MSFT Help Viewer Duplicate Entries

Microsoft Help Viewer 1.0 is a new document database that ships with Visual Studio 2010. It is basically an offline version of the “lightweight” view of the MSDN library online. It even runs in its own little web server and is accessed through a browser.

It ships with a number of categories of documentation including documentation for the .NET Framework version 4.0. You can install additional documentation from online or offline sources, including the .NET Framework 3.5 documentation.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t make much sense if you install both the v3.5 and 4.0 documentation. Firstly, the 4.0 documentation seems to be a superset of the entire 3.5 library. Secondly, installing both inserts two links for every article into all the navigation but both links resolve to the same document and that document specifies which version of the Framework the API is supported in.

I don’t see much point in installing more than one version of the .NET Framework documentation. Just stick with the .NET Framework 4 documentation that ships as part of the default options. It will update from online sources when changes are published.