MSDN Express is the documentation package you get when you install one of the Visual Studio Express products. It has a few behaviors that just plain irritate me.
I like having a single documentation package to reference, whether I'm working in an IDE or just playing with the command line tools. So irritation #1: the only way to open MSDN Express, by default, is through the IDE. This IDE launches two processes: one via a service, the other under your user account, which has the actual Document Explorer window. If you close the IDE, that Document Explorer window goes away too. Arrgh. Luckily this one is an easy fix: just create a shortcut to (en-us) C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help 8\dexplore.exe. But I have no idea what will happen when more things start to use Help 8. Will it show me all of them?
Because I like having a single documentation package to reference, I want it to show everything. Everything. Irritation #2: you can't turn off the filters. The “.NET Framework” filter seems to show the most at once, but it won't show (for example) the C Runtime Library Reference. That requires switching to the “Visual C++ Express” filter. Which takes time. And rearranges things. Arrgh.
Not all the documentation for a product is actually available. I once wanted to know more about these C++ attribute things. Visual C++ Express supports them, so they must be in the documentation package, right? Wrong. Irritation #3: you have to go online to learn about attributes. Arrgh. I can almost excuse this with the reasoning that the focus is entirely on .NET these days, and the CLI actually has real cross-language attributes, so Microsoft may not want people to find these proprietary C++ ones by accident. And I suppose I should be glad I get offline docs for the C++ compiler at all. But damnit, C++ attributes are useful.
And finally, irritation #4: it hides documentation! MSDN Express includes the .NET Framework SDK documentation in the package. It's installed a little differently from what the separate Framework SDK normally does for some reason, but it is there. I decided I wanted to look up serialization, and I remembered from way back when that the Framework SDK has these advanced topics that discuss such things, so I went looking for it. Couldn't find it. Finally tried “serialization” in the index, which brought up exactly the page I was looking for, even though the “sync TOC” button is greyed out. It turns out this topic and others are linked from the main “Advanced Development Technologies” page. These incredibly useful documents are actually installed, if you can figure out how to find them. But are they in the Table of Contents? Nope. Arrrghh!
Update: After realizing the class library reference was missing all of the System.Runtime namespaces, I finally just installed the Framework SDK on top of Express. Much better. Fixed #4 and more tools. Highly recommended.