CodePlex

Register Sign In

MSDN Forums Client

Home

Releases

Discussions

Issue Tracker

Source Code

Stats

People

License

RSS

All Project Updates

Discussions

Releases

Source Code

Wiki

RSS Feed

RSS

Comments \| Print View \| Page Info \| Change History (all pages)	Search Wiki:
Home
Project Description A project to create a client based application to interface with the new MSDN Forums platform. What are we doing here? My team and I are undertaking an endeavour that has been highly requested for quite awhile. We will be creating a client side solution to work with the MSDN Forums. Several attempts have been made in the past to solve this problem with varying degrees of success. This time around we have the support of the forums team to make sure that a public API is available on the brand new forums platform. That doesn't really tell me much about your project... You can find the detailed initial scope document here. In the scope document you'll find some more details about what kinds of things we want to do (and a couple we don't), a sample user scenario, and some information about our team. What do I get out of this? Well, if you are a frequent user of any of our forums sites and wish you had an offline option this is an excellent opportunity for you to drive the requirements so we don't build the wrong tool. If you are a developer wanting to try out some cool technologies like WPF, WCF, or maybe even LINQ if we need it, this would be a great sample app for you to learn from and also contribute to. Okay you've hooked me and I'm excited, how can I help? There are a couple ways for you to contribute to the project. Tell us what we're doing right or wrong. Feel free to give us your feedback using the Discussions tab and let us know if this would be an useful tool for you, or if you think we're heading in the complete wrong direction. Tell us what you would do! If you have other great ideas on features that we should consider you can either create a discussion in the Discussions area, or create a work item in the Issue Tracker for people to vote on. Put your code editor where your mouth is. Eventually we're going to have to actually write the code for this thing. When we get to that point we will have plenty of opportunities for you to contribute to the project in a tangible way and to help implement features. -Jeremy Kelley Program Manager Developer Division Community Connection Microsoft
Last edited Feb 22 at 9:56 PM by JeremyKelley, version 10
Comments yousaid wrote Feb 26 at 6:40 PM Ok, this is a great idea, but while you are it, why not write a Forum Application that includes the features you have listed? Remember ASPNET FORUMS? It was a great tool that is now sold as community server by Telligent. Rob Connery, the Subsonic guy already has a starter that can be expanded. The way I see it, in addition to MSDN and other MS forums, a developer may be interested in viewing other forums offline. To develop that, the developer will need MS tools, etc, meaning more VS2008 copies sold ! PaoloTCS wrote Feb 27 at 12:30 PM There are a few grammatical errors, do those count? pauldomag wrote Feb 27 at 9:12 PM Count me in! tfl wrote Mar 1 at 12:15 PM I have read the scope document with interest. When I get a moment, I'll provide detailed comments via an annotated doc. I am very dissapointed with the statement that "We are hoping as an organization to be able to phase out the newsgroups with the help of the FC to enable customers who enjoy the newsgroup style of interaction only using the forums as the data source rather than newsgroups." As your MVPs have been telling you loudly and clearly - building a new client is not really the best way to help Microsoft's forum users. Many of those users use the forums to get answers to their questions, and to get the best out of Microsoft products. for them, the on-line forums are a great resoruce. Microsoft a 3000-strong team of MVPs, but many of them use the NNTP newsgroups. I've never seen any issue on which the MVPs are so unanimous! Please re-think the strategy. This project faces two significant challenges: first MS have to derive, build and deliver a scalable open API set. In effect, they have to re-invent NNTP and that is just not easy. Secondly, they need to build a rich, reliable, robust client in order to meet the needs of both the users of the content and the creators of that content. Pleasing the first group is more straightforward and a lot simpler than satisfying the second group. In effect, this project seeks to build, from scratch, a new forums API client that is as rich, reliable and usable as exsiting NNTP clients (such as Forte Agent, Turnpike, Gravity and even Outlook express). The best way forward would be to re-use existing NNTP to Web forum gateways (such as the one being used to support MCTs), then focus on building a great on-line client. That way, casual questioners (follks who come over, ask a question and leave when it's answered) can continue to use the web interface, while the content providers (MVPs and others) could use their client of choice. And if a forums client that is non NNTP based still makes busienss sense, then go for it. Better yet, with NNTP in place, why not make OE a really great product? I will watch this project with interest. Sadly I do not have much faith it'll be successful, but I'm happy to provide detailed comments as and when. Thomas Lee MVP albertpascual wrote Mar 20 at 8:53 PM Would that work as well with Community Server forums? Al Pascual MVP dcsoft wrote Mar 28 at 12:11 AM This sounds like a great project for the lucky people on the dev team. But while I would drool over the chance to start from scratching using the latest stuff like WPF and WCF, what I suggest is grabbing the source code to any of the popular NNTP newsreaders that you have access to. Go across the hall (or freeway) and grab a copy of the Outlook Express (or Windows Mail) code if you don't have any other, then modify it to use the forum API's. That's it. This would be educational to see how little you have to do give us a product that serves our needs quickly. Thank you, David Ching Microsoft Visual C++ MVP bliengme wrote May 2 at 1:06 PM At Summit there was a v ery shrill women who hindered discussion. When I compare answering question using Outlook Express vs Internet Explorer these are my concerns. I hope they might help with your design. 0) Peole having questions like to use websites not newsgroups; so the problem is with those who answer not those who ask 1) Hard to see the question while answering it on website 2) Cannot flag a question so as to follow other answers 3) Cannot save another person's answer as a file - helpful for building 'canned' replies. 4) No spell check - I am poor speller and terrible typist 5) In OE, one used CTRL+H to see all one's postings (good for egoists!) Helpful finding an answer to similar Q that you replied to weeks ago. In general: why are there so many Excel groups/communities? We need i) Excel general; ii) Excel Charting and iii) Excel VBA (not 'programming' which confuses novices) Bernard Liengme Microsoft Excel MVP artfudd wrote May 8 at 6:40 PM I read the documentation about the proposed Forums Client, and while it appears it might be a step in the right direction (aside from syncing forums to NNTP readers like OE, WMail & WLMail - which IMO would be the best way to go), however.. maybe I am missing something, but I fail to see how this proposed Forums Client will address the problem I stated - that of being able to monitor and post to many forums quickly and easily like we can do now with NNTP readers like Windows Mail. The problem is that if you insist (as stated in the documentation) on moving away from NNTP altogether - for whatever mysterious reason - then there needs to be a method of making the browsing and participating in many forums as quick and easy as it is now with WMail etc.. I see from other feedback in various places that most MVPs agree with my take on this... Why should we have to spend 12 to 15 hours a day to monitor and participate in say 20 forums (as an example), compared to being able to spend maybe 4 or 5 hours to monitor and participate in say 20 NNTP newsgroups like we can now? When will a beta of this Forums Client be available for testing? Without a model to test, it is very difficult to understand exactly what you propose and whether it will address these concerns. Just being able to access forum content offline, while important to some, is not IMO the major concern here. Being able to access and monitor and participate in multi different forums in the quick and easy fashion we can now with NNTP, is the major concern as I see it. GaryVand wrote May 23 at 9:58 PM When you say "We are hoping ... to be able to phase out the newsgroups," which particular newsgroups are you talking about? artfudd wrote Jun 10 at 11:29 PM GaryVand.. I think they intend to phase out all MS NNTP newsgroups by the sound of it............. a really really BIG mistake IMO.. They stand to lose a vast number of knowledgeable contributers.. There doesn't appear to be much progress on this project at any rate.... so it looks like (at this pace) it will take 10 years to implement this new forums client, and phase out NNTP... :) larsw wrote Jun 30 at 7:37 PM Pingback: http://larswilhelmsen.com/2008/06/30/msdn-forum-offline-client/ Sign in to add a comment

Draft requirements doc...

Wed Apr 16 2008 at 7:00 AM

Page Views	97
Visits	37
Pages Per Visit	2.62
Work Items Closed	0
Discussion Posts	1

© 2006-2008 Microsoft | Privacy Statement | Terms of Use | Code of Conduct | CodePlex Blog | Version 2008.5.27.12860

Updating...