New GUI for helpauthoring newsgroup

Microsoft have changed the design of their "Discussion Group" interface at microsoft.com.

One result of this is that the link I was using to get to the helpauthoring newsgroup (which I included in my posting of 19 May) no longer works.

The alternative is:

www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.helpauthoring

If you're using Internet Explorer, this is a good alternative to the previous version. If you're using Firefox it looks horrible and isn't easy to use.

How like Microsoft to develop an IE-only solution.

If, like me, you use Firefox as your default browser, a handy tip for IE-specific websites like this is to put an IE shortcut on your desktop (or somewhere else that's easy to find).

If you just drag a shortcut from the address bar, the shortcut will open your default browser - even if you drag the shortcut from IE. So you have to specify the browser you want to use in the shortcut.

For example, right-click the desktop and choose New > Shortcut. In the Create Shortcut dialog box, click Browse and browse to the location of the Internet Exporer application, iexplore.exe, (typically the path is C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe).

Now copy the path to the newsgroup:

"http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.helpauthoring"

including the quote marks, and paste this in at the end of the location text box.

The location the shortcut is pointing to should now look like this:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" "http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.helpauthoring"

Click Next, give the shortcut a suitable name (e.g. helpauthoring) and click Finish.

You can now double-click this shortcut and be taken straight to the newsgroup, in IE, even if your default browser is something else.

If you want to you can change the icon of your shortcut by right-clicking the shortcut, choosing Properties, clicking Change Icon and selecting an alternative icon, or browsing to an application or a DLL that contains an icon you want to use instead (e.g. %SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll contains a good selection - I chose the Windows butterfly).