SteveX Compiled

Oh look, another Google search result that leads to an MSDN page that’s gone missing (the 2nd link on the results page, at least as of right now).

This happens far too often.  There’s really no excuse for Microsoft not realizing by now that search engines index their site, and that users use search engines to find developer content far more than they use MSDN.

How about some search engine friendly URLs?  For example, the link above is:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms123402.aspx

Basically a meaningless string.

This is the page that should have been hit by that link (I think):

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa965225(VS.85).aspx

Another meaningless string.

How about something like…

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/win32/windows2000/system/memory/about/memory_performance_information

This has a version number in the URL.  I can tell from the URL that it’s for a win32 function and that the documentation is relevant to Windows 2000.  With a URL like this:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/win32/vista/sdk/apiref/CreateProcess

This URL would even let me Google for Vista specific documentation, and tell if I found it because it’s right there in the URL.

Sun did a great job of this with Java.  Even though the documentation is way old:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/io/PrintStream.html

This link still works, and I can tell by reading it what I’m going to get.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.