What's Wrong With MS Support?

I noticed that over the past two years or so it has become virtually impossible to download and apply "engineering fixes" and patches to .NET in general and ASP.NET in particular. More often than not you get this much "support" from a Knowledge Base article:

To resolve this problem immediately, contact Microsoft Product Support Services to obtain the hotfix. For a complete list of Microsoft Product Support Services phone numbers and information about support costs, visit the following Microsoft Web site...

While reading Scott Mitchell's latest article, Making an ASP.NET Web Site Accessible, I came across a link to KB823030 which is about a DataGrid which is compliant with Section 508, which in its turn led me to KB821156 (ASP.NET 1.1 June 2003 Hotfix Rollup Package). Like many many other fixes of this kind it's not available for download.

Here's my theory. Some "products" are free, e.g. .NET and ASP.NET. Other products have a price tag, e.g. SharePoint Portal Server. The .NET Framework is FREE and so is ASP.NET itself. Support for the .NET Framework should be free. Support for the SharePoint Portal Server... Well, it depends, but legit owners must be entitled to receive some free support. How can you have someone go through the pain and cost of contacting Tech Support to fix some major screwup in a free framework?

To wrap up I'll say this much: there are places out there where you can download patches directly. I think we, developers, are getting a rotten deal and MS folks better not make it harder for us. Guys, we are your backbone.

Update: Josh Ledgard promises your complaints will be heard.

Agreed.

I downloaded the code sample from the "Making an ASP.NET Web Site Accessible" and ran it in FireFox with javascript turned off and it didn't convert the header links to buttons at all!

Even the assessible datagrid code in the article was incomplete.

A half-hearted, poor attempt by MS to provide developer support for something that has been lacking in ASP.NET for a long, long time.

If Sun has something better and/or provides better support for its developers, then its got my vote.

Hi,

I am working with Datagrid Control. While working on datagrid I came across need to fix first row then I figured out that th is not working I went to Microsoft side to view how to handle this problem they have told that datagrid is not compliant with www standards and they have fixed up this bug in this rollup but I could not find where to download this fuckin rollup, please help me out if any body has downloaded this I am really in need of this. Thanks in advance.

Junaid Siddiqui

you must contact support for the rollup. Any support calls to microsft to recieve a hotfix, resolve an issue cuased by a hotfix or service pack are free.

I am working with Datagrid Control. While working on datagrid I came across need to fix first row then I figured out that th is not working I went to Microsoft side to view how to handle this problem they have told that datagrid is not compliant with www standards and they have fixed up this bug in this rollup but I could not find where to download this rollup, please help me out if any body has downloaded this I am really in need of this. Thanks in advance.

Since I wrote this post, I've talked to Microsoft Support. If you call them for a hotfix, they should provide it for free.