Prior to Java 9, the standard Doclet generated API documentation pages were difficult to navigate. Unless you were very familiar with the layout of these documentation pages, you would have likely used the browser-based find functionality to search text. This was considered clunky and suboptimal.

The current platform includes a search box as part of the API documentation. This search box is granted by the standard Doclet and can be used to search for text within the documentation. This represents a great convenience for developers and is likely to change our usage of Doclet-generated documentation.

With the new Javadoc search functionality, we have the ability to search for the following indexed components:

• Module names
• Package names
• Types
• Members
• Terms/phrases that are indexed by using the new @index inline tag