Datasheet

Using the Help System
The Help system included in Visual Basic 2005 is an improvement over Help systems in previous
versions. As you begin to learn Visual Basic 2005, you will probably become very familiar with the
Help system. However, it is worthwhile to give you an overview, just to help speed your searches
for information.
The Help menu contains the menu items shown in Figure 1-20:
Figure 1-20
As you can see, this menu contains a few more entries than the typical Windows application. The main
reason for this is the vastness of the documentation. Few people could keep it all in their heads—but
luckily, that is not a problem, because you can always quickly and easily refer to the Help system. Think
of it as a safety net for your brain.
One really fantastic feature is Dynamic Help. When you select the Dynamic Help menu item from the
Help menu, the Dynamic Help window is displayed with a list of relevant topics for whatever you may
be working on. The Dynamic Help window can be displayed by clicking Help ➪ Dynamic Help on the
menu bar. The Dynamic Help window is then displayed as a tab behind the Properties window.
Let us say, for example, that you are working with a text box (perhaps the text box in the HelloUser
application) and want to find out some information; you just select the text box on our form or in the
code window and you can see all the help topics that pertain to text boxes, as shown in Figure 1-21
The other help commands in the Help menu (Search, Contents, and Index), function just as they would
in any other Windows application. The How Do I menu item displays the Visual Studio Help collection
with a list of common tasks that are categorized. This makes finding help on common tasks fast and
efficient.
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