MonoTouch.Info with a pinch of search
MonoTouch.Info has now been running since the beta of MonoTouch and the community support has been terrific and it is really appreciated. Even better than the support we have received is the great content that is being generated by members of the community.
MonoTouch.Info has been growing fast and we now have over 150 MonoTouch related entries on the site with more being added every week. As the content grew we wanted to make it easier to find what you need to make great iPhone / iPod Touch applications.
We see the site being used in two main ways:
- Browsing - You're not looking for anything in particular but you feel like browsing the site to see what great MonoTouch content has been generated by the community.
- Searching - You know you've seen an article somewhere and you'd like to find it again or you have a question and you want to see if someone has written an article, posted an answer to the forum/mailing list or added something to the wiki that may help you.
Yesterday when you performed a search it would search the summaries of each entry and return a list of any entries that matched the single keyword you entered. You would then click through to get more details and then click through to the content. We try to offer a nice summary of an entry for those of you who are browsing, but a summary doesn't cover the entire content of the entry so you could in fact be missing out on the content you're actually looking for.
Today when you perform a search we don't search the summary of the entries listed on our site, we actually search the content of the entries we've linked to! This allows you to get more accurate results and ensures you don't miss out of any of the great content out there.
On top of that we also include all of the content on the official monotouch site, wiki, forums and mailing list. We see these as official sources and therefore include the whole site in our index. One other site we include in our index is StackOverflow.com. The reason we include stackoverflow.com is because it is a source of great content. As a MonoTouch developer you might have a C# question, an Objective-C question, a .NET framework library related question or an iPhone SDK related question. StackOverflow.com has these types of questions covered and a great community of people asking and answering questions.
What about Filtering?
To make things easier we've also introduced the ability to filter the results via a key character (simply prefix your search terms with one of these characters e.g. a monotouch would search all articles for the word monotouch):
- a - search all article entries
- b - search all book entries
- e - search all event entries
- l - search all library entries
- n - search all news entries
- p - search all podcast entries
- q - search for questions/answers on forums.monotouch.net, the monotouch mailing list and stackoverflow.com
- s - search all sample entries
- t - search all tool entries
- v - search all video entries
- w - search all website entries (only the homepage is indexed apart from wiki.monotouch.net and monotouch.net)
Can I only search the content by visiting your website?
Ideally we would love other sites to have a search box that made use of the MonoTouch.Info search index and we are looking at adding instructions on how you can add a search box to your site (search parameters are sent via a querystring so it is very easy to add support to your own site).
Individuals have two main choices (other than going directly to our site):
- If you are using a browser that supports Search Providers (e.g. Firefox or Internet Explorer) you can add us as a Search Provider
- You can add our Bookmarklet to your browser which will let you quickly search from your browser no mater what site you are on
Internet Explorer
When you are on the MonoTouch.Info website if you click on the down arrow next to your search box within Internet Explorer you should see the option of adding MonoTouch.Info as a Search Provider.
Firefox
Similar to Internet Explorer you should see a down arrow next to your search box within Firefox. Clicking on that should give you the option: Add "MonoTouch.Info". Once you have added it you should have the option to search for content using the MonoTouch.Info search engine:
Safari
With Safari you will need to use our bookmarklet. First ensure that your Bookmarks Bar is showing (View -> Show Bookmarks Bar). Once that is showing simply drag the bookmarklet to your Bookmarks Bar. It will ask you for a name to save the bookmark under (you can keep the default) and then you'll have the following available (clicking it will open a search box for you to type your query):
Chrome
With Chrome you'll need to use our bookmarklet. To show your Bookmarks Bar use Ctrl + b. Once that is showing simply drag the bookmarklet to your Bookmarks Bar. You can then simply click on the link whenever you want to search for MonoTouch content.
Opera
If you are using Opera you will need to use our bookmarklet. You'll need to drag our bookmarketlet to your Personal Bar (View->Toolbars->Personal Bar). You can then simply click on the link whenever you want to search for MonoTouch content.
This is just one of the features we wanted to add to MonoTouch.Info. There are still plenty more things we wish to add in the future in order to make it easier to find content that will help you develop your MonoTouch based applications.
Thank you for using the site!
MonoTouch.Info
http://monotouch.info
