What Happens When You Search Globally

The docs.sun.com Web site is designed to search books, not pages within books. When you search globally or use the Within pull-down menu to search globally, the site treats all books equally, whether the word or phrase for which you search appears in XML-based books, HTML documents, or PDF-only books.

When you search all books or use the Within pull-down menu to search for information in a subject, product, or collection, the number of books that contain the string for which you searched is displayed at the top of the search results page. Only 50 books are displayed on a single page. If more than 50 books contain the string, the list of books continues on the next page. The page navigation bar at the top center and bottom center of the page indicates the total number of pages available. The indicator points to the current page. You can display other pages by clicking the page number.

A large number of matches might indicate that you need to narrow your search, either by changing your search text or by using the Within pull-down menu to scope your search more narrowly.

The docs.sun.com site displays a list of books that contains the word or phrase for which you searched in order of decreasing relevance. The relevance of a book is indicated by icons:

• Documents marked with the icon are the most relevant to your search criteria.

• Documents marked with the icon are the least relevant to your search criteria.

The name of the collection to which the book belongs is displayed below the title of the book, after the word “from.”

If you search for more than one word at a time, books in which the words appear closest to each other are displayed higher in the list. Books in which words appear further apart, within a maximum span of 30 words, are displayed lower in the list.

Books that contain words or phrases in a chapter title, section title, or similar element in a book are given greater relevance. These books tend to move up to the top of the list in relation to books that contain the same frequency of words or phrases but only in paragraphs instead of titles.

When you display the docs.sun.com Web site in another language, the books that are written in that language appear at the top of the current list when you search the site. For example, if you display the content on the site in French, books written in French appear at the top of the current list when you search for a word or phrase.

When searching globally, the docs.sun.com site ignores books and collections that require a password to access. Once you provide a password, however, you can search locally within a book, provided that book is XML-based.