Do you find it difficult to search the iTunes Store? Do you find it difficult to locate the song, book, or app that you seek? Do you find it difficult to compare similar applications since you can only view one product at a time? If so, there is a better way to search the iTunes Store — use Safari or any other web browser.

You can browse the iTunes Store using this link: https://music.apple.com (Note November 22: now called Apple Music). This is somewhat satisfying, but it’s still pretty limited. However, at least you can view multiple items (books, songs, apps, etc) in multiple Safari windows or tabs. What’s really great is that you can search the store using Safari. For example, let’s imagine that you want to view all Stephen King novels that appear in the iTunes Store, you would then search using these terms:

site:itunes.apple.com/us book Stephen King

The most important part is site:itunes.apple.com/us. (Note that there aren’t any spaces between the colon at the end of site and the address itunes.apple.com)

When you perform this search, one of the first search results will be a page that nicely lists Stephen King novels, followed by audiobooks and movies based the novels. If you’re familiar with using Safari Tabs you know that you can hold down the Command key and click on each item to view it in a separate tab. This lets you easily switch back and forth between different novels, audiobooks or movies. The items that you browse will also provide View in Tunes buttons that will open iTunes and take you right to this item so you can buy it and download it.

You can, of course, use this type of search to find anything in the iTunes Store. If you want to find all apps made by a company named Cultured Code, your search would look like this: site:iTunes.apple.com/us app Cultured Code.

I use this feature regularly and I hope you embrace it too.