After more than a decade of MSDN and TechNet, Microsoft presses upgrade: docs.microsoft.com

MSDN and TechNet have seen a number  of upgrades over the years, but Microsoft has decided the two documentation portals deserve a major refresh, since some of the code powering them is a decade old. And so, the preview release of its new documentation systems, docs.microsoft.com.

During the preview release, Microsoft is starting (relatively) small and just offering documentation on the company's Enterprise Mobility products. I say relatively small because that already includes documentation on:

One interesting twist for developers: If you click on the editing interface, you aren't kicked to a custom content management system, but over to ... Github. There, anyone can tweak and modify the content.

There are a lot of visual improvements, too: A clean design, ample white space, responsive formatting that works well on both desktop and mobile devices.

Even the URLs are nicer: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn646983.aspxvs. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/intune/get-started/start-with-a-paid-subscription-to-microsoft-intune

It's also speedier: Pages load 50 to 300% faster, according to Jeff Sandquist, General Manager of Cloud and Enterprise Group at Microsoft. (He noted that the new infrastructure is built entirely on Azure.)

And Microsoft has made of a point of making explanations shorter and easier to digest, and coupling them solutions to the actual challenges customers are trying to address.

"In the future, as our platform matures with the help of your feedback, we will migrate more of our documentation onto this experience," Sandquist wrote.

What do you think? Is Microsoft headed in the right direction? Let me know below.