VISTA general impression

[Alan Simpson]

(cont'd).Of course, you don't search Google for index.htm. You search it for
words. Same as Search in Vista. You don't search for filenames like you did
in Search Companion. You search for words and context.

Click the Start button, click your user name, and open the Searches folder
to see some examples of saved searches (virtual folders).

Or try some stuff out for yourself. If you have any songs in the Rock
category, click Start, choose Search and type Rock in the Search box. Or, if
you get too much stuff type genre:rock to narrow it down. Or narrow it down
to MP3s in the Rock category with type:mp3 AND genre:rock. It finds them
all. Filename and location are irrelevant.

If you're using Windows Mail for e-mail and these newsgroups, click the
Start button and type vista. You'll see everything that contains Vista, even
e-mail messages and newsgroups. And those things aren't even files.

You just have to forget everything you know about the XP Search Companion
and think of it as a search engine for all your documents and messages.
System files don't count, because those aren't part of everyday searching
for most folks. But you can force it to search outside the index to find
those things, when necessary. It's just slow because like the old search
companion it lumbers through the whole filesystem, not the much speedier
search index.

 

[Chris Game]

Well of course we're used to that in browsing things like images,
the new Windows Photo Gallery allows one to add tags for exactly
that purpose. They don't carry over to the file browser (Explorer
or whatever it's called in vista) however.

Apparently they do, and you can add tags directly from the Explorer
window for jpeg files BUT not for text files!

 

[Alan Simpson]

It's not just about pictures at all. Not by a long shot. It's about many
types of files. And with text files the content is indexed so you don't even
need to worry about tags. But you can tag many types of files. Right-click a
file and choose Properties. Then click the Details tab.

Also, open a folder and go to Details view. Then right-click a column
heading and choose More. See all those columns you can show? They're all
properties that apply to different kinds of files.

And it's not just files either. If you use Windows Mail you can search for
something like:

from:wiley

To see all message that have "wiley" in the sender's address.

Or something like the one bepw to see all MP3s in the Rock genre modified
after July 1, 2006. Ain't no pictures or filenames in this query, but it
works.

type:mp3 genre:rock datemodified:>7/1/06

It's wayyyyy bigger than what you're thinking. But it takes some time to
learn to master it, and maybe a little effort to tweak it to maximum
performance. But by 2010 everyone will be doing it this way. We'll look back
at the way we've been doing things up till now and laugh at how lame it all
was. You'll see...

 

[Alan Simpson]

Ooops, I forgot the uppercase ANDs in that last query. It's more like:

type:mp3 AND genre:rock AND datemodified:>7/1/06

But there are actually two different querying syntaxes. Once that's kind
rigid like the one above. And another natural search language with a more
flexible syntax.

 

[Bernie]

Alan thanks for persisting with this. The more I find out the more I
think of ways it would be useful.

As a developer I have a huge number of code files (at least 30MB) that
are basically text files containing code that does something that I
later need to do again in another app. I've used many different code
snippet database programs that were good but too cumbersome to bother
making the entries in the first place. Something like this would bypass
the need for such things and that would greatly increase productivity.

Two questions on this;

1. How much of it is available now?
2. What do I have to do to get all the files indexed?

I know about the file and folder properties having metadata tabs. It
would be good if the metadata could be made or captured automatically. I
know with digital photographs it already is but for other kinds of files
if I need to input the metadata it would be good if this could be part
of the Save As dialog.

 

[Alan Simpson]

1) Well, it's not WinFS. But there's a lot. I don't know to put into
specific words what "a lot" means. It seems to cover all properties in all
files that currently have properties. And it seems to cover all forms of
text file content. For example I can do a search for text in comments in .cs
files and it finds the .cs files. I can't tag the .cs. files. But I don't
really need to because the contents of all those files are in the search
index.

2) You don't want to index all files. Only document files. Keep all system
files and program files (except your own source code, of course) out of the
index. You can use the old style searches for the occasional search for
system files.

By default the search index only covers documents within your user account
folders, the Start menu, and offline files. And it doesn't cover all
extensions. But you can add other locations to your search index through the
Indexing Options dialog box. (Click Start, type inde and click Indexing
Options). You can also tweak some settings on the Search tab in Folder
Options.

I'm sure plenty of programs created after Vista will have plenty of
automatic property capturing. All the Office 2007 programs have that built
in now, as well as options to tag a file in the Save As dialog box). I
assume all of the developer tools will too. How long it takes for other
vendors to get on board is anyone's guess. But seems it would be crazy to
release a new product these days that doesn't support the notion. Coz to
continue doing this stuff the same way we have been since DOS and floppy
disks is getting a little ridiculous.

Alan thanks for persisting with this. The more I find out the more I think
of ways it would be useful.

As a developer I have a huge number of code files (at least 30MB) that are
basically text files containing code that does something that I later need
to do again in another app. I've used many different code snippet database
programs that were good but too cumbersome to bother making the entries in
the first place. Something like this would bypass the need for such things
and that would greatly increase productivity.

Two questions on this;

1. How much of it is available now?
2. What do I have to do to get all the files indexed?

I know about the file and folder properties having metadata tabs. It would
be good if the metadata could be made or captured automatically. I know
with digital photographs it already is but for other kinds of files if I
need to input the metadata it would be good if this could be part of the
Save As dialog.

 

[Bernie]

Thanks again Alan. I've added a few file types and changed what gets
indexed on the source code files as well as expanded the scope to my
data drive. It will probably take several hours to index but it looks
like it will be worth it. Now I'm thinking it's a shame this is only a
beta and I will have to destroy all that work when the real thing comes
along.

Can you point me to something where I can get a good handle on the
construction of search queries?

 

[Alan Simpson]

I haven't found any real documentation on the query language. If you search
MSDN for "vista query" you can find a little stuff on how to build apps that
support search. (Basically you use their Save As dialog box). Or search
Microsoft for "Vista search" or something. I've mostly just been guessing
and hacking my way through it.

In earlier builds you could pick a property name from a drop-down menu. But
that disappeared in 5472. The basic rule is that you separate a property
name from a value with a colon (e.g. from:wiley), datemodifed:07/26/2007.
Separate multiple search items with uppercase AND or OR. You can use < and >
operators with dates (e.g. datemodifed:>07/26/2007).

Even though it's a beta you could start tagging things now in
non-destructive ways. In source code create a comment that contains keywords
(tags) you want to search on. You don't really need a properties sheet with
text files. And of course any file type that has a properties sheet will
retain any properties you set. That stuff is permanent and will be indexed
in the next build. In Photo Gallery you can tag files that don't have
appropriate properties sheets. For example, you can tag bmp files even
though there's no property for tags in the bmp file type. I imagine those
kinds of tags would be lost from one build to another. But that's just Photo
Gallery and I'm just assuming.

It's also important to know that where you start the search is important.
When you search from the Start menu, or after choosing Start > Search, you
search the whole index. But if you launch from a specific folder, you search
only that folder and its subfolders.

Like the lack of drivers, the lack of info has been a real bugaboo
throughout this OS beta.

 

[Bernie]

Thanks again Alan. I suspect that the "tagging" of files that don't
natively support tags (like .bmp) means the info is put into a database
somewhere which would explain losing them between installations.

 

[Chris Game]

It's not just about pictures at all. Not by a long shot. It's
about many types of files. And with text files the content is
indexed so you don't even need to worry about tags. But you can
tag many types of files. Right-click a file and choose
Properties. Then click the Details tab.

<tries .pdf file>
No such property
<tries theme file>
No tags available
<tries .ini file>
No tags in properties
<tries .adr file>
No
<tries .dat file>
No
<tries .css file>
No
....