Code Crunching

At the EKON I gave a session on the Windows Vista search engine and how to feed it with own content. One thing I heard quiet often was Who bothers using it. or It is hard to find what you are looking for! Well, you may be right, but I think you are wrong.

First: how is it designed? Who did Microsoft have in mind when implementing the search feature right in to the start menu of Windows Vista? Not you, probably. Microsoft designed it for the laymen using Windows, persons who use the computer as part of their work life, as part of their free-time. The average user is probably quiet happy how well the search works. But then you are coming and you tell me you can't find what you are looking for. Why?

Well, mot of us remember searches from a time when it worked strictly on file names, like dir *demo*.*, but this is not how the Windows Vista search works. The search engine (aka Windows Desktop Search 3.x) matches your search against the file name, the content of the file, meta data of the file, data about the program used to create the file, and quiet a few other things.

If you want Windows Vista to search for files containing demo in their name, you have to tell Vista to do so. And it is quiet easy, once you know it, simply type: file:(demo) and the search will return just those. You want to search for files created by a specific person, well you use author:(Daniel Wischnewski) or author:(Daniel OR Bob) (AND, NOT, OR, and so on are case-sensitive)and so on.

Once you know that the search works this way, it is time to get to know over 50 search modifiers, all part of the advanced query language coming with the Windows Desktop Search. Btw, if you like what you read here, but you are still running on Windows XP, go get it!