C# Tutorial - Accessing Help

Help can be accessed in two ways. The first way is through the menu system by accessing the Help menu. The second is through the F1 key. When you first run help, via one of the two methods, you are greeted with the Online Help Settings screen. This screen prompts you to choose where you wish to access help from, either locally or online. Do not worry if you feel that you have made the wrong decision, as this can be changed in the options menu (see the next figure).

The Help menu contains five useful sections:

  • How Do I - These pages consolidate Help topics about common tasks on a per technology basis.

  • Search - This page allows you to search the local MSDN that was installed with C# Express as well as MSDN Online, Codezone Community and Knowledge Base articles.

  • Index - The index lists all of the MSDN help pages in alphabetical order. To use this, simply type the word that you require help on and the list will show available pages on the topic.

  • Contents - This list shows all of the MSDN pages in a catergorised view. Harder to use, but once you get the hang of it this can produce better help results.

  • Help Favorites - Instead of re-searching for a page, bookmark so that you can look at it again later.

Each of the above menu items is repeated across the top of the help screen (see the next figure).

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© Publicjoe, 2008