MSDN Library Sidebar Search Gadget Problems?

It's been bugging me for a while that my favourite Vista gadget is broken since (I assume) an API change as a result of ongoing improvements to MSDN Search. I decided to try and fix this today. I started with the Script# version which is the one I had been using but, having downloaded Script# and the samples, I seemed to be missing a couple of crucial files. Instead I switched to Tim Heuer's original gadget and cracked open the msdnsearch.js file.

In the flyout() function there's a search URL which no longer works. I played around with a couple of different URLs and tried substituting the RSS version (ie you can perform a query such as: https://search.msdn.microsoft.com/search/Feed.aspx?query=Console%20AND%20WriteLine&feed=rss to get the results as an RSS feed). Hey presto, it seems to work just fine. So I assume the "old" URL was generating an RSS document as well. I'll ping Tim and Nikhil a mail and see if I can get them to update their gadgets (unless they already have and I missed it in which case this was a bit of a waste of time. It also points to one of the downsides of gadgets - how do I subscribe to updates?)

Technorati tags: msdn search, gadget, vista