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A comment on Introducing docs.microsoft.com.

Re:Introducing docs.microsoft.com by koyote on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @05:46AM (#11627243)
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 I have also often found (after using google to find the relevant article) that the content is either out of date or not relevant anymore.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.

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Re:Introducing docs.microsoft.com by pionar on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @07:04AM (#11627490)
Depending on what you're looking for, there's usually only two you need: MSDN[0] and TechNet[1].

[0] https://msdn.microsoft.com/library [1] https://technet.microsoft.com/library/default.aspx

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Re:Introducing docs.microsoft.com by runako on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @09:38AM (#11628201)
You confirm the problem in your response:

"usually"

"only two"

That means that Google.com is still needed as the front-end to MS documentation. Ergo, it doesn't matter how many domains they use to host their documentation.

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Re:Introducing docs.microsoft.com by mistermann on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @12:44PM (#11629597)
Not to mention search on MS sites essentially doesn't work (unless something has changed).
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Re:Introducing docs.microsoft.com by 1wd on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @07:04AM (#11627492)
Agree. Actually I'd already be happy if they stopped moving stuff around for no reason. I get "This object has moved" or worse "This object no longer exists" or just a redirect to some generic "Download Windows 10" page all the time on Microsoft documentation sites. :(
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Re:Introducing docs.microsoft.com by danfernandez on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @04:30PM (#11631505)
[Disclosure: I work for the team that built docs.microsoft.com]

Thanks, this is great feedback and something we totally agree and want to fix. We recently created a redirection service, which historically did not exist on MSDN/TechNet so that when content moves, we can properly 301 redirect content to the correct place. This will help for net new content that moves, but as you correctly point out, we still have a lot of work to do for existing content.

Thanks again for the feedback!

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