Expanded, Google-like search results?

[KeithM]

Why have the WebHelp search results remained in the HTML Help format all these years? Seems like with the emergence Google and Yahoo, etc., it would have been added as the default or at least as an option instead of having to pay for/use a 3rd-party program like Zoom.

After all, it is WebHelp. Why not make it behave like the search tools we're accustomed to in that environment?

If you feel the same and haven't submitted a request yet, here you go...

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx

[RamonS]

One easy way to get the results you want formatted the way you like is CSS, PHP, and swish-e. It even indexes your PDFs.

[KeithM]

Thanks for the suggestion Ramon, but I'm in a strict SharePoint environment (i.e. even if PHP and SharePoint played nicely on the same box our internal policies won't allow us to install/setup it or swish-e), and I don't know PHP at the moment.

[KeithM]

On a related note...

http://www.gryphonmountain.net/2009/08/ ... -wardrobe/

[RamonS]

Thanks for the suggestion Ramon, but I'm in a strict SharePoint environment (i.e. even if PHP and SharePoint played nicely on the same box our internal policies won't allow us to install/setup it or swish-e), and I don't know PHP at the moment.

Therein lies the problem. Rather than using something that works well for many, some folks are just hellbent on trying to fix everything with SharePoint. We got a management issue - use SharePoint, we need more resources - add another SharePoint site. In the end SharePoint is nothing more than a framework that generates dynamic webpages. After making that step back it should be possible to tell IIS (yuck) to send any .php files to the PHP interpreter. Once that is in place you can simply link to the PHP script, which just as ASP doesn't do anything more or less than craft dynamic pages or crunch data in the background. So, if PHP is a no go you should be able to write a script in ASP and do the same thing. But then again, learning PHP is probably better in the long run, because it wipes the floor with ASP, is far more flexible, and costs less. If your IT folks have such strict policies have them SharePoint you an awesome search engine with full indexing. SharePoint in the MOSS variant has that, but that is excessively overpriced, but maybe that is what you have available.
I'd be more paranoid over installing something that is proprietary, closed source than something like swish-e, but then again, I don't run server farms and that may just be good that way.