Windows 7 has long evolved past its precursor, Windows Vista. One key aspect of this evolution is the operating system's ability to stretch Windows Explorer well beyond the limitations of a local machine, or even a local network. Enhancements such as HomeGroup and Libraries do make it easier to find content via the Start menu or the search box integrated into Windows Explorer, but Windows 7's search jewel is actually Federated Search support. In fact, the software giant has leveraged OpenSearch v1.1 in order to make Windows 7 play nice with Federated Search.

“Federated Search enables you to search a remote web service from Windows Explorer and get results back that you can act on like any normal file. The largest barrier to doing Federated Search has already been taken care of too. That is, most of these content stores are already indexed on the server, or at least on some server. There are several great offerings that will accomplish this, such as Microsoft Search Server. Not only do these servers index this content, but many of them already expose search results via a standard web protocol. This is largely thanks to the prevalence of OpenSearch and RSS enabled clients,” revealed Brandon Paddock, Microsoft Program Manager.

Federated Search enables Windows 7 to easily stretch beyond the local machine, and even beyond the intranet into the Cloud. Of course that when it comes down to the Internet, Windows 7 has to rely on services that support OpenSearch. Without the services taking advantage of the protocol, the next iteration of Windows will not permit users to access Internet data via Windows explorer, Federated Search or no Federated Search. Still, with Windows 7, Microsoft has worked to make sure that users will be able to take advantage of the familiar interface of Windows Explorer when dealing with accessing data beyond the local machine.

Users “know how to use the navigation pane to change what they’re looking at. They know how to scroll around, how to select an item (or several), and they know how to double-click to open them. Most people know how to right-click for context-sensitive options related to their selection, or how to find those options presented in the command bar. They know they can drag and drop items to move them around. They know how to change view modes. We hope that they know how to search their current location using the search box, and in Windows 7 we think we’ve made it much easier to discover and use the Preview Pane to make sure they’ve got the right result,” Paddock added.