MSDN Instant Answers

Wanted to point out a great new feature that the MSDN team has just made available when searching in the MSDN library. The feature is dubbed “Instant Answers”.

Try this out. Go to msdn.microsoft.com, then click the library tab ( or go directly there by clicking this link ). Now, type “Hashtable” in the search text box. You should see something like this as the first entry in the results:

The main thing I like about this is the quick access to the source code. Notice to the right of the C# and VB code, there is a little icon. Go ahead and click that. That will bring up a “text” window in the middle of your browser, allowing you to select that code, copy, and paste into your code. Very nice!

This is a new approach to search results within MSDN, and the amount of content that is ready for this new format is limited, but I think these folks are really doing a great job to make the content as accessible as possible.

What do you think? What do you like about it? Anything you’d change?

Cameron