After reportedly interviewing hundreds of developers and IT pros, and sifting through site feedback on UserVoice, Microsoft decided that it needed a new documentation service. According to the firm, both TechNet and MSDN are built on "a 10-15 year-old brittle codebase with an archaic publishing and deployment system that was never designed to run on the cloud".
In an effort to start from scratch, Microsoft is launching docs.microsoft.com, "a new hope for documentation from Microsoft", available today in preview form.
The new site promises to improve readability with a set content width. According to the blog post, this will help to increase reading speed and comprehension.
The service will also offer estimated reading times. Microsoft says it knows "many of you are learning/evaluating technology a few minutes between meetings and you’re more likely to read articles if you knew how much of a time commitment is required".
The firm is also promising to shorten the length of articles. According to them, longer articles can be overwhelming and hard to navigate, so the more lengthy articles have been broken up into smaller, logical steps, adding buttons to go to the next one.
Responsive design is also a key factor. Users on smaller screens will have an Options button to see the selections that they would get on the desktop version.
Other features include things such as social sharing and light or dark themes.
Currently, the docs.microsoft.com preview has documentation for the firm"s Enterprise Mobility products. According to Microsoft, the new site loads 50-300% faster, and runs completely off of Azure.
Source: Docs.microsoft.com blog