those versions as required. Although we address feedback and revise topics regularly, changes do not necessarily appear immediately on the MSDN Web site. All revised topics are reviewed to ensure technical accuracy, and this may take awhile. Also, topics may have to wait in the MSDN publishing queue until the next scheduled update, which occurs every few weeks. Again, we appreciate the feedback that we receive from our users. If you have feedback about a topic on the MSDN Web site, please click the feedback link at the top right corner of the topic and send us your comments.  |
| Adding ToArgb() to the Silverlight Color class Posted: 23 Sep 2009 01:19 PM PDT If you're using existing imaging libraries with your Silverlight applications, they often represent a Color from the System.Drawing world in the full framework as an integer. An ARGB value is a 32-bit integer with the byte-ordering of AARRGGBB. Using...( read more )...( read more)  |
| How to Share Workspaces in Blend 3 Posted: 23 Sep 2009 12:15 PM PDT Let me start with a disclaimer that this is not a fully supported feature in Blend 3. This post describes how to share the workspaces manually and by bravely editing the config file. Proceed with care or not at all. Adjusting and customizing workspaces...( read more )...( read more)  |
| Speaking on Designer/Developer workflow tools with Ryan Stewart on Oct 21 Posted: 22 Sep 2009 11:52 AM PDT Since its inception, the Seattle Interact group's goal has been to talk about designer and developer integration topics without a specific technology bias. The experiment has been interesting, but this October we are putting the idea to a true test. Ryan...( read more )...( read more)  |
| Intel and Microsoft Announce Collaboration to Provide Great Experiences for Atom Posted: 23 Sep 2009 11:24 AM PDT As a team we are committed to continuing to extend the platform and operating system support of Silverlight to reach the broadest set of customers possible. Today, Intel announced at IDF (Intel Developer Forum) support for Silverlight 3 on their Atom...( read more )...( read more)  |
| Advertising on the ASP.NET Web Site ? Posted: 23 Sep 2009 05:58 AM PDT We're spending a LOT of time planning a complete re-vamping of the www.ASP.NET web site. Recently I came across this comment in a blog entry discussing what Microsoft should do to improve the web site. The justification that the ads exist to offset the cost of running the site is indefensible for a company Microsoft's size. Though most folks don't care about the ads and many folks tell us they even find them useful, this is not the first time I've hear this. The last time I made a comment about the cost of running our little collection of web properties a "community member" with a healthy sense of entitlement basically called me a liar and demanded to see our accounting :) Some times folks don't want to hear it, or don't "get it" but Microsoft...( read more)  |
| Silverlight Cream for September 23, 2009 -- #698 Posted: 23 Sep 2009 06:40 AM PDT In this Issue: Mark Tucker , Silverlight Toys , Matthias Shapiro , qixing , Chris Klug From SilverlightCream.com : Hidden Object: Episode 4 – Adding Particles with a Behavior With a nod to Robby Ingebretsen, Mark Tucker adds shooting particles when an...( read more )...( read more)  |
| Microsoft, Zend and others announce Simple API for Cloud Application Services Posted: 23 Sep 2009 05:07 AM PDT Did you know Microsoft has a team in Developer Division that is specifically focused on Interop ?? Their latest coolness is a submission to Zend to add Azure support to their PHP Cloud Initiative. Click HERE to read a detailed blog post from the Interop Team. Read More......( read more)  |
| MultiBrowser or CrossBrowser Testing and deconstructing Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview Posted: 23 Sep 2009 02:02 AM PDT Cross-browser testing is a hassle. Most of the time you can follow standards and get a decent looking website working cross browser, but there's always variations. All browsers have their quirks and older IEs have more than their fair share. As I see it, there's basically three main pillars of cross-browser testing: Pros Cons Breadth ScreenShot Service Gets you screenshots of your site on a million browsers and platforms No interaction with the browsers, no way to debug interactions. Depth - Interaction Virtual Machines You really get to see how your site looks and works on many browsers. You have to maintain a bunch of Virtual Machines, or a be aware lot of browser installations. Depth - Look and Feel SuperPreview Lets you see...( read more)  |
| Lessons learned from my iPhone experiment Posted: 23 Sep 2009 12:25 AM PDT About once a year I need a new phone. Not because the old one dies, but I get bored and start looking for something new. This year was no different as I approached my one year of replacing my Treo 750 with a Treo Pro I was in search of a new device...( read more )...( read more)  |
| Overview Post for Web Deployment in VS 2010 Posted: 22 Sep 2009 11:05 PM PDT In past few months I and my team have written a few blog posts on VS 2010 Web Deployment features… In VS 2010 there was a lot of investment made in Web Deployment and over next few months I will be writing more on the subject… Every time someone asks me for a link to one of it I land up recommending them search keywords to find it on the web…:-) Instead of doing a search over and over again below is the list of all the posts for easy reference: Overview of Web Deployment with VS 2010 and IIS Web Packaging: Creating a Web Package using VS 2010 Web Packaging: Creating web packages using MSBuild Creating a Web Package using IIS Manager How does Web Deployment with VS 10 & MSDeploy Work? Installing Web Packages using Command Line Importing...( read more)  |
| Silverlight Cream for September 22, 2009 -- #697 Posted: 22 Sep 2009 01:29 PM PDT In this Issue: Mark Tucker , Fredrik Normén , Silverlight Toys , Nikhil Kothari , David Poll , Terence Tsang , and Bea Stollnitz . Shoutouts: If you had trouble with the SilverlightSpy site, it's back up now, so go get a copy to try! From SilverlightCream...( read more )...( read more)  |
