Newport Boy -

You're apparently referring to the "Advanced Search" built into mudcat? I've found it somewhat limited, possibly due to lag in indexing as for the mudcat regular search.

Google sometimes will direct you to a GOOGLE ADVANCED SEARCH but there's no way I've found to start there, and it doesn't appear uniformly regardless of what you do or what results you (don't) get. And it's possible that it doesn't appear at all any longer(?) since I haven't seen it recently.

It's sort of like the Windows Explorer search that has to fail before you can get (easily) into "Advanced Search" to enter what you really want to find. With Windows it doesn't matter all that much since they're both mostly useless, but Google used to be helpful.

An additional irritation with Google is that the "spellcheck" that previously would check whatever you highlighted on the page you were looking at has been replaced with a new "feature" that requires you to paste the text you want to check into a window with limited capacity, and then go to an "online spellchecker" with dubious properties (not much better than the multitude of "on line translators.) If I have to paste stuff somewhere I'll paste to Word where I know how reliable the check is, and I can "correct" the dictionary when it makes misteakse.

I note also that several "buttons" for the Google Toolbar that previously allowed you to make quick links to several methods of searching, or to search specific kinds of sites, have been replaced by buttons that just take you to "popular social sites."

Apparently Google is losing interest in adults, and has joined the crowd that only talks childishness.(?)

John