Visual Studio 2008: Using the Help System

The Help system included in Visual Basic 2008 is an improvement over the Help systems in earlier versions.As you begin to learn Visual Basic 2008, you will probably become very familiar with the Help system.However, it is worthwhile to give you an overview, just to help speed your searches for information.

The Help menu contains the items shown in Figure 20 .



As you can see, this menu contains a few more items than the typical Windows application. The main reason for this is the vastness of the documentation. Few people could keep it all in their heads — but luckily, that is not a problem, because you can always quickly and easily refer to the Help system. Think of it as a safety net for your brain.

One really fantastic feature is Dynamic Help. When you select the Dynamic Help menu item from the Help menu, the Dynamic Help window is displayed as a tab behind the Properties window, with a list of relevant topics for whatever you may be working on.

Suppose you are working with a text box (perhaps the text box in the HelloUser application) and want to find out some information; you just select the text box on your form or in the code window and then use Dynamic Help to see all the help topics that pertain to text boxes, as shown in Figure 21 .

The other help commands in the Help menu (Search, Contents, and Index), function just as they wouldin any other Windows application. The How Do I menu item displays the Visual Studio Help collectionwith a list of common tasks that are categorized. This makes finding help on common tasks fast andefficient.