Docs.sun.com Blog

Based on what we've heard from our stakeholders, docs.sun.com is making improving search a top priority. Overwhelmingly, the top two areas stakeholders want improved are:

• You want to be able to search within a collection.
• You want us to improve the relevancy of search results

So what are we doing to address your concerns?

First, we are working with our publishers to increase and improve the level of metadata that describes our documents. We've completed a focused study which has specific recommendations for improvements. The Docs.sun.com Engineering Team will be working hand in hand with the publishing community to implement these recommendations.

In late March, Docs.sun.com will roll out a release with enhancements that will improve the accuracy of searching for content within a book. We will be providing page-specific titles vs. today's method of describing every page with the main title of the book. For example, instead of getting a page full of hits all with the same title of 'Solaris ZFS Administration Guide' when searching for 'ZFS information', each hit listed will have a meaningful title to show what that particular page is about in order to assist you in locating the information you need quickly.

In addition, the March release will bring improvements that will ensure the documents in your selected language preference will be returned from your searches. We'll implement some preliminary changes that will set us up to allow you to search within a collection in soon thereafter.

We will keep you posted as these improvements are released and will look forward to hearing what you think!

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There was a service interruption of docs.sun.com beginning at 15:01 GMT due to a problem with the database that supports the site resulting in multiple server errors. We have repaired the problem and service has resumed. We apologize for the trouble and inconvenience this may have caused.

We'd like to let you know about some of the recent improvements we've made to our site...

Performance:

As any user of docs.sun.com in recent months can tell you, we've been plagued by performance problems. We know it's been painful and we thank you for sticking by us as we worked to fix the problems. We can finally state with confidence that you will be seeing improved performance on the site from this time forward. What have we done to fix things? We've done several things: upgraded our hardware, moved to a new hosting facility, and determined that our most recent issues were due to a very hard to track-down firewall configuration issue.

New Feedback Mechanism:

As of last week, we've improved our ability to process your specific site feedback via the Send Comments link on the home page. We've put in place a different mechanism that allows us to better filter out spam and more quickly get to the heart of the issues our users are experiencing. We've also got a better process in place for responding to your comments, so you can rest assured that your feedback will not go unnoticed and unanswered.

And now turning our attention to Search...

Back in July, we implemented a new search mechanism on the site. Some have told us that they really like the new search functionality. Other feedback has been decidedly negative. We'd like to know what you think. Are you finding what you need using our new search mechanism? If not, what would you like to see work differently? Again, please post specific search bugs to the feedback link we've given above. We'd like to use the blog to gather overall impressions of what's working well and what's not with the new search mechanism.

Over the next month or so, we'll be evaluating whether changes need to be made to search, and, if so, what we can do to make them happen for you. Your feedback is important. Please chime in.

Welcome docs.sun.com users to docs.sun.com's new blog space. Why have we created a blog? We want you, our user community, to have better information on what's happening with our site. In addition, we'd like to open a dialogue with you as we continue to improve the site. We want to know what's important to you.

What this blog is: A place to find out the latest news and work going on to improve docs.sun.com. It's a place for you to let us know what you think of docs.sun.com and where you'd like to see it go in the future.

What this blog is not: A place to post site feedback reporting bugs or broken links, nor questions or problems about specific documents. To do this, please go to our Send Comments page.

Who will be writing and responding to comments on this blog? This blog will be authored by members of the docs.sun.com core team which includes representation from both engineering and the authors who publish content on the site. We'll be working to add new news every few weeks at a minimum, so check back to keep up to date on the latest happenings.

In summary, we're looking forward to an open dialogue with you to help us provide the Sun product documentation you need in a way that's most useful to you. Please let us know if there are specific topics you'd like to see addressed here. Welcome to the new docs.sun.com blog and thanks in advance for becoming an active member of our community!