Online References

Last week's article, Mining NT Information, covered using the Microsoft Knowledge Base to find answers to particular NT problems; various sites for finding NT products (software/games, and hardware); and finding recent NT articles using an NT-specific search engine.

I neglected to mention NT "forums", where you can ask questions and hope to get an answer, since those answers may fall more under an "opinion" category than "information". There are plenty of NT forums, some which are very good (read: moderated), which I plan to go over sometime in the next few weeks.

All of the above resources have one thing in common: they're forever-changing and being updated. Databases, if you would.

There are plenty of "static information" resources, as well: the online analog of books.

I don't generally use these types of resources for reading (my stomach does flip-flops trying to "read" a monitor as you would a book). However, I use these resources often by searching them for what I need, or printing out particularly interesting chapters.

Microsoft doesn't publicize it (actually, it hides it away!), but it has all Resource Kits and Development Kits online and available for your free perusal, including but not limited to:

• NT Workstation Resource Kit
• NT Server Resource Kit and
• Resource Kit supplements
• Backoffice Resource Kit
• MS Office Developer's Kits
• Language References
• the SDK and DDK

not to mention an HTML reference, Microsoft periodicals, and just about all Microsoft resources, arranged by category.

The only catch is that you have to register (free) to use it, and your browser has to accept (and you have to keep) a cookie. There are a few pages of questions, including a whole page devoted to junk mail (i.e., "can we call you at home?" ; "can we mail you at work?"; etc): just answer "NO to all of them. Then after you register, there's another whole page of "newsletters" to which you can subscribe (I actually get some of them... they're not bad, and you can unsubscribe pretty easily as well). But then you're in!

Another potential catch is that the actual site uses frames and controls, so your browser has to be somewhat modern.

The site is MSDN, which is short for Microsoft Developer's Network. The area you want (and should bookmark once you've registered) is called The Library. You can't miss it, because the rest of MSDN Online is not that useful (and constantly points you to the library).

You can search the MSDN Library by using the general Search button on the top navigational bar: it takes you to the MS Search Engine, but fills in "MSDN" for you in the "site" category. I find this the most useful function of the whole site, of course!

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