If you are like me, you often google a .Net class and find it at MSDN. Also, since you want the page to load quickly and get you the information you need, you probably selected the Lightweight view on MSDN. If you haven't, you should :) Anyway, a problem with MSDN is that it shows you every possible member of the class, which is especially annoying with WPF classes as they inherit from FrameworkElement that has a gazillion events. Wouldn't it be great if one could hide the inherited members from an MSDN page?

At first I thought I would parse the content of each row and detect the (Inherited from string, but it appears it is even simpler: table row elements have a data attribute that (if the member is inherited) contains the word inherited. Probably someone at MSDN wanted to make the same thing as me, but forgot to implement it (at least on the lightweight view). The javascript is simple enough:

var trs=document.getElementsByTagName('tr');
var l=trs.length;
for (var i=0; i<l; i++) {
var tr=trs[i];
var data=tr.getAttribute('data');
if (!data||data.indexOf('inherited')==-1) continue;
tr.style.display=tr.style.display=='none'?'':'none';
}
You probably wonder why I haven't used jQuery. It is because I want it to work in a javascript: url so I can put it in a bookmark! Just as with the Firebug bookmark you need to manually create a bookmark in the Favorites folder (or to add any page as a favorite, then edit its URL) in Internet Explorer or to simply add a bookmark in the browser in Chrome and Firefox and paste the one line script. To make it easier, I will write them both here. The content of the .url favorite file:
[DEFAULT]
BASEURL=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/
[InternetShortcut]
URL=javascript:var trs=document.getElementsByTagName('tr');var l=trs.length;for (var i=0; i<l; i++) { var tr=trs[i]; var data=tr.getAttribute('data'); if (data&&data.indexOf('inherited')>-1) tr.style.display=tr.style.display=='none'?'':'none'; }; void(0);
IDList=
IconFile=http://msdn.microsoft.com/favicon.ico
IconIndex=1
[{000214A0-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
Prop3=19,2
and the javascript line to use in other browsers:
javascript:var trs=document.getElementsByTagName('tr');var l=trs.length;for (var i=0; i<l; i++) {  var tr=trs[i];  var data=tr.getAttribute('data');  if (data&&data.indexOf('inherited')>-1)  tr.style.display=tr.style.display=='none'?'':'none'; }; void(0);
.

Happy coding!

Comments

Siderite

Well, I am glad I could help. You made my morning.

Siderite

Anonymous

trackback http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5929760/using-the-msdn-docs-is-it-possible-to-hide-or-filter-inherited-members

Anonymous

Anonymous

Holy hell you saved the day. Seriously. If I saw &#39;ActualHeight&#39; one more time I was going to abandon C# altogether.

Anonymous

Anonymous

Just what I was looking for, thank you!

Anonymous

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