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 
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:
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:
This release also adds the following Vista / Server 2008 features to Windows XP / Server 2003 systems:
Read the KB article here for more details and complete feature list.
Download Links
Vista users - don’t forget to grab the indexer status gadget!
I’m pleased to announce that the second tool to join the BrandonTools.com collection is now available! It’s a new Sidebar Gadget for those who want to see what the indexer is up to and to easily control its behavior.
Note that the screenshot depicts the gadget running on WS4. The "index now" button is not available on versions prior to Windows Search 4.
Following up on the Windows Search 4.0 Preview release, I will be writing several posts about some of the new features and changes enabled by this release. One such feature, and this first one I will dive into here, is the capability to remotely search the index of another Windows PC.
This features isn’t entirely new. Windows Vista shipped nearly a year and a half ago with the ability to query the index of another Vista machine when searching file shares. The same capability extends to and from Windows Server 2008.
Windows Search 4.0 brings this capability to Windows XP machines, as well as Server 2003 - and perhaps more importantly, Windows Home Server.
So how does it work? First let’s take a look at how the user sees it. Let’s say I have a folder on Machine A called “Cool Stuff” that I want to share out. One simple way to do that is to browse to the folder in Explorer, select it, and click “Share.”
You’ll then get a friendly dialog that asks you who you’d like to share with.
“Everyone” is a simple answer for information you want to be accessible to everyone. Select it from the drop-down and click “Add” to add Everyone to the list of people the folder is shared with.
What else do I have to do on Machine A? Nothing! Windows Search 4.0 will automatically index any folders you share out, on both XP and Vista.
On Machine B, you simply navigate to the share as you normally would. That could mean typing a UNC like \\MachineA\Cool Stuff\ or it could mean using a mapped drive, redirected User folders, the Network browser, etc. Once there, just type a query in the Search box (or on XP, click the “Search” button to bring up the Search Pane) and you’re off!
Unfortunately I don’t have any XP machines to get a screenshot from, but I’ll try to add one soon.
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Hi. I'm Brandon. I work on the Explorer for Windows 7 at Microsoft. This is my blog.
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The views expressed within my blog are my own - and are not in any way indicative of those of the company I work for, Microsoft, or it's employees. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.
