Microsoft is making some changes to the way it handles Windows release notes, the company announced today. For starters, it's combining support.office.com and support.microsoft.com into one site, and of course, that means that other changes are on the way. Microsoft says that combining the two sites will make it easier to publish release notes more quickly.
One thing that's changing is the URL structure, as the KB ID will always be prominently displayed on the page. The firm noted in the announcement that while the KB ID is always included in the URL, allowing the user to paste a KB ID to the end of 'https://support.microsoft.com/help', it wasn't always included in the article. Now, there's more of a tie between the article and the URL, also making it easier for search engines to find.
Microsoft is adding the ability to add support articles to Facebook and LinkedIn, adding to the email option that's already there. Microsoft says we're also going to see more changes to the formatting and the UI. In fact, KB articles will no longer be served in a JSON format; they're going to be HTML instead.
Chris Morrissey, who penned the blog post, also made a list of things that aren't changing, such as all existing release notes. He also promised that Microsoft will continue to deliver release notes, as it always has, for supported versions of Windows. Other things that are being kept are the ability to quickly find similar or related articles, and the ability to leave comments. All of these changes are rolling out in the coming weeks.
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