BrandonLive

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

Just wanted to post a heads-up to interested parties, the stub page on MSDN for IOpenSearchSource and its one method have been replaced by the draft documentation.

The new page roughly sums up its use and purpose:

A client-side OpenSearch data source that sits in between the Microsoft Windows OpenSearch provider and the external data source.  With a search connector (a .searchconnector-ms file), Windows Explorer calls your implementation with the query parameters. Your implementation returns results formatted in RSS or Atom format. That allows your implementation to provide custom authentication UI and connect to the data source using its proprietary API.

More details at:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd378289(VS.85).aspx

Unfortunately we still don’t have any details on how you actually hook up an implementation of this.  The doc / SDK folks are working on this but it’s part of a larger effort that’s taking a bit of time.  In the meantime I’m going to see if I can post an example here or on CodePlex.  Most likely I’ll be posting a detailed .NET example followed by a simpler C++ version.

If you have questions about whether this API may end up being useful to you, let me know, and hopefully I can help clarify what is or isn’t possible.

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

Got yourself a shiny new Windows 7 Beta install? Here’s a little cheat sheet I made up for some of the handy new hotkey combinations, many of which I’ve become quite dependent on!

General

Windows Explorer

Taskbar modifiers

Note that this list focuses on stuff that’s specific to Windows 7. For a complete list of Windows Vista hotkeys (which should be largely unchanged except where noted above), visit this page on Microsoft.com or look in the Windows Help file.

If there’s something you think I should add, post a comment!

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.

Our video about integrating OpenSearch-enabled data source with Windows 7 is now available on Channel 9!

Check it out!

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.

I updated my Windows Search indexer gadget with a couple of fixes.  If you run the gadget, you may want to update in order to fix issues with the play and fast-forward (“index now”) buttons not properly reflecting the state of the indexer back-off feature after clicking one of them.

Also, if you like the gadget, please go to the Gadget Gallery page and give it a good rating

Download Indexer Status Gadget on Live Gallery