MSDN Search powered by MSN - v1 Review and Next Steps

Comments

# Matt Dargs said on March 8, 2006 1:54 PM:

One thing I'd really like to see is the ability to get restrict search results by programming language / product / technology easily (a la Visual Studio).  I would think this should be a setting of some kind so that I could restrict all searches for a "session".  Ideally, you'd be able to specify MSDN sections to search within the search string so it would be possible to set up several different search providers in IE7- e.g. one for the standard C++ library, one for C#, one for web etc.

I see you've got it on your todo list (search from here, filtering), but I thought I'd cast my vote for it!

  Regards,

      Matt.

# Anand Narayanaswamy said on March 11, 2006 11:24 PM:

This is a very cool application. It loads fast and returns good amount of results. I searched for my articles with my name as keyword and it returned around 69 results from various sources such as codeguru.com, aspalliance.com etc. I think they are targetting only thosae sites which are codewise community members.

The blog returned only one result for my keyword. I think they should get the results from msmvps.com.

# Richard said on March 22, 2006 3:58 PM:

Sorry, but it seems to suck.

"driving directx alpha blending" returned zero hits?

Phil Taylor wrote the "Driving DirectX" column on MSDN for at least 12 or so columns and his alpha blending articles are a very good explanation of this feature in D3D, even if its in DirectX 8.1 terms.

Even searching for "driving directx" turned up none of Phil's Columns, while a google search for that term immediately turned up Phil's column, and googling for the exact phrase above in google yield's Phil's column as the first hit.

So, I'd have to say that this new improved msdn search still sucks.

# Jack Hoxley [MVP] said on March 22, 2006 4:32 PM:

Hi,

Excellent to see things improving, but my one biggest grievance with MSDN search is still there - archived results.

When answering forum questions I like to cross-reference them with the official documentation. Just makes for a better answer :-)

Anyway, DirectX uses a bimonthly SDK update - so for 9.0c there have been 9 (I think) SDK's already. Much of the help-file content still exists online but in archived form. I don't want the archived version - I want the current one!

Example: I want to point a thread to the "ID3DXMesh" interface. The correct doc page is: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/directx9_c/ID3DXMesh.asp

If I go to http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/search/ and type in "ID3DXMesh" and hit search 22 of the first 25 results are old/stale/archive links. The remaining 3 point to members of that interface, but still require an extra click/navigation from the search result to get where I want to be.

To get around this I use the following search "ID3DXMesh NOT (inurl:archive)" and it's suddenly the first result returned - which is what I originally wanted. Yay!

By comparison, if I run a search for "ID3DXMesh" via Google I don't get any archive results and I get the page I wanted first time.

In conclusion...

Searching archive content is definitely useful, but not for API documentation. If I'm searching for an API/keyword then I want the latest fresh content to be at the top of my list unless I specifically request it to bring up archive (and by that I mean searching for "ID3DXMesh October 05 SDK" for example)...

Any chance you'd be so kind as to sort this minor little thing out for me? :-)

Cheers,
Jack

# Tim Roberts said on March 22, 2006 5:04 PM:

Very nice.  I noticed one amusing and quite trivial thing.  I searched for "PoRegisterSystemState", since I had been working with it.  From IE6, it returned one result, "Results 1 - 1 of about 1".  From Firefox, it returned the same single result, but called it "Results 1 - 2 of about 2"!

I look forwardto using it more.

# Brian Catlin said on March 22, 2006 6:27 PM:

The new search doesn't find things on the MSDN site nearly as well as Google.  In the search box I typed in NdisOidRequest.  It came back with "There are no search results to display"; however, Google was able to find it on two pages on Msdn.Microsoft.com

# Kim Gräsman said on March 23, 2006 6:17 AM:

For me, the most important are:

- Search From Here
- Filtering Results
- Crawlability

Also, I'd love some way of putting my search into context. Maybe that is Search From Here, not sure...

Try for example:
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/search/Default.aspx?query=RegisterWaitForSingleObject

I made that search as a native developer looking for the function RegisterWaitForSingleObject. The first 5 hits mean nothing to me. If I could elect to just search the Platform SDK, that'd be great.

I think it's very rare that you want to search both the Platform SDK and the .NET SDK in a single search, but there may be cases where that's convenient.

# Phil Webster said on March 23, 2006 9:43 PM:

- need to be able to specify favorite search areas so you don't have to keep narrowing searches every time you return

examples:

a. DirectShow Win32 (no Windows Mobile or Windows CE)

b. MFC on Win32

(this is the biggest complaint about search on MSDN Code Center Premium)


- Search options:

a.  No archived content

b.  Public Downloads

c.  Subscriber downloads

d.  Changes in latest version (example: changes in latest version of the Windows Vista (Platform) SDK.



- needs option to search the newsgroup archive;  there is a lot of history on the MS newsgroups (a minimum would be the MSDN Managed Newsgroups)

# Joseph M. Newcomer said on March 25, 2006 12:02 AM:

I am trying to figure out exactly what benefit this has.  Does this mean that there is yet a new search engine for the MSDN when we receive it on CD/DVD?  Of course, nobody would mistake an online Web search for a local search, since the online Web search is, to put it mildly, completely useless.  I can't use it while flying at 35,000 feet over Utah, or in a hotel room without wireless, or on a client site where I don't have Web access for security reasons; therefore, ANY feature of MSDN that says "download" or "access Web" is an outrage.

Now, the current MSDN search engine sucks.  Big time.  Each "improvement" in the MSDN has destroyed its utility, so I do not under any circumstances think that an "improved" search engine is other than a fevered dream.

In an intelligent design, I would be able to
--- Set any search limit I wanted, not something useless like the hardwired "500"
--- be able to remove useless categories such as "CE", "FoxPro", "Office", "Exchange", etc. from my MFC world by clicking on the offending location and getting a dropdown that says "remove this category from my search set".  In the newer releases we are given some bizarre, incomprehensible boolean expression mechanism, but we have to guess what categories the offending items belong in.  This strikes me as the low point in search engine development
--- STOP ELIMINATING IMPORTANT ARTICLES!!!!  Some nitwit keeps deleting important articles, leaving in erroneous articles (some of which I've been trying to get fixed for years) or obsolete Win16 articles.
--- MAKE SURE THAT WHEN I INSTALL IT, EVERYTHING I NEED IS INSTALLED.  Sitting at 35,000 feet only have it ask me to install library CD 2 is not useful.
--- Years ago, we could add annotations.  In fact, we could download annotations from a number of sites and have them added for us, so when we clicked into something, we got additional information, including errors that others had discovered in the documentation.  This was eliminated.  This is stupid.
--- I tried to use the online demo to search for some topics, and while I can find them in my locally installed MSDN, I could not get ANY hits from the new online search.  Pointless.
--- I saw no mechanism to limit my search to the sort of articles a C/C++/MFC devloper needs.  What possible good is this?

Overall, I would suggest you stop "improving" things for political purposes (such as using MSN search) and start IMPROVING them by meeting our actual needs, not somebody's pet internal agenda.  I see more and more that Microsoft's internal agendas are taking precedence over utility and common sense, and frankly I'm getting a little tired of the whole thing.  Anyone who has tried to use the abomination known as VS.NET realizes that fixing bugs and making real improvements takes second place to ego trips and political decisions.

# MSDN amp TechNet Search Blog MSDN Search powered by MSN v1 Review and | Insomnia Cure said on June 13, 2009 1:57 AM:

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