In this topic

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Some features of the SDKs are less visible than others. However, some of them make your life as a developer much easier.

 

Synching with the table of contents

When you click a link and are directed to a new document, it can be helpful to know the location of that document in the table of contents (TOC). This enables you to access all the related topics that are around it. To locate a document in the TOC that is open in the viewer, use the Synch with Table of Contents  button, which is displayed on the toolbar at the top of the Microsoft Document Explorer (used to view the help files).

 

Working with tabs

The Microsoft Document Explorer uses tabs that allow you to have multiple documents open at one time. You can think of these as a stack of documents, where although they are all open, you can only read the one on the top of the stack. However, the title of each document is visible on the tab at the top of the viewer window.

 

To switch between tabs, click the tab at the top of the viewer window to bring the document you want to read to the top of the stack. You can also switch between tabs using the Active Files  button, which is located alongside the tabs and next to the Close  button for closing tabs. The Close button is the one to use to exit from a single tab but leave the rest of the help system open.

 

If you notice that the Back button on the Microsoft Document Explorer toolbar is disabled, check at the top of the viewer window to see if your other document is open in another tab besides the one currently opened.

 

In the ArcGIS SDKs, the following open in new tabs:

 

Using the query topic

Each of the ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Engine installed SDKs includes a query page that lets you locate documents and samples based on the main categories it falls into (New functionality at ArcGIS 9.2, Geocoding, Globe, Layers, and so on) as well as the document type (Conceptual, How To, Library Overview, Sample, or Walkthrough).

 

In the installed help system TOC, the query page is located under Extending ArcGIS Desktop with .NET and Building solutions with ArcGIS Engine using .NET. See the following screen shot:

 

 

To access each query page, you will need to use the installed ArcGIS help systems. The query pages are not available online.

 

Working with samples

Samples have been included to give you full, working code examples. General information on how to use the samples can be found in Using the ArcGIS samples.

 

Each sample has a page in the help system that gives information particular to using it, including licensing and extension information, as well as links to view the main sections of the sample's code. You can find samples either by task under the Working with ArcGIS components node in the TOC or by using the query page and selecting Sample as the type.

 

Using snippets

Snippets are chunks of reusable code that aid programmers in performing common tasks. ArcGIS snippets are available in the Visual Basic and C# code editors of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Using snippets in your code, the format of ArcGIS snippets, and viewing the snippet Extensible Markup Language (XML) documentation are discussed in Snippets in ArcGIS 9.2 for .NET developers. This help system also includes a snippet index that lists all the snippets that exist for ArcGIS programming. The snippets are a part of the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) integration, and additional topics will be in that content area in the query pages.

 

Interacting with links to other ESRI SDKs

Some documents that are found in both the ArcGIS Engine SDK and the ArcGIS Desktop SDK include links to documents that are only in one of those systems. If you have both the ArcGIS Engine SDK and ArcGIS Desktop SDK installed, those links will take you to the desired page in whichever SDK it is in. However, if you do not have the SDK that contains that document installed, you will be routed to an error page that informs you the document is only available in the other SDK. In these cases, the content of the document being linked to, while relevant to the referring document, is only specifically applicable to developers using the other SDK. If you want to see the linked content without installing the other SDK, you can find the page on the EDN Web site.

Interacting with links that open menus

If you have both the ArcGIS Engine SDK and ArcGIS Desktop SDK installed, you will occasionally click a link that opens a menu instead of navigating to the document the link references. The menu that opens will give you the choice of the document as it is found in either the NET_Engine (ArcGIS Engine SDK) or NET_Desktop (ArcGIS Desktop SDK) help book, as shown in the following illustration. To follow the link and open the document, click the menu option for the SDK in which you want to find the document.