How to: Optimize Help for Smart Device Development

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If you selected Minimum or Custom when you installed the MSDN Library for Visual Studio, you might not have all the Visual Studio Help files that are available for smart device developers. Specifically, the Minimum setup does not include the Mobile and Embedded Development section of the library.

The Mobile and Embedded Development section includes such material as Pocket PC and Smartphone SDK documentation, Windows CE information, and so on. Topics in that section are often referenced by topics in the Smart Device Development section of Visual Studio, which is always installed and focuses about how to use the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) to develop smart device applications. The following procedures show you how to determine what Help you have installed, how to add Mobile and Embedded Development Help, and how to filter Help.

To verify whether the Mobile and Embedded Development Help section is installed

  • Click Pocket PC Developer's Guide.

    If the topic is displayed, the Mobile and Embedded Development section is installed.

    If the topic is not found, you can add the Mobile and Embedded Development section by completing the following steps.

To include Mobile and Embedded Development topics

  1. In Windows Control Panel, click Add or Remove Programs or click Programs and then Programs and Features (in Windows Vista).

  2. Click MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008, and then click Change.

    The Microsoft MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 setup wizard appears in Maintenance mode.

  3. Click Next.

  4. Click Add or Remove Features.

  5. Check Mobile and Embedded Development.

  6. Click Update.

Filtering Help Topics

Visual Studio provides a Smart Device Development filter for the table of contents and index. When you apply this filter, the visible topics are reduced to include only documentation considered basic for smart device developers. Most importantly, this filter displays only the smart device subsets of run-time reference topics and the .NET Compact Framework, MFC, and ATL libraries.

If you apply a language filter (for example, Visual C#), smart device development topics are excluded from the viewable topics. For this reason it is better to use either the Smart Device Development filter or no filter. Note also that a language filter is applied by default if you select a language development setting, such as Visual C# Development Settings, when you start the Visual Studio IDE.

To set the Smart Device Development filter

  1. On the Visual Studio Help menu, click Contents or Index.

  2. In the Filtered by box, select Smart Device Development.

To change your development setting

  1. On the Visual Studio Tools menu, click Import and Export Settings.

  2. On the Welcome page of the wizard, click Reset all settings, and then click Next.

    If you are not sure of your options, press F1 to open the Help topic for the wizard.

  3. On the Save Current Settings page, select whether to save your current settings, and then click Next.

  4. On the Choose a Default Collection of Settings page, select General Development Settings, and then click Finish.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Find Supported Members of the .NET Compact Framework in the Class Library

Concepts

Help Filters for Visual Studio

Other Resources

Getting Started with Smart Device Projects