Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 Breaks MSDN/HTMLHelp2 Searching!

The Problem:

* After installing Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2, HTMLHelp searches do not work correctly. This affects existing installations of the MSDN library (which uses Document Explorer 7) as well as the Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 MSDN library (which uses Document Explorer 8).

Both of those use HTML Help 2, which leads me to believe that it is the HTML Help 2 that is somehow broken.

* The Symptoms:

(1) Go to the "Look For" search field.
(2) Type two words into the search field that shouldn't get too many hits.
(3) When you check the search results, you can see that the search is looking for either of the words, rather than both of the words as it should. This happens even if you separate the words with the "AND" keyword.

For example, if you were to search for:

THISSHOULDNTEXIST LINKER

you should get zero matches, but instead you get 500 matches (the max).
This is a VERY IRRITATING BUG!

* Test Systems

I tried this on 3 systems, which all gave the same problem.
All systems are XP Professional, set to English UK region.
On all 3 systems, Visual Studio 2003 and the MSDN library was installed before installing the beta of Visual Studio 2005.
On 2 of the systems, Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 was installed and uninstalled before Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2.
On the other system, Beta 1 was not installed first.

Is anyone else getting this problem

[EDIT]

I have found a bug report for this that was posted on 30th April. MS have reproduced it.

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/viewfeedback.aspx feedbackid=a68de6b2-0ebb-4375-b2d2-5d9800450a9d

How could such a crucial thing have slipped through testing This is really impacting my ability to use Visual Studio 2005 effectively.

I hope there will be a fix for this before September!

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Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 Breaks MSDN/HTMLHelp2 Searching!

veugelenw
We are working on a fix to the issue you have identified. The issue did not "slip through testing", rather we wanted to understand how often queries are used with the words AND, OR and NOT used as Boolean operators. Many queries are submitted where the user does not intend for them to be used as search keywords; for example: a) "What is the difference between C++ and C# ", b) "Repartition disk not lose data".

The problem we face when as we parse these queries is to determine the user's intent when they formulated the query.

This problem will be addressed in time for the final release.

< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
NozTheGK
Ah I see. Personally, I never actually type "AND" - I just use the default behaviour (which is, of course, AND).

I think it would be quite good if we could just use '&' and '|', but I realise that's a C/C++/C#-centric way of looking at things. ;)
Tebby
Good grief! I can't believe you [Mark] said that. You even broke the old one!! We are not complete numbskulls; we know how to formulate a boolean search. If you are really worried about this, you could always check for AND in upper case.

I am just getting to grips with VS 2005, and I found this very confusing. In fact, it is unusable, so I am now using MSDN online for full-text searches instead (which actually works pretty well).

While I'm on my soapbox, I'd just like to say that I don't like the new full-text search at all. The abstracts are a nice idea (although I much prefer them as 'tooltips'), but the old format had considerably more functionality and used the screen space much more efficiently. I suppose this is unlikely, but is there any chance of having the old version back as an option in the final release Also, why are the filters for Search different from those in the Index I don't see the logic of offering two different sets of filters; almost perverse, in fact.

-----

Later the same day...

I did a bit of digging around, and Matthew is right: HTML Help 2 is indeed broken. If you replace the following files with the old versions from the VS 2003 CD, VS 2003 works as it used to:
\program files\common files\microsoft shared\help\hxds.dll
\program files\common files\microsoft shared\help\hsvz.dll

But... this breaks the Help in VS 2005 - nothing works at all. Oh well.

Lots of useful info about MS Help 2 here, by the way: http://helpware.net/
Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 Breaks MSDN/HTMLHelp2 Searching!

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