Friday, June 27, 2008

New Plugin "MSDN BCL Help"

So I just released another new plugin.

CR_MsdnBclHelp available from the Community Plugin Site

This one provides a single action "MSDN BCL Help" which causes your browser to launch a url pointing at the help page for the Type that your caret is situated on.

For example: When your caret is positioned on the word string within the phrase “Dim X as String”

I have bound this to the 'F1'  key combo in my copy of CodeRush.

To do this… visit the options screen via “DevExpress\Options” and locate IDE\Shortcuts

Create new “Keyboard shortcut” via the Toolbar button at the top and fill out “F1” (Or Alt+F1) as the key, and “MSDN BCL Help” as the command name.

Click Ok and wonder at how pressing F1 now launches the correct MSDN page for any Type your caret is situated on :)

For the ultimate “Lowband” (read quick) experience I highly recommend you follow the steps outlined on Craig Andera's wonderful post regarding the low bandwidth version of MSDN.

The primary download site for this DXCore plugin is http://www.rorybecker.me.uk/DevExpress/Plugins/Community/CR_MsdnBclHelp/

[Note: If you link here, please link to the folder not the file, as future versions will be named according to their version and old versions may be moved elsewhere.]

[Update: Recently (in build 322)this plugin has been enhanced to take direct advantage of MSDN’s low bandwidth facility. A new parameter has been added to allow you to specify ‘loband’ or ‘robot’ or any of a number of other options (detailed in Scott Hanselman's recent post. Simply pass the desired keyword in the parameter box as shown in the image below and click ok to take direct advantage of this new facility]

MSDNBCLHelp

Never has it been so easy to use Visual studio and MSDN together.


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