Sams Teach Yourself .Net in 21 Days

By Jason Beres

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • About the Technical Editor
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You
  • Introduction
  • Week 1: At a Glance
  • Day 1. Introduction to the Microsoft .NET Framework
  • Day 2. Introduction to Visual Studio .NET
    • Introducing the Start Page
    • Using Dynamic Help
    • The New Projects Dialog
    • Exploring the Visual Studio .NET IDE
    • Using the Project Menu
    • Using the Build Menu
    • Managing Code Windows and Designers
    • Getting the Right Toolbars
    • Customizing Your Environment
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Quiz
    • Exercises
  • Day 3. Writing Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 4. Deploying Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 5. Writing ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 6. Deploying ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 7. Exceptions, Debugging, and Tracing
  • Week 1. In Review
  • Week 2: At a Glance
  • Day 8. Core Language Concepts in Visual Basic .NET and C#
  • Day 9. Using Namespaces in .NET
  • Day 10. Accessing Data with ADO.NET
  • Day 11. Understanding Visual Database Tools
  • Day 12. Accessing XML in .NET
  • Day 13. XML Web Services in .NET
  • Day 14. Components and .NET
  • Week 2. In Review
  • Week 3: At a Glance
  • Day 15. Writing International Applications
  • Day 16. Using Macros in Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 17. Automating Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 18. Using Crystal Reports
  • Day 19. Understanding Microsoft Application Center Test
  • Day 20. Using Visual SourceSafe
  • Day 21. Object Role Modeling with Visio
  • Week 3. In Review

Using Dynamic Help

You've just seen the Start Page and all great things it offers you. The next best thing about the Visual Studio .NET IDE is a new feature to Microsoft products called Dynamic Help. Dynamic Help literally gives you the help file information about whatever item in the IDE has the current focus. When Visual Studio .NET starts, the focus is the Start Page. To start Dynamic Help, press the Ctrl+F1 keys. The Help contents window appears on the screen, and the current help file for the Start Page shows up, as Figure 2.7 demonstrates.

Figure 2.7 Dynamic Help for the Start Page.

From this point, you can click the available hyperlinks in the Dynamic Help window to learn more about the IDE and customizing your environment. The Dynamic Help window also has three buttons on its toolbar: Contents, Index, and Search. If you click the Contents button, the window changes to the contents of the software development kit (SDK) help file. If you click the Search button, you have the ability to search for items. Clicking the Index button gives you the searchable index of the help file. Figure 2.8 demonstrates the Search capability. Notice how the Results window appears at the bottom of the screen. From this point, you can click on items in the results, and the help screen changes to that particular topic. You can also change the default filter of the help search. My default was Visual Basic and Related, but you can simply change the Filtered By drop-down list and select another language.

Figure 2.8 Using Search in Dynamic Help.

The predefined filters for Dynamic Help can be modified by selecting Help, Edit Filters from the Help main menu. You won't normally need to modify the filters or add new filters, but the capability is there to do so.

From the Help screen, you can get back to the Start Page by selecting Show Start Page from the Help menu or by clicking the Home button on the main toolbar.

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