18.4. USER EXPERIENCE

Now that you understand the basic concepts and components of search, the variety of search products available in the SharePoint stack, and the analyses necessary to select a search product, it is time to dig into the search experience in more detail. This chapter closes with a detailed look at the user experience provided by the search products. Chapter 19 digs deeper into the administrative and operational details of search, and Chapter 20 provides a deeper look at FAST.

Although significant feature differences exist between the search products in the SharePoint stack, the user experience is generally similar on all platforms. Where they differ is in the details, such as document thumbnails that appear only in FAST search results. For this reason, the following discussion and screenshots will not differentiate between the different product offerings. All the screenshots were taken on a system that has FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint deployed. Therefore, the search-results screenshots show things like document thumbnails and PowerPoint previews, which are not available in the other product lines. If you are unsure whether your edition of search has a feature that is shown here, consult Table 18-4.