Maybe I am missing something, but when I search for particular subjects on the FW site I sometimes get 1000’s of results – almost all of which aren’t what I am looking for. Many sites allow what programming types call “Boolean Operators” which are a few simple things you can add to your search to narrow it down.
One example is putting one or more of your search words in quotation marks – this should only give you results that include those words and skip the other results. Another easy one is putting a + sign between two words, this will only give you results that include both of those words. there are a few other ones that allow you to exclude words from the results etc…
Enabling this on the site would make searches MUCH more productive. I searched for “repairing dog holes” today and got nearly 3000 useless suggestions. For people unfamiliar with, or who don’t want to use this method, the search would still work like it does now if you didn’t include parenthesis, plus signs and such. Enabling this would allow much better searching for those who know the few simple additions to add to their search term. FW could easily add a description of this process right next to the search box so people can learn how to do this. it is very easy, just a couple of extra key strokes.
Is this a possibility? Many other sites allow it.
Thanks
Rick McCarthy
Replies
+1 for Boolean searching. Currently adding a second word to narrow your search (with or without a plus sign) does just the opposite by including anything with EITHER word. Quite frustrating.
Thank you Rick and JEarch- I couldn't agree more. Most frustrating!
My workaround is to put this in a Google search:
fine woodworking magazine dogholes
good idea - I wasn't sure if google could peer into all of the data on the magazine website. I'll give it a try. Still, FW shouldn't make us have to resort to workarounds. thanks for the input!