Redirection page has moved



  • I guess correcting the redirection or redirecting server-side was too complicated.

     

    Yeah, I know this kind of thing happens, but I wouldn't pass an opportunity for some sweet MS-bashing.  :)



  • Works like a charm, yo.

    Bash attack unsuccessful! 



  • That actually sends me to an MSDN page on "Run Method (Windows Script Host)" without problems?

     

    But yeah, they keep reorganizing MSDN for no apparent reason.  Links break all the time.  The MSDN search function sucks as well; you search for a Win32 API function, and it invariably sends you to the Windows CE Visual Basic equivalent or some nonsense like that.  I've always found it hard to navigate.



  • @seaturnip said:

    But yeah, they keep reorganizing MSDN for no apparent reason.  Links break all the time.  The MSDN search function sucks as well; you search for a Win32 API function, and it invariably sends you to the Windows CE Visual Basic equivalent or some nonsense like that.  I've always found it hard to navigate.

    Ok, so that's not just me, then.  Damn, that's frustrating. 



  • I've always found it amusing that I can find pages on microsoft's site easier using google than MSN search...



  • It's a really sad sign when a company treats it's life blood (developers) like that (by making the API so hard to search). I actually tried to get back into Windows programming by trying out their free VS C++, requiring someone to download a special pack for a program marked for compiling C++ programs so that they can compile C++ programs is absolutely retarded.



  • @Lingerance said:

    It's a really sad sign when a company treats it's life blood (developers) like that (by making the API so hard to search). I actually tried to get back into Windows programming by trying out their free VS C++, requiring someone to download a special pack for a program marked for compiling C++ programs so that they can compile C++ programs is absolutely retarded.

    And it's certainly not the first time. I think keeping developers on an eternal chase really is part of their business model. Normally I don't jump on the Microsoft conspiracy bandwagon (as I'm a firm believer in Hanlon's razor), but a while back, I had wanted to share the Microsoft User Interface Guidelines with co-workers, only to discover it was gone.

    At first I assumed they'd moved it for the sake of moving it. It wasn't long before I learned of another possible explanation: Why give away that for which you can gouge people?



  • @poochner said:

    Ok, so that's not just me, then.  Damn, that's frustrating. 

    No, I saw it too, but I didn't get a page for it.  I just noticed the title bar say "redirection page has moved", then it worked properly.  So I guess they redirect to a new redirect.  Very enterprisey :P 



  • Every few weeks, MSDN decides I've moved countries and learned a new language. I notice the "en-us" in the URL has changed to some other language-country when this happens. If I edit the URL I get the English page, but as I follow links I get the same wrong language versions more and more often. The solution is to delete all microsoft.com cookies. Every once in a while I get a page thats part English, part very much not so (far East character sets sometimes), and the URL is still correct. WTF

     The search also sucks mightily. They added the ability to filter (yeah, no more Win32 for twenty dozen different desktop varieties when I want the one CE reference), but the damn filter list is in random order and cosists of a random set of choices that is sometimes incomplete (as in I know the API exists on CE but there's no choice for that. Prior to the filtering, I looked at the link and could tell what product it was for, but that was useful which is unacceptable so they changed the URL scheme to random junk. Of course that was months prior to the filtering option, so those were fun times searching for docs.

    Around the time they added the filtering, they changed the search box to contain some italicized gray text as a label. I guess its really hard to put a label next to the field or something. Since this label exists in the field, it must be removed before its useful for search text, so there's a script to clear the field and revert its style to plain black text when focus enters. Of course, their script to do so works half the time at best. The other half, my search text is buried in the middle of their label and zero results come back.


     



  • While I don't know how much I agree with the strategy for VC++ Express, it makes sense. The whole point of it is to introduce users to Windows Forms and C++.net (which is horrible compared to C#, and I was a C# hater until I actually started reading up on it a month or so ago) with a view to getting new programmers indoctrinated with .net and also giving them a good compiler to learn C++ with, not to let developers use it as their main tool. If you want to do Win32 stuff you should really be buying the Professional edition.

     While I don't like the idea of forcing people into using .net, especially if they're inexperienced programmers and don't understand exactly what .net is and how it fits in with C++, I think it makes perfect sense to deprecate the Win32 API, which as I'm sure most people will agree, is a poorly designed API with stupidity throughout. While .net is not without mistakes, it's a lot cleaner, more sensible, and easy to use once you get used to it (except C++.net which should only be used for very specific reasons - ie native interop). Pick up C# Express, a decent book and use that instead. Like I said, I had a complex about C# and it being too much like VB, too far from C++, slow etc. but it's not really any of those things, it's a good, fast, new language. Also, you're not downloading a special pack to program C++ you're downloading an SDK to program with the Windows API. You can program as much C++ as you want and it will compile fine.

     Also, yes - MSDN is horrible. It's too slow, searches are awful, and actually using the MSDN app is pretty much as bad. I always just use Google for MSDN searches and open a new tab each time I'm looking at a new MSDN page and leave it open until I leave at night.



  • After using Apple and Sun API documentation, MSDN seems like a giant fumbling ogre of a way to find information. The amount of time and searching around to find the info you need on even a single class... it's just so bad it's not even funny. Compare:

    [url]http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ApplicationKit/Classes/NSFont_Class/index.html[/url]

    [url]http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/awt/Font.html[/url]

    [url]http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.drawing.font.aspx[/url]


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