Today
at noon we’ll be giving a session at PDC’05 titled Tips, Tricks, &
Hacks. We’ll be talking about advanced search syntax for both web
and desktop search.
For
the web, I’ve prepared a hack that makes some of
our advanced search syntax more accessible, specifically to
developers. The hack is a Trixie / Greasemonkey script that modifies the MSN Search interface at run time with javascript.
Take a look at a screenshot below or read on to see the syntax we’re illustrating with this script:
- Site search: MSDN. Use a query like “pdc (site:msdn.com | site:msdn.microsoft.com)”
- Blog search. Use a query like “pdc hasfeed:”
- Ranking sliders. Click search builder and then result ranking to play with these.
Try it out. I bet you’ll find great value in becoming a MSN Search power user. Installing the script will help you explore the possibilities.
For
IE, you’ll need to first install Trixie and then save the script file
into Program Files -> Bhelpuri -> Trixie -> Scripts.
-Andy Edmonds, PM