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"Recommended Version" button discards context #1179

Open ColinCampbellCCL opened 5 years ago

ColinCampbellCCL commented 5 years ago

When you are reading an older version of the documentation and the top banner presents the message "We're no longer updating this content regularly. Check the Microsoft Product Lifecycle for information about how this product, service, technology, or API is supported." with a button "Recommended Version", instead of taking you to the new version of the item you are viewing, the button drops the context and takes you to the root of the documentation.

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

  1. Google "microsoft.sharepoint.client.taxonomy"
  2. Click on any of the items with the URL that start with "https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/sharepoint-csom/..."
  3. Click the "Recommended Version" button in the banner.
  4. The resultant page is not a new version of the content from steps 2/3.

This issue is not limited to SharePoint. It occurs across a broad spectrum of Microsoft Docs, and is extremely frustrating.

The re-directed page should be the new version of the content, not some random page much further up the documentation hierarchy.

Google search: image

Landing page at old documentation: image

Erroneous page delivered by "Recommended Version": image

Desktop environment:

welcome[bot] commented 5 years ago

Thank you for creating the issue! One of our team members will get back to you shortly with additional information.

mairaw commented 5 years ago

@kexugit @ryanmajidi can you take a look at this issue? Not sure if perhaps the archived version shouldn't be indexed in these cases?

@ColinCampbellCCL I know that by design the Recommend version button only takes you to the homepage of the docs for the latest version, not to the newer version of that page.

ColinCampbellCCL commented 5 years ago

Thanks @mairaw. Sadly it doesn't even take you the same area, and that is probably the main cause of frustration, given how challenging it is to navigate MS documentation. Thankfully, it's getting better.

To get from where I was, from the destination "recommended version" page, is not easily discoverable - I'm not even sure I've ever been able to do it, in any of the times I've clicked that button (for any technology not just SharePoint).

kexugit commented 4 years ago

@jmazzotta the example topic was in officedocs-dev-sharepoint-csom-archive-pr repo in office-dev-reference-archive archive project. I think you worked on its migration. Do you have any info on why the discoverability was enabled for the content, if it's OK to turn it off?

SamB commented 4 years ago

If you think that's bad, look at all the stuff that redirects to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop, which is honestly worse than just leaving the URL out entirely to surface the (I presume) default "Return to main site" button.