this appears to be a bug, however, there is a work around.  While you are correct that the searching only searches in all categories in the gallery, you can then apply the category afterwards and get the filtered results you were looking for.

The "search whole site" message you are getting is because it found no results, if you look right above that line it says that.  The link is there as an option should your search come back with nothing.  Looks like there is nothing in category docklets with "start menu" in it, but if you try say "clock" you will get results.

ok I looked into it again and the issue is that its not finding "start menu" because the skin is called "startmenu".  If you search for "startmenu" you will find it, I will try to look into where in the search query this is messed up.

Can't  use search on homepage.