Search and Navigation Improvements on MSDN
In response to customer suggestions and many rounds of usability testing, MSDN now has a new look. You asked us to make it easier to switch between product-focused resources and simpler to find information through site navigation and search. We’ve responded with the following improvements. We will be rolling out these changes across MSDN over the coming weeks.
Improved Search
We heard very clearly that you want improved search on MSDN, with deeper and more relevant search results and the ability to scope results to the products and technologies you’re using. 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. Search refinement will soon work across sources, so when you refine to SQL Server, you can see content only 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!
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1603&SiteID=1.
Inclusive, Contextual Navigation
We’ve simplified and integrated the navigation in MSDN. Links in a Developer Center are now scoped to content about that technology or product. The left-hand navigation has moved to tabs and sub-tabs located across the top of each page.
We’ve improved the navigation in the following ways:
- Contextual, tabbed navigation. Clicking on a tab takes you to a page scoped to the technology or product site you are visiting. You no longer have to navigate to the technology or product you want. That means less clicking for you and less redundant links taking up space on the page.
- Merging Library and Developer Centers. As a result of the contextual, tabbed navigation, Library content is no longer separate from the Developer Center Web site. This makes it much easier to switch between technical documentation and related content on other areas of the site.
- Every Developer Center now has consistent top-level navigation. For example, every center has a Downloads tab that is in the same location on every page.
- Drop-down breadcrumbs provide site context. Customers can quickly navigate to lower-level pages from the current page. This feature has been available in the MSDN Library for months, and will be made available across all of the Developer Centers.
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 home page and on the ASP.NET, Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, and Windows Vista Developer Centers.
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.
Thank you!
We hope you’ll like the new changes to our site, and as always we welcome your ideas and feedback. To find out more about these changes, or just to let us know what you think, visit
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1603&SiteID=1