Today, the Internet Explorer Team has made available Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 for all to download. You can read the IE Team's announcement of the new release and very important milestone here from IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch on the IEBlog. Download: Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Also be sure to read this post from Program Manager Jane ...

In the last video, Esther told you all about how Instant Search makes her day-to-day life easier. Today, she's going to talk to you about Live Icons, which makes searching even faster by letting you see a preview of the files you're searching for. If you're a visual person you'll especially appreciate seeing icons instead of file names or ...

We're announcing quite a few new languages available of the Windows Search 4.0 Preview today. The following languages are available for download for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008: Arabic (Only for Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008) Brazilian Portuguese Bulgarian Chinese - Simplified Chinese - ...

OverviewFrom my past posts about implementing your own Shell Namespace, there have been some great questions posted by readers.  Many of these stem from the fact that the Namespace example is fairly simple in that it does not implement all of the behavior that is possible in Explorer.  This was done to focus on the core steps in getting ...

Last week we showed you how to make some interesting Search Folders on Windows Vista.  If you're like me, you probably can't get enough of them.  Today, I want to introduce you to new feature that's a little geeky, but very useful for anyone that has to do a lot of team-based work. The thing about Search Folders is that while they're ...

OK, more on searching today.  One of Windows Vista's coolest features that I use every day is the Windows Vista Search Folder.  The concept is simple:  a Search Folder is just a saved search.  There's a whole bunch that come with the system at installation; you can find them if you open the Start Menu, select your user ...

A couple of weeks ago we showed you some of the more popular keyboard shortcuts in Windows Vista.  Now that you've had a chance to see how shortcuts can speed up your navigation, I thought it would be a good follow-up to show you how to not only speed up your searches, but also make them more relevant to what you're looking for. Over the ...

Part 1 - Introduction  A lot of things happen when a new version of Windows is finished.  Parties are thrown, vacations are had, millions of discs are pressed, boxed, and shipped around the world.  There’s another tradition, however, that you may remember from previous releases.  We call them PowerToys… and I ...

Lately there’s been some stir about a project at Microsoft often referred to by codenames like “Casino” and “OneView.”  The team behind Casino started the project with some clear goals: to bridge the gap between searching local and remote data, and to create a next-generation desktop search experience building on ...

Today, I'd like to share with you a hidden gem inside of Windows Vista's search capabilities.  It's a neat little feature that lets you build one saved search on top of another, and we call it Query Composition.  Think composition in the mathematical sense, not in the context of writing an English paper.  To explain ...