Microsoft vs. Google Round 2: Windows Live Search Beta - Introducing the Live Search Tools
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The new search engine looks a lot less like a Google knock-off than MSN Search. It creates some of its own style and introduces some new ideas and tools for changing the way people can search.
As an example, I searched for a random celebrity with a lot of fan pages. You can see a few new search features in the image above.
First, check out the horizontal slider above the search results. That slider customizes the amount of detail on the results pages. If it is on the left, all that is displaying are page titles and URLs. You can see the middle setting is what you have come to expect from search results. Moving one more setting to the right adds a new link below each entry called “Search within this site.” Being able to customize the size of results help make scrolling faster or slower, which you’ll see is important.
That funny looking scroll bar between the results and the ads works a little differently than you’re used to. Microsoft has tossed out the entire idea of separate pages of results, and they load thousands of results on one page. The scroll functions make it able to be navigated. As long as you hold the scroll bar down, the results page moves down. When you release it, the scroll arrows orient themselves to the middle again. If you use a scroll mouse, this will feel similar to clicking the mouse wheel and moving up and down pages.
As you scroll up and down the page, the results numbers changes dynamically. You an see, the shot above is of numbers 14-16. The PPC ads on the right side also change dynamically based on what results are on the left. You can also click the “add to live.com” to add the search to your personalized page like a feed.
Speaking of feeds, you probably noticed the Feed link up on the navigation bar. Let’s take a look at it.
Next: Live Feeds and Images >>
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