Datasheet

Figure 1-4
A9
Amazon.com is world famous for being an online marketplace for just about anything, but when it
released a search engine, it did so with little fanfare and attention. The introduction of A9 (
www.a9.com)
showed off enhanced searching, enabling you to search different types of information simultaneously.
For web and image searches it uses MSN to fetch results. It performs searches of books on Amazon.com
and movies on IMDb (Internet Movie Database). Searches for Yellow Pages, Wikipedia, and
Answers.com debuted in mid-2005.
What makes A9 unique is how its user interface works. When you perform a search, the different types
of results are displayed in different areas of the page (see Figure 1-5).
On the search results page, you have the option of selecting other searches to perform using the same
criteria. When you select a check box corresponding to a type of search, the search is performed behind
the scenes using a combination of hidden iframes and XMLHttp. The user interface shifts to allow room
for the extra search results, which are loaded as soon as they are received from the server. The result is a
more responsive search results page that doesn’t need to be reloaded when you want to search on differ-
ent types of information.
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