How to search MSDN in default browser when pressing F1 in Visual Studio 2008?

Question

In 2010, if I press F1, then VS will open the MSDN help page for the object the cursor is on. It even passes the target structure in the query string to get the correct documentation page. I want this kind of behavior in 2008, but I can’t figure out how to do it.

Now it will open the help page in the integrated viewer or external viewer (depending on the option "Settings" → "Environment" → "Help" → "Show Help", but both of them are ugly and use some very old CSS styles. Open it in my default browser.

The url is right in the viewer, so I know that it’s just a matter of extracting this macro and opening a default browser or finding a very well hidden setting that makes VS itself.

This question is similar, but has not received a good answer, and I do not consider these answers to be suitable, because I want to go directly to the correct MSDN page, and not search Google / Bing / what for the object name.

Answer 1

The first link has a good suggestion. Unbind the key binding for F1, write a macro and then map the macro to F1. The second link has a different macro.

http://s344.codeinspot.com/q/1309159

Download browser search URL from Visual Studio

Answer 2

For Visual Studio 2013, I use external tools for this. Click "Tools" / "External / Add". For url you can use this

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Search/en-US?query=$(CurText) 

Then you can bind the key to an external tool.