Review: Specialized search engines fit the niche

For Tech Pages, Krugle spiders code documentation, white papers, knowledge base documents, release notes and so forth. Search is simpler here; there are no optional fields. You get the results in a tab, and the right-side panel holds related Tech Terms. Here again, clicking a link in the results opens that page in a tab within Krugle, and your search results persist in their own tab.

Krugle's Tech pages also open into their own tabs. (Click image to see larger view.)

Finally, the Projects tab lets you specify search term and language. Clicking on a resulting Project from the search results gives an overview of the project: name, a brief description, the project homepage, language(s) used and the license. Below this is a chart showing the lines of code and number of files for each language used. The right panel is once again used to let you browse through the project's source files.

Of course, like any other search engine, Krugle is only as good as its results, and in this case that pretty much depends on it spidering as many projects as possible. Whenever a search comes up empty, it invites you to suggest a code repository that it might have missed. Unlike most search engines, Krugle is something of a community site as well, with user forums, a MyKrugle page and so on. It offers a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE, as well as a tool bar for Internet Explorer 6 and 7, add-ons for Firefox and OpenSearch tools for Firefox 2 and IE 7.

Searching on Projects gives a nice overview in Krugle. (Click image to see larger view.)

Krugle is an amazing tool for developers, whether you're a veteran looking for a routine that you know already exists somewhere or a neophyte trying to hack together your first project. It's both a great reference and a great learning tool. If you write code, Krugle is well worth checking out.