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Hope you’re all enjoying the Windows 7 RC!

This week we published an update to the Federated Search Implementer’s Guide.  This update includes some new information as well as some corrections to the original document.  Most crucially, the original document erroneously indicated that the URL template contained an attribute called “format” – when it was referring to the “type” attribute.  So if you followed the guide exactly, your OSDX file wouldn’t work properly with Windows 7 (or anybody else following the OpenSearch spec).

This update also includes additions such as information about providing “collection” templates to display results without the user entering a query, details about URL protocol support, and more.

Link: Windows 7 Federated Search Provider Implementer’s Guide

Late last night Steven updated the E7 Blog with a post about Federated Search in Windows 7.  I co-authored the post with two program managers from my team.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

We just posted the first version of the Windows 7 Federated Search Implementer’s Guide! You can download it here.

This document covers subjects such as crafting the best OpenSearch Description File for your site, returning files and custom properties, customizing the results view, optimizing your source for performance, and more. If you’re interested in developing an OpenSearch source for Windows 7, check it out! And as always, please share your feedback!

Link: Windows 7 Federated Search Provider Implementer’s Guide

Long Zheng of iStartedSomething.com has taken it upon himself to enable users to leverage my Windows 7 feature, called Search Federation, to search their Flickr photos from inside the Explorer.  

It looks like a work-in-progress, and since his service works as a proxy to talk to Flickr, performance isn’t what it would be if Flickr had a native implementation.  But for something he threw together over the last night or two I’m impressed!

We’ll be talking more about Search Federation on the Engineering Windows 7 blog soon, and will have much more to share when we deliver the upcoming Windows 7 beta release.

It’s been a whirlwind of a trip here in LA.  When I arrived I thought I’d be blogging, posting photos, and keeping in touch with the outside world the whole time.  Well, that didn’t quite work out.  There was always so much going on and so much to do, that the little downtime I had when I arrived back at my hotel was spent squeezing some of that “sleep” stuff into my schedule.

In case you’re wondering which of the features unveiled at PDC is “my baby,” that would be the OpenSearch-based search federation feature in the Windows Explorer, detailed in the Find & Organize session which you can watch here.

We also have a Channel 9 video covering the new Libraries feature and other user experience improvements in Explorer for Windows 7.  This video is part 1 of a two part series, the second of which covers the Search Federation feature (and yours truly).

For now, the best place to learn more about OpenSearch in Windows 7 is to watch the session video at the link below.

PDC 2008 session - Windows 7: Empower users to find, visualize and organize their data with Libraries and the Explorer

About a week ago we posted an entry to the Windows 7 Engineering Team Blog about Windows Desktop Search, describing the motivation behind indexing files and what investments we’re making in that area of the system.  It’s a good read so check it out if you haven’t already.

This afternoon we made a follow-up post addressing some of the suggestions, comments, and concerns that showed up in the comments to the original entry.

If you have more feedback, please keep it coming.  I and others will try to respond in the comments over there, or in future follow-ups.

In addition to the aforementioned e-mailing, I also spent a little of the weekend on some personal projects, and did some poking around at the OpenSearch discussion group. 

I was curious about the fact that OpenSearch 1.1 has been stuck in “Draft 3″ status for well over a year now.  Apparently my prodding has provoked Dewitt Clinton, who originally developed and maintained the spec, to set up a Google Code project to solidify OpenSearch 1.1 and to have a place for future contributions to be sent.  Cool stuff!

When I first posted about the WS4 release on Neowin a few members had a response that I had never expected.  Some examples:

Windam - I wonder why this would be released for Vista since search is already a well integrated feature to begin with.
Is it just because(optional)?

Maudit - Pardon my ignorance, but what the difference between Windows Search 4.0 and the one in Vista ultimate sp1, does it streamline into windows ?

A similar question was asked on Channel 9.

The answer is quite simple:

• Windows Vista includes “Windows Search 3.0″
• Windows Search 4 is an upgraded version of the indexer built-in to Vista.
• This release does not change the User Interface, it looks exactly the same.  The improvements are around responsiveness, resource usage, reliability, API support, etc.

A good analogy here might be DirectX.  Windows XP shipped with DirectX 8.1.  When DirectX 9 was released for XP, it didn’t change the way anything looked or behaved, but it made your system better.  You may apply a similar understanding to WS4.

Windows Search 4.0 was released this afternoon.  This release focuses on performance and reliability improvements.  Here are some highlights:

• Faster queries, often several times faster
• Faster indexing / reduced resource usage
• Support for EFS (encrypted folders)
• Support for indexing delegate mailboxes
• Fixes for all the top reported Watson crashes / errors
• New group policy options

This release also adds the following Vista / Server 2008 features to Windows XP / Server 2003 systems:

• Remote query support (using the server’s indexed when querying a network share)
• Support for Vista-style preview handlers (Office 2007 documents, etc)

Read the KB article here for more details and complete feature list.

Download Links

Vista / 2008                    32-bit    |    64-bit

XP                                   32-bit    |    64-bit

2003 / WHS                    32-bit    |    64-bit

Vista users - don’t forget to grab the indexer status gadget!

ReadWriteWeb has an interesting story (if interesting means, “haven’t I read this before?”) titled “The URL is Dead, Long Live Search.“  As you might guess, it’s about search boxes basically replacing the address bar.

This piece caught my attention:

Of the 10 fastest rising search terms on Google last year, 7 were for searches where adding a “.com” would have brought the user to the correct site. These are called “navigational” searches — searches done when the user already knows exactly where he or she wants to end up — and they make up a surprising large number of total seaches.

I question this logic.  Just because the user could have typed “.com” after the search term(s) into the address bar, but didn’t, doesn’t mean the domain / URL wasn’t vitally important.  Why?  Because one of the most significant factors in search engine rankings is the URL.  The reason that “Brandon Tools” returns brandontools.com as the first result is almost entirely the fact that the URL is BrandonTools.com. 

As far as I can tell, nothing has changed recently.  Domains and content-appropriate URLs have always been vitally important to search engine rankings, which have been vitally important to traffic for about 10 years now, especially if you have a brand or trademark that people already recognize.