Here's a quick tip for those of you who search the discussion forums on the Lotus Developer Domain site. When you perform a search, the default sort order is by relevance. For example, take a look at the search URL below:

Note the parameter "SearchOrder=0", which indicates the results are sorted by relevance. Sometimes, though, you want to see the results ordered by date in descending order, so you can see the most recent documents at the top of the list. You can accomplish this by changing the SearchOrder value to 3, as in "SearchOrder=3". You can see an example of this in the modified URL below:

This doesn't work perfectly all the time, but if you need to quickly change your view of a list of search results it can certainly help you. There is also a "SearchOrder=4" option, but this has its own set of problems, such as possible lost documents.

For more options when searching the Lotus Developer Domain forums, click on the "Advanced Search" link just below the search box. Be sure to note how the URLs change when you perform the different types of searches. You can then use the options you see to change searches manually on the fly (without having to go through the search process again) or to get ideas on how to sort your own searches and views that you develop.

Dan Velasco is a Senior Technical Editor for DominoPower Magazine and occasional contributor to PalmPower Magazine. He is also a Principal CLP Application Developer (R4, R5 and ND6) as well as a CLP System Administrator (R4 and R5). You can reach him via email at dvelasco@dominopower.com or on the Web at http://DanVelasco.com.