I'm trying to create a search block like the one on Top Notch Themes where the users can choose one or more taxonomy terms and then do a keyword search within content that matches those terms. I was trying to figure out how to do this with Views but that didn't work right. It wanted to suggest the terms and then filter the view.
So I found Faceted Search on drupal.org. I'm testing that now, and I'm going to try Views Fast Search as suggested by Jeff
A combination of exposed filters in Views and the use of the Views Fastsearch module may be able to help. It lets you set up exposed filters above a View that use the search index itself to do their filtering; It's a lot like building your own custom pre-filtered search form, where you can use Views to control the output.
Depending on how much data you have and how complex the view you're building is, it can be slow: it's doing all of Views' querying, and pulling in the search index on top of it.