Today a new version of MTLookup, the search engine for Movable Type related information, has been released. Several new features have been implemented.

In a couple of days, I will describe all improvements in detail. Here is a summary of the most important changes.

More Websites

With the initial release of MTLookup just the three websites Movable Type Weblog, Learning Movable Type, and Movalog were included.

Today, 20 websites are spidered. There are Movable Type resouce websites, Six Apart websites, and CSS related websites. These are...

Tutorials

• Movable Type Weblog
• Learning Movable Type
• Movalog
• Dan&Sherree
• geekmum {movable cafe}
• MT-Hacks
• PubHacks
• Staggernation
• StyleMonkey
• MovableTweak

Six Apart

• Six Apart User Manual v3.2
• Six Apart Knowledgebase
• Six Apart ProNet Weblog
• Six Apart Pronet Plugin Directory
• Six Apart Pronet Articles
• Six Apart News
• Six Apart Mena's Corner

CSS

• A List Apart
• Glish
• MezzoBlue

Stemming

Previously you had to specify a keyword exactly. If you executed a query for »template«, but an article's author did not write that exact term, no hit was found. Singular and plural forms of a noun, conjugated forms of words, all were regarded as different.

Today, MTLookup uses a technique called »stemming«. With its help all words - those inside the articles and those inside the search phrase - are translated into their root form.

So for example, there is no longer any need to decide between

• template style
• templates style
• template styles
• templates styles
• ...

All these forms will be mapped to the same base form.

Paging

As the number of articles has increased significantly, it is no longer reasonable to show the complete result list in all cases. A paged display has been put into effect.

You will be shown a maximum of 100 articles at the same time. Links above the result list allow easy jumping to other pages.

Persistent User Data

With the help of a cookie, MTLookup will remember your last visit. All settings (display mode, sorting, category, websites, etc.) will be restored on a later visit.

There is even a search history, where previous searches can easily be executed again.

Misc

Litte icons next to an article show the originating website. The size of an article as well as the number of words is shown in the result list. The display mode has been extended. All articles have been categorized and can be searched for that category.

Related Articles

The new version of MTLookup is described on the Movable Type Weblog. These articles are...

• Second version of MTLookup released
• MTLookup v2 Improvements: Website Indexing
• MTLookup v2 Improvements: Stemming
• MTLookup v2 Improvements: Persistent User Data
• MTLookup v2 Improvements: Query Feedback

If you want to try: MTLookup.

mgs | 09/11/2005

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