Dynamic Search Still Exists in Zune Desktop Software

[Jason Dunn]

The Zune desktop software continues to disappoint me, but I've been reading other blogs and reviews stating that the dynamic search is gone from the Zune software. This is the feature where you'd click in the search box, start typing, and it would filter down your content until you found what you were looking for. This feature came from the Windows Media Player 11 code base, so most of you are probably familiar with how it works. In the new Zune software, when you click in the search box and start typing, nothing happens until you hit enter - then you see a really great summary of your search results: artist results, song results, and even Zune Marketplace results.<br /><br />But guess what? If you just start typing, without clicking up into the search box, you'll get a dynamic search! Check out the screenshot below for an example: I just started typing, and as I typed it superimposed the characters I was typing on the screen and did the search. When I stopped typing the superimposed text vanished and my results were waiting for me.<br /><br /><img border="1" alt="" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/zt/auto/1195588885.usr1.jpg" /><br /><br />Like the Now Playing function, this is pretty much entirely undiscoverable - you might only figure it out by chance (which is how I found it). But now that you know, enjoy it!

[Rocco Augusto]

this is just an awesome feature. thanks jason! to think, i was wasting time scrolling through artist! :D

[jaxim]

That's great, BUT it only works if what you're searching for starts with whatever you type.

Let's say you have the song, "Love Me Tender". If you start typing "Tender", the old dynamic text would search thru the meta data for all references to what you type. Typing in "Tender" will not locate "Love Me Tender", it will only take you to song titles starting with "tender". If no song titles exist that start with "tender" it will take you to the songs that start with the letter "T".

They really dumbed down this software. Hopefully they'll be able to smarten it up fairly soon.

[Adam Krebs]

I completely agree with Jaxim. I loved how I could filter the results down using extra words, artists, and genres, and especially that you only had to enter part of the word and that it could come from anywhere. I don't always remember the first word of a title (especially ones starting with parentheses), and though the search box is still there, it's decidedly lamer than last year's. I really liked how much more visual (or appropriately visual) the WMP11/Zune v1 library area was than this one.

Hopefully they listen on a number of fronts and bring back some of our favorite features. They can only go up from here.

[Jason Dunn]

That's great, BUT it only works if what you're searching for starts with whatever you type.

Ah, interesting - I hadn't noticed that! Thanks for pointing that out.

[julioangelortiz]

I found this, like you said, completely by accident yesterday. It's a neat easter egg but I prefer just doing the plain search. The software may be dumbed down but it is light-years faster than the older version- and that buys them some time in my book to add more functionality.

[Jason Dunn]

The software may be dumbed down but it is light-years faster than the older version- and that buys them some time in my book to add more functionality.

Indeed - this really is a ground-up re-write. It's not based on the WMP11 code base, it's something new...but very 1.0 in terms of features. Here's hoping they improve it fast...

[David Tucker]

I hated dynamic search...I was so happy to see the search box was just a standard search box. It is odd how many out of the way features there are in the software but on the other hand, I'm not disappointed with it. I really love it myself.

[Covert]

I find it interesting that the new Zune software runs "faster" for some people. Personally, I find it much slower and more memory-intensive than the old software. My cursor actually lags behind as I'm moving across the screen in the new software - something that never happened in the old version (and doesn't happen in WMP).

For the record, I'm on a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo laptop with 2 GB RAM, a 7200 RPM HD, and 64-bit Vista, so I was actually thinking that having a proper 64-bit version of the software would make it faster...not so.

But about the search, I noticed that soon after I had complained about the lack of dynamic search, but I also saw what jaxim said and that's pretty crippling to its usability.

[Jason Dunn]

I find it interesting that the new Zune software runs "faster" for some people. Personally, I find it much slower and more memory-intensive than the old software. My cursor actually lags behind as I'm moving across the screen in the new software...For the record, I'm on a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo laptop

That sounds like a video hardware acceleration program - have you tried going into settings and turning that feature off? The software most definitely should not be doing that- I suspect a video driver bug.