Microsoft Document Explorer

MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) is the complete database of help files for Visual Studio programs.

It is available in online and offline versions. The offline version is accessed through the program called Microsoft Document Explorer. It is actually the Program included with all the Visual Studio SDKs, and has been there since the earlier Visual Studio 6.0 versions.

Version 9.0 is an improved version. It includes options to easily search the library. This has four search zones. One is the local help that can be installed offline. The other is MSDN Online (the complete version of MSDN available in MSDN Website). And the remaining two are from the community supported by Microsoft : Codezone Community. We can search the posts and questions separately, and we can also participate in it with a Hotmail account.

The program is very good, but I didn't like the searching method. It searches everything based on the given string. Selecting the search parameters, like Language, Technology, etc. is not that smooth. Also, being .Net, the results can be very much different, if you are searching for a simple programming tip.