Following the beta release of Google’s Desktop Search, Microsoft has now released its own MSN Toolbar Suite Beta.
MSN TOOLBAR SUITE BETA
Everyone is jumping forward to get their version of Desktop Search up and running. Following the beta release of Google’s Desktop Search, and Microsoft has now released its own MSN Toolbar Suite Beta. Just recently Ask Jeeves has released a sneak preview of their Ask Jeeves Desktop Search, and Yahoo promises one on the way.
How is it that Web searches are so fast and localised searches were so slow? This new generation of desktop searching tools changes that.
This issue is a continuation of our series on Desktop Searching tools. We’ll tell you how to install MSN Toolbar Suite to the best effect (hint – the Microsoft directions are incomplete). And a comparison with the main rival for hearts and minds, Google Desktop Search. We’ll also review of how well we found the MSN Toolbar Suite performed compared to the expectations we were given from Microsoft themselves.
Because this is OFFICE Watch our main focus is on how it works with Office products and files. In that regards there are some disappointments.
PROMISES
“Find anything, anywhere, fast”. It is impossible for Microsoft to live up to this standard that they have set themselves. Anything? Where are my glasses? Where is my old girlfriend? Where is hope?
The MSN Toolbar Suite fact sheet quickly alludes to this claim by specifying that they mean documents, media files and email items. Anywhere? This product allows you to define the location of specific files you want indexed, but it is supposedly restricted to a single computer. Officially it does not search across networked computers, making the anywhere promise false too.
Tip: MSN Toolbar Suite can index network drives but only if they are mapped network drives. Firstly, to map a network drive, go to Windows Explorer, and select Tools > Map Network Drive… In the dialogue box that appears, select a letter for your drive (A,B,M-Z) and select ‘Browse…’ to browse for the network folder you want to map to. Click ‘Ok’, then ‘Finish’. Then tell the indexer to scan that drive as mentioned below.
Fast? Ok, the speed for this product when searching is good. I was impressed. But this could be because I’ve only had the Windows ‘file-search’ speed to compare it to.
INSTALLATION
Before installing MSN Toolbar Suite you should install the Adobe PDF iFilter. This will let you search the contents of PDF files. Download IFilter free from Adobe.
The MSN Toolbar Suite Beta can be downloaded from msn.com just 4.70 MB. It is truly a Suite of Toolbars, adding MSN Toolbars to Microsoft Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer and Microsoft Office Outlook 2000 and newer and adds the new ‘Deskbar’ next to the system tray.
Once you’ve downloaded the two programs shut down all other programs, especially Internet Explorer, and Explorer folder views and Outlook (including detaching any PDA’s linked to Outlook).
Install the iFilter first so the MSN indexer will search PDF file contents from the beginning. Then install MSN Toolbar Suite.
In typical Microsoft manner, during installation you are given the options to make MSN Search your default search engine, and to make msn.com your home page. At least Microsoft asks such things these days. If you are happy with your current configurations, I suggest you uncheck these options.
Also, as always, you are asked to be involved in the Customer Experience Improvement Program in which bug reports are sent automatically to Microsoft. Enrolment is entirely up to you.
Refreshingly, you don’t have to restart Windows XP entirely once the installation of MSN Toolbar Suite Beta is done (it may be necessary for Windows 2000).,. You only have to restart Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, and especially Outlook. You have to start Outlook to let the indexer access the email data,
Once the installation has finished, you are taken to a “MSN Toolbar Suite has been successfully installed” web page, with the MSN toolbar displayed. This page allows you to take a tour, learn more about the individual toolbars, or learn about indexing. Take note that if you check ‘Automatically close Internet Explorer windows’, they will not be reopened afterwards, so remember what sites you are visiting!
RUNNING IT FOR THE FIRST TIME
Once you have installed this Toolbar Suite, and you want to start searching (via one of your many toolbars), you have to manually make MSN Desktop Search start indexing.
If you try to search immediately MSN Desktop Search will appear and quote “Desktop Search isn’t running…” Grrrr, it obviously is running. The problem is that the program hasn’t yet indexed your files. (Right click the MSN icon in the system tray, and select ‘Indexing Status” to see what’s happening).
To get going select ‘Index now’ on this Indexing Status window to force MSN Desktop Search to index your files, so you can start searching.
INDEXING
Indexing is the creating the index of your files that MSN will check against when searching.
A good feature of the MSN Desktop Search is that it allows you to force indexing (as described above).
It also shows you how many items you’ve indexed, and are yet to index (a feature not found in the Google Desktop Search).
It also has a better snooze/pause option than Google’s. The MSN Desktop Search can snooze for between15 seconds to 1 day, compared to Google’s 15 minutes only. Selecting ‘Snooze’ will stop the indexing for the selected amount of time. If the indexer is snoozing you can also ‘Wake Up’ if need be, to start indexing again.
The MSN Desktop Search seems to index new files very quickly, whether you create or update a file, it is added to the indexing list. However there doesn’t seem to be a relation between ‘Items left to index’ displayed in the Indexing Status to the actual items you actually have left to index. Adding one new calendar file supposedly added 30 more items to index.
If your index gets too messy, or you just want to start all over, MSN allows you to rebuild your whole index. Right-click the MSN icon on the system tray, and select ‘Indexing Options…’ In the ‘Desktop Search’ option, click ‘Rebuild Index’. Another prudent feature omitted from Google Desktop.
WHAT IS INDEXED?
Checking off Microsoft’s fact sheet of the MSN Toolbar Suite Beta, most expectations were met. Outlook 2000 + e-mail, attachments, contacts, calendar, tasks and notes items were found, searching titles and content. Office Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint documents and plain text files were found when searched as well, content and titles.
Not all expected items were returned in searches. Web pages such as .HTM were searched correctly, but the useful .MHT files were not. This is strange, considering that MHT files are Microsoft’s own format.
.RTF, .XML, .PUB and Reader .LIT files are only searched by their titles, not their content. While the omission of .LIT books was expected, the lack of searching for RTF files is unforgivable. RTF is a common format, especially for sharing documents without the worry of nasty Word macros hitching a ride.
Publisher is supposedly part of the Microsoft Office suite, but the document format is usually forgotten even by the company that makes the product.
And no XML searching? After all the noise we’ve heard from Microsoft about XML over recent years, adding this to the indexing capabilities should have been a forgone conclusion. Even more unforgivable since XML is just plain text and could be added simply by including it in the list of accepted extensions.
At first, Adobe PDF files are only searched through their titles, unless you followed our advice (see above) and installed the iFilter first. For MSN Desktop Search to search through their contents as well, IFilter has to be installed.
MSN Desktop Search appears to need a restart after installation of iFilter to make the two work together.. All this could have been stated clearer on the fact sheet, and may cause confusion as to why PDF content is not being searched through. Download IFilter here.
Media files are also not as clear cut. The MSN Desktop Search searches through some properties, but not all. For example the following properties of images were searched : dimension sizes, camera model, camera equipment, but not dpi. Just because you can see an image property in Microsoft Office Picture Manager does not mean that it is included in those searched.
WHERE IS INDEXED?
Only My Documents and Email (no attachments) are indexed by default.
To add other folders or drives to be indexed, right-click the MSN icon on the system tray, and select ‘Indexing Options…’ Select ‘Desktop Search’ on the left side menu. There are 3 options given for locations to be indexed. Email and all hard disks, Email and the My Documents folder (default), and Specific locations. All are pretty self-explanatory. Specific folders or drives can be defined by selecting ‘Specific Locations’, clicking ‘Browse…’ and finding the folder or drive on the Locations dialogue that appears. Just check the box next to the location(s) required, and click ok. You may want to force indexing to update the index with your newly selected folders.
EMAIL ATTACHMENTS
Are your email attachments not being searched? For MSN Desktop to search through your email attachments, they have to be indexed, and by default MSN Desktop does not index them.
To index your email attachments, select MSN > Options > Toolbar Options on the MSN Toolbar in Outlook. [Or right-click the MSN icon on the system tray, and select ‘Indexing Options…’].
Select ‘Desktop Search’ on the left side menu. Check the ‘Index email attachments’ checkbox. Click ‘OK’.
SIMPLICITY
Google’s Desktop Search is simple and elegant. MSN’s toolbars include many ‘useless’ links to sites like Shopping, Money etc. The Internet and Windows Explorer toolbar has many buttons, looking a little too cluttered. It is like comparing the spartan Google.com with frilly MSN.com.
THE TOOLBARS
The MSN Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer toolbars are the same. They have a function which allows you to enter a search term, and it highlights all instances of that term on the page. It also creates a thumbnail of the file (for example a web page) and locates the search terms via different coloured dots. This is very cute in Internet Explorer, but seems to do nothing in Windows Explorer. The form fill option is another that may be useful in Internet Explorer, yet absolutely pointless in Windows Explorer. Perhaps Microsoft should think about a slightly different toolbar for Windows Explorer considering.
The Outlook MSN Toolbar allows you to search Outlook, your Desktop or the web. However, each time you do a search, once entering the keywords you have to select the search button and choose which of these you want to search in. This can get a bit tedious. The default search is Outlook (if you press enter instead of choosing a location). The other toolbars allow you to change from within searching the Web or your Desktop, but actually show which one you are searching from.
The Outlook MSN Toolbar is missing a feature which the original slow Find feature in Outlook has. The Find feature of Outlook allows you to select the folder you want to search in – the default is whatever folder you are currently in. This helpful restriction is not found in the Outlook MSN toolbar. It does not give you any choice of location on which to search, other than Outlook, Desktop or web, and it doesn’t even make which one you are searching from clear.
A feature of the MSN Desktop Search that does not appear in the Google’s version is the sorting of the results found. The results displayed are sortable depending on what results they are. Documents can be sorted by title, author, date, size, type, folder and relevance. The leftmost column, with that little blue bar in it, shows the relevance rating. Emails can be sorted by from, subject, received, size and folder. Music can be sorted by title, artist, album, genre etc.
Just clicking on any of these columns will sort the results. At the moment however, the ‘Type’ column seems to hold either ‘Outlook Message’ if the file is an email, or nothing if the file is anything else. Considering this is a Beta version, let’s hope Microsoft will fix this up.
The results displayed are promised to enable ‘quick access to actions such as managing, sharing, deleting, opening or playing files’. MSN Desktop Search basically integrates the usual Windows action for each file (by right-clicking it) – again something that Google Desktop doesn’t do.
Warning: When searching for emails, MSN includes those in your Deleted Items folder. Watch out for attachments you might find here.
The Deskbar is a different toolbar, one that appears next to your system tray. It searches for emails and files like the other toolbars, but also programs on your computer. Typing in ‘solitaire’ for example brings up a link to the game. This searching is quick and convenient.
An interesting feature is to also create shortcuts for programs, files or web pages. Typing in a defined character string into the Deskbar will trigger the item you’ve linked to it. This will look great in demos at conferences but I’m not sure that its better than links in the Quick Launch bar on the other side of the screen. However some smart people might be able to make this feature do some clever things. To find out more click the MSN butterfly on the Deskbar. Select Help > Desktop Search Help. Select ‘Tips and Tricks’ in Contents and select ‘Create Desktop Shortcut’. Follow these tips to create shortcuts for the MSN Deskbar.
WHICH IS BEST?
The MSN Desktop Search is better than the Google Desktop – at least comparing the two current betas. The MSN offering gives you more control over what is searched (additional drives including mapped network drives). In addition the results display is more powerful with more searching options and the ability to right-click to actions appropriate for that file.
Google Desktop will, hopefully, integrate the Acrobat iFilter into its’ abilities soon. Both companies need to broaden the type of documents covered – Microsoft in particular could at least make an effort to include the document formats created by the company itself.
MSN Desktop Search gives you more control over the indexing process with better pausing options and a re-building index choice. At our human scale the speed of indexing and searching for results seems equivalent – doubtless experts will be able to compare the two down to fractions of a second,
Google Desktop Search has a superior rival, at least for the moment. GDS has three things going for it: a simpler and cleaner interface, support for non-Microsoft browsers and the fact that’s its not made by Microsoft. Judging by the emails we’re getting the last point is an emotive and decisive one for many WOW readers.
Of course, we’d not be even seeing this product in 2004 from Microsoft if it were not for the rise of competitors, especially Google. We can be grateful to Google and others for forcing the issue with Microsoft.
Microsoft has been running a little campaign to suggest that the desktop searching rivals only came to the fore when they had seen the Longhorn features being demonstrated. According to this view, the whole idea and look came from Microsoft who have now been shamelessly copied by others. This is a simplistic view of a far more complex situation. For starters, Apple’s Sherlock feature looks and acts a lot like the new MSN Desktop. In reality Microsoft borrows as much, if not more, from other developers as they are borrowed from. And there’s also the likely possibility of two or more teams of developers coming up with similar solutions independently of each other. All of this is quite irrelevant to us customers – the competition is giving us better searching tools at a frantic pace and that’s good for us. Who made what and when doesn’t matter to us – only to lawyers and judges if it gets that far.
