offline – nullteilerfrei

Ghidra + MSDN Offline Library = ❤️

rattle malware-analysis, technology 2019-07-29

A while back [I blawgd about how to get the MSDN library for offline use](https://blag.nullteilerfrei.de/2017/12/21/get-the-msdn-library-for-offline-use/). However, the Help Viewer has its problems. I won't list all of its problems, but it was certainly a bad candidate to integrate Win32 API documentation support to Ghidra. There is [a pretty neat project by Laurence Jackson](http://laurencejackson.com/win32/), but I think I just found something a little better even: Microsoft provides [a download of the MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 SP1, stand-alone, offline, as an ISO](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=20955) - smell this, Help Viewer:

So this is nice, but the main point of this exercise was to integrate this into Ghidra. If that's something you care about, read on.

Get the MSDN Library for offline use

rattle code, technology 2017-12-21

So you develop in [Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition](https://www.visualstudio.com/de/vs/community/) and you long for the old days when there was a way to get the [MSDN Library](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/) as an offline help file? Fear not, you still can. Open Visual Studio, type Ctrl+Q to open the quick access bar, usually located in the upper right corner of your interface. Enter Help Viewer, it should yield one result by that name, marked as an *"individual component"*. Selecting that entry should allow you to download and install the Help Viewer. Now relaunch Visual Studio and start the Help Viewer via quick access in the same way. You will be prompted whether you want to download some *content* - and I bet you do.

Offline Maps

rattle technology 2014-05-24

It used to be a problem to get good route planning on your smartphone when you are outside the country, because the roaming fees could plunge any McKinsey employee into bankrupcy when using Google Maps, which is only able to cache small map sections and basically has no way of telling you what is cached and what isn't. Rejoice! The OSMAND project provides an open maps and route planning solution which allows you to download all kinds of maps for offline use. I personally like the Android App even better than Google Maps: It's clearly for power users, there is much more to configure and you have more control. There is always an obvious argument for choosing another option over the kraken, but the option to download maps for offline use has to be the main reason why this is awesome. The entire Open Street Map project (see also the German version) seems to be a cool project which is worth contributing to, even if it's just pointing out a house number here and there.