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Windows Presentation Foundation search engine using Windows Live Search Macros

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Windows Live Search Macros enables Joe Bloggs like you and me to create our own search engines! WL Search Macros are a great way of getting more out of the default Live search engine by allowing users to create personlised search macros which modify the default experience. For instance, I am doing a lot of WPF development at the moment, expect a few MSDN UK Nuggets from me on the basics in the next week or two! Like anyone that is trying to source information I use the web and almost solely search engines to source answers. I would normally do something like this:

"WPF Animate Rectangle" or "XAML Animate Rectangle" or, because the code-name was around for so long, "Avalon XAML Animate Rectangle"

Everything to do with the subject was prefixxed with one of the key words which said to the search engine, Mark wants to see results on Animating rectangles but only around WPF/Avalon. Wouldn't it be great if I could do that without having to type "WPF" "Avalon" or "XAML". This is where Search Macros come in.

Dead easy to do....I went to the WL Search Macros site and signed in with my Windows Live ID (you don't have to do this, only if you want to save this to use at another time).

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Basically what I wanted to do was filter searches which contained the words WPF or Avalon or XAML and restrict it to sites which link to the main https://msdn.microsoft.com site (because I felt this was a good indicator of relevance given MSDN is probably the most definitive source of knowledge on WPF right now)

The syntax was as follows:

wpf | avalon | xaml AND linkdomain:msdn.microsoft.com

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(My plan is to improve this over time and include other prominent sites on WPF and include them as relevant on this macro)

The below search compares vanilla with my macro-ed version:

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If you want to use my WPF search engine then please point your browser at https://search.live.com/macros/markjo/wpfsites (You can even add it to your search box in IE7

Technorati tags: windows live, search, macros, wpf