One of the best features of Windows Vista is something dubbed as Instant Search. Instant Search is integrated at a number of places in Windows Vista. This search feature is useful not only because it is a super fast way of finding things; what makes it absolutely priceless is that it is very context sensitive, i.e. it behaves differently depending on where it is accessed from.
It shows you different results when accessed from the Start Menu, Control Panel, Explorer, Media Player, Photo Gallery, Internet Explorer, and others. For example, when you type in the Instant Search box in the Control Panel, it gets results from within the Control Panel programs. Or if you use the Instant Search from within the Photo Gallery, it filters your photographs.
The most useful location of the Instant Search is in the Start Menu, and the quickest way to access that is to simply press the Windows Key and start typing what you are looking for and press enter to run it (this works because more often than not, what you are looking for will come as selected in the search results). The Instant Search feature filters the search results as you type.
For example, in the image on the left, I pressed the Windows Key and typed ‘min’ and immediately the Start Menu has filtered down the result to “Minesweeper”.
The good thing about the Vista Instant Search is that it nearly always gets the choice you want right. It uses a set of 20+ rules to rank the possible results which combine to get you the best result as the top one.
“Extra Tip”: If instead of the Enter key, you hit Ctrl+Shift+Enter, then the selected program will run as an administrator (or in Vista-speak, with elevated privileges).
Well, the good news doesn’t end here. Not only is the search fast, super smart in figuring out what you want, and context sensitive; it also allows for an advanced mode. If you are the kind of user who likes to really work the keyboard and are good at remembering syntaxes, the Vista Instant Search offers a huge list of parameters that you give to the search box to narrow down your search. This parameter list ranges from something as simple as applying boolean operators to your search to querying individual properties of a document (such as author, or number of slides in it). For a detailed study visit the Vista Team Blog’s page here.
So, what are some Instant Search techniques that you use?
It’s a littlebit like the “Launchy” program, isn’t it? Launchy is a small (opensource) prog to ‘launch’ programs or open files with one simple box.
Well kind of… at least in the Start Menu, it is…. Launchy, Slick Run, etc. are good replacements for the Run command in Windows.
What is really neat is that there are people working on extending the Instant Search and adding really good features to it:
http://brandonlive.com/2007/02/22/new-tool-i-made-for-vista-start/
[…] talked about the Search features in Windows Vista a couple of weeks ago. We had just barely scratched the surface when it comes to search in Vista at […]