Search and Navigation Improvements on MSDN

Updated August 21, 2008 by TechBlogger.

As you may have noticed, many MSDN sites have had a new look since May. Since then, we've been refining these pages and adding new features and content in response to customer suggestions and usability testing.

Here's an overview of the most recent changes, and a look at what's ahead.

1. Improved Search

Our latest release includes these customer-requested improvements:

• Refinement by Product/Technology and Content Type. You can refine search results to a particular product or technology with a single click. You can also scope to a type of content, such as Downloads or MSDN Library.
• Search more stuff. We’re searching not just MSDN, but also forums, blogs, Knowledge Base (KB), and many other sources of useful technical content across Microsoft.com and beyond. And refinement will soon work across sources, so you can refine to a product such as SQL Server and see content just about that product.
• Auto-complete. As you type into the search box, a set of similar queries that other users have typed appears. Keep typing or press the down arrow to select one of the suggestions.
• Non-English Search. You can easily switch the language of search results, whether switching to English to see more results or from English to see results in your language of choice.

Try out the improved MSDN Search and tell us what you think!

None of these search improvements would be possible without the new Windows Live Search.  In addition to improved relevance, the Windows Live Search API and underlying engine made it much easier to build these new features.

2. Inclusive, Contextual Navigation

We have simplified the navigation for each of the product or technology sites we call "Developer Centers." Links in a Dev Center are now scoped to content about that product or technology.

Here are some of the key navigation improvements:

• Contextual, tabbed navigation. Clicking on a tab takes you to a page scoped to the technology or product site you are visiting. That means less clicking for you and less redundant links taking up space on the page.
• Merging the Library and Developer Centers. As a result of the contextual, tabbed navigation, “Library” content is no longer separated from the rest of the site.  This makes it much easier to switch between technical documentation and the rest of the site, and to quickly get to related content on other areas of the site.
• Consistent top-level navigation. For example, every Developer Center has  a “Downloads” tab, which is always in the same location on the page.
• Drop-down “bread crumbs” provide site context. You can quickly navigate to lower-level pages from the current page. This feature has been available in the MSDN Library for months, and it is now available across the sites.

Even though we have made many improvements, the information available is the same and will be familiar to experienced users, so the new navigation shouldn’t take long to understand and use. You can see the tabbed contextual navigation now on the MSDN homepage and on most Developer Centers now. These features are now being implemented on international MSDN pages around the world.

3. New Social Platform features

You told us you wanted to be able to mark answers as correct or incorrect, set up customized profiles, provide and rate feedback, share bookmarks, get RSS feeds of new content, and so on. We listened! Check out the new social features, including new and improved forums, blogs, social bookmarks, and much more. They are designed to help make MSDN yours.

We hope you like the new changes to MSDN, and as always we welcome your ideas and feedback. To find out more about these improvements, or just to let us know what you think, visit the MSDN Forums.