Search-driven navigation is getting more and more popular as amount of data increases and it gets harder to organize and access it using the traditional structured approach. I'm also a big fan of the application launchers, having tried most of the tools on the Scott Hanselman's list and then some. In fact, if you're not on Vista and don't use any of those, I highly recommend trying a few.

In Sitecore 6 we took a step in that direction, enhancing the UI with two large-scale search options.

Content Editor Search

Content Editor search sits right on top of the content tree. The simplest mode is the basic search:

All search results are grouped into categories. Some categories are contextual (subitems), most are based on items paths and some use item templates (like Jpeg image). Clicking the result moves the Content Editor to the selected item.

The search input can also be expanded to allow field-level search:

The new search has a few special abilities, being able to recognize item IDs and paths:

ID:

Item path (a few variations of paths are supported, you can omit /sitecore or /sitecore/content):

Startbar Search

The familiar startbar search has also been upgraded, now operating in the live search mode:

To enable keyboard-only searches, there is a new global shortcut: press Ctrl-/ and the startbar search will get focused so you can start typing immediately.

Both searches operate using a new "Quick Search" index. If you don't get any results - rebuild the index using the same Rebuild the Search Index control panel applet.

The startbar search has a few extra abilities compared to the Content Editor, being able to launch applications, provide shortcut to the user editor and database switcher.

Application launcher (supports both traditional applications and control panel applets):

Users (the user name has to be an exact match, clicking the result opens the Edit User dialog):

Databases:

The application launcher makes the search really handy in the developer scenario. In the deployed website the ability to search through content is likely to provide more value to the editors.

The geek beauty of the new search architecture is that it allows shell developers to hook in and provide own categorization, additional search results and implement new actions. In the following parts, I'll get to that.

This post is a part of series about new client search introduced in Sitecore 6:

Part 1: Overview
Part 2: Categorization
Part 3: Custom Search Results