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VS2013 Users - Missing the Help on Windows Desktop App Development?


NoelC

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Oops, looks like Microsoft removed all the Help files for Win32 / desktop development APIs from Visual Studio 2013.

 

Presumably they're trying to encourage people not to develop desktop applications any longer.

 

Ridiculous, manipulative, $#%&s...  :realmad:

 

Anyway, for those who haven't already found it, there's a workaround to get the help viewer to actually show info for Win32 calls - at least at the VS 2012 level.  Very little is changing in Win32, so I guess this is still pretty valid.

 

Download the VS 2012 help content manually from here (a nearly 3 GB download!):
 

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34794

 

Once that download is completed, mount the ISO and change the Installation Source in your Help Viewer to point to the help index at the root of the mounted ISO.  There you will find the Windows Desktop App Development help content under the Recommended heading.  Add it to the list of locally installed Help files.  After that you will be able to get Win32 help again.

 

Hope this helps someone.

 

-Noel

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?! This sounds very odd. Desktop dev is very much alive and well.

What I'd want to find, though, is the docs in a VS6-era CHM format. All the later Microsoft help viewers and formats were just more awkward, slower, limited, bigger. And that without any advantage I can think of. Surely someone, somewhere, made a tool to extract the HTMLs and recompile them as good ol' CHMs?

(There's H2Viewer and H3Viewer, BTW, which may be an improvement to the MS viewers. Haven't tried them yet.)

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