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Aaron Bertrand

How do the links in YOUR copy of SQL Server 2008 Books Online work?

I am just taking a quick show of hands; and maybe some information, if you are willing.  (And if this hasn't happened to you, I apologize for taking up your time.)

I have had various problems on multiple installations of Books Online throughout the entire Katmai / SQL Server 2008 cycle.  They have been on both 32 and 64-bit; with / without IE8 installed; and with / without Visual Studio installed.

Currently I have one instance where IE8 is not installed, BOL is alongside 2005 on Server 2003, and every single link is not clickable at all.  Just no response... I can only navigate to items through the index or search results.  On a similar machine the links work, but every single one leads to a page that says, "Sorry, no topics were found for the selected link."  Again I must navigate via index or search results.  Which is really too bad, because some of those links are much tougher to track down.  And now I came across a much more isolated case where on a Vista SP1 machine with IE8 installed, a certain link leads to this "sorry" page from one topic, but not from another topic (the difference is an xmlns attribute in the link, which I think may be the cause of the problem).

You can see what I am talking about in more detail in the following Connect items:

http://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=290461

http://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=357008

(I have some other items about messed-up formatting in IE8, and a lot of others have submitted the same.  But I am more curious here about the links, as the formatting issue is being addressed.)

I can't imagine that this kind of thing happens differently across every single machine / VM I use, but it doesn't happen to anyone else?  If you have had any issues clicking links in Books Online, please drop a note here providing any specific information we can relay back to Microsoft so they can try harder to reproduce these issues.  I mean really, I am not making this stuff up... please help me escape from this madness!

Thanks!


Published Saturday, July 19, 2008 8:55 PM by AaronBertrand

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AaronBertrand said:

Wow, I guess I am the only one with these problems.  <shrug>  How did I screw up all of my machines this badly, and in slightly different ways, leaving me with not a single functional copy of SQL Server 2008 BOL?

July 23, 2008 9:11 AM
 

David said:

Sorry for the late response, just subscribed to your blog feed.

Can't say that I have had more than a couple of link problems just more on the missing content side. Stuff that should be clear in the index list is not there and when reverting back to 2005 BOL (mainly to check my sanity) I find it immediately. So, there is certainly some work that needed to be done prior to the final release.

July 29, 2008 11:05 AM

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