where is the "search posts" function so one can see if a post has been made for the same subject / topic ??

The link to the Advanced Search page is located in the shortcuts list (top/right) on the forum home page: http://silverlight.net/forums/

Mike Banavige
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Dont forget to click "Mark as Answer" on the post that helped you.
This credits that member, earns you a point and marks your thread as Resolved so we will all know you have been helped.

a few minutes later I did find that...  funny that it's name is "Advanced search" like so where is "Basic search" or whatever....

they should just call it "Search" IMHO and perhaps put a link on the other pages...

several other message boards have a search link on the header or footer of each page so you can just click there.

There is a sister site to this one (forums.asp.net) that uses the same link name for the search page. That site does have the search box in the header. The naming was likely kept the same for consistency as many members use both sites.

Mike Banavige
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dont forget to click "Mark as Answer" on the post that helped you.
This credits that member, earns you a point and marks your thread as Resolved so we will all know you have been helped.

Yah and I am really not so sure the number of different message boards for MSFT stuff is a good thing.

lets see:

channel9
winforms
asp
IIS
MSDN
Silverlight

what did I miss ??

given that so many bits of the msft tech overlap the answer might be in a different board.

sorry but I am trying to find out some things about silverlight and I started from google, that led me to a msft post that then led me here...

Thank you once again for your input. We have just added a search box at the top of most forum pages to make it much easier!

That's helpful, thank you all:)