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Comment by aosaigh | Hacker News Reader

I've tried to use an offline documentation browser a few times before (Dash on Mac) but have never really been able to get into the habit of using it. I generally just end up Googling for what I'm looking for. Outside of low-connectivity situations, what benefits do people find with these viewers?

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Google has become a terrible search engine to the point that the first mention of the official documentation will be half a page down with some random version. I have to enter like 3 queries for the most trivial workflow of displaying the official documentation’s relevant pages.

Also, even with high speed internet, it is several seconds at least, while zeal/dash will return it basically instantly.

> what benefits do people find with these viewers?

I stop and think about the issue instead of just googling for an answer.

Also, I removed the wifi card from my laptop so I can work from a room without ethernet letting myself get distracted by the internet.

For me, the combination of Dash and Alfred is the productivity boost. Alfred makes it very easy to search documentation in Dash. You can have unique keywords in Alfred to target specific packages in Dash. For example, “guava: ImmutableList” or “sidekiq: Client”. I find it especially useful with Dash on a secondary monitor while the editor is on the primary so that both are visible at the same time.

What's the difference between using Alfred to search vs using the hotkey to open a Dash window in search mode?

I don’t think there really is a significant difference, unless you’re already using Alfred. I’m an Alfred user and it’s kind of the “start everything place” window for me, the system-wide equivalent of a text editor’s command palette, a CLI for the GUI.

Agreed. I just tried out the Dash hot key and it’s basically the same. I’m tempted to claim the Alfred integration is better but that’s probably just me being a user of Alfred.

For many queries, Google offers more of a "ready-made" solution e.g. from a StackOverflow post or blog.

When looking at the offline documentation, I know that I am looking at a supported version (not something ancient or much newer than what is deployed in production) and that I am looking at the "authorative" answer i.e. the "real" docs not some third party comments.

When the program I am developing is expected to run correctly even in the presence of errors, it makes a lot of sense to me to consult the authorative documentation rather than "the web" which rarely covers all of the possible corner cases.

Speed and snappiness mainly. Skips at least two slow page loads (Google and the docs page).

But yeah, it took me a while to get into the habit as well, and the benefit was pretty small. It mainly just feels nice.

Exceptionally quick lookups: alt + space and Dash is there with the search focused. I search and press alt + tab or esc to get back into my editor.

I actually only started using Zeal during the last few months...but similar to you, the trap i fall into is that muscle memory has not been built up with me to *remember* to check zeal before resorting to a search engine. However, those few times that i *did* remember to use zeal, for me it was really great, solid experience!

Honestly: that it's not Google.

A more limited and focused selection of documentation gets me exactly what I need. It's also a lot faster then documentation websites.

I have felt the same way, and curious to what others say about it. I assume the problem I have is that I am not always good at asking the questions of the documentation that I mean, and Google is good at inferring my meaning. More often than not, I don't just need the method signature, but some narrative around what and why. But I try things like Dash again when they come up, or moments like this. To your question, offline browsing is the biggest benefit I see. Long plane ride ahead, or cruise, or train ride? Take your doc with you.

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