I spent more time trying to understand why it sometimes sorta works and mostly doesn't. I still don't have any explanation (other than just buggy code), but here are three examples of my experience searching the vault.
Example 1) Searching for an Analog Devices chip, AD7124.
a) Search using "AD71*". First results screen shows "All folders" (why does it always do this ? what is the point ??).
c) When I click on "All folders", it shows the typical results of a table with lots of columns, each two characters wide, and I am unable to increase the width of any of the columns by dragging.
Example 2) Searching for all 8050 devices.
a) search for "8050", first results screen shows "All folders"
b) first page of results is actually legible
c) can advance to second page of results without problems
d) click on one of the results in the table, shows the component details
e) using the little green "back" arrow to return to the search results, and now the results table has changed - "Item" and "State" columns have disappeared, and the buttons at the bottom to navigate to additional screens have disappeared also.
Example 3) trying to search for all devices with TSSOP package
a) search for "TSSOP"
b) first page of results looks ok
c) advance to next page and the table view is screwed up again (and it is showing "Items 151-288 of 11354" while the first screen said "Items 1-120 of 11354", so it apparently has skipped 30 items)
Am I doing something wrong ?
As far as I can see, CS was released in late 2014. That bugs like this exist over 2 years later makes me question the future of the product, and the wisdom of us investing in it. I presume the vault doesn't behave like this in Altium Designer ?