Browsers
Customize Icon bar by adding a printing icon:
Hover the mouse over the icon bar and right click* on a PC or on a Mac hold down the mouse button. Then click on Customize. Drag the printer icon up to the Icon Bar.
Set a Home Page:
Go to the page you want as a home page. e.g. google
PC Tools, Options, General, Use Current Page
Mac Firefox, Preferences, General, Use Current Page
Tabbed browsing:
Over a link, right click* and click on Open Link in New Tab
Increase the Size of Text on a Page
If the page is too small to view, press CTRL + (Mac keys are Command + ), Hold down the Control key and hit the minus ( - ) key to make the text smaller.
Searching for selected text:
Highlight a word or two, Right Click* and choose Search Web For
Answers.com
A site that will give you answers to questions as opposed to links to sites.
Bookmarks: (called Favorites in Internet Explorer)
Manage Bookmarks
File, New Folder
Drag bookmarks to a folder
Viewing Toolbars:
View, Toolbars, click on Bookmarks Toolbar
Drag the URL icon onto the Bookmarks Toolbar
Right click* and click on Preferences to modify the name that appears in the Bookmarks Toolbar
Rearrange the toolbar by dragging back and forth
The Search Engine search box:
Common Cause, copyright free and royalty free content
IMDB
Kartoo
Firefox extensions: (addons):
Google Toolbar
Google Preview
Stumble Upon
See
http://www.mvrhs.org/library/How_to/FFox_Install.html
for an extensive look at configuring and using Firefox.
Google the six Tabs
Web Cached
Similar Pages
Definiton (in blue, underlined )
Images Size, filtering
Groups user discussion groups, prone to spam
News News stories from around the world, groupd by subject
Froogle Search for best prices
Local Search in areas near you
Google Advanced Search
Search for: All words, Exact phrase, At least one word, Without the word
search in a language
translate language
Google Preferences
Search for pages only in a language
Safe Search
Google Language Tools
translate phrases or whole pages
Google More
Directory useful for “bearing down” on a subject, e.g. Hong Kong Museums
Catalogs catalogs.google.com
use Ctrl + or Ctrl – to increase/ decrease the size of the page
Google Labs
Google Maps
Google Video
Google Scholar
Google Sets
The High School Library Page
Google Earth
These pages can be found at
http://www.mvrhs.org/library/How_to/FFox_Class.html
Sites Used
www.google.com
www.answers.com
mycroft.mozdev.org
www.kartoo.com
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/showlist.php?application=firefox&category=Search%20Tools&numpg=10&pageid=7
http://www.mvrhs.org/Library/How_to/FFox_Install.html
* Right clicking with the mouse on a PC brings up a context sensitive menu. An equivalent action on a Mac is to hold down the mouse button for two seconds.
Increase the Size of Text on a Page
If the page is too small to view, press CTRL + (Mac keys are Command + ), which means hold down the Control key and press the + key, either on the keyboard or on the numeric pad. Every time you hit the plus ( + ) key the text will get larger. Hold down the Control key and hit the minus ( - ) key to make the text smaller.
To open a new tab, press Ctrl T. You might want a new tab to start a new search.
Ctrl Enter (Command Return on a Mac)
Entering a name in the address bar, such as mozilla and using Ctrl Enter (on the Mac use Command Return) will add the http://www. and .com to the beginning and end of the name. e.g. http://www.mozilla.com
Entering a search term in the address box (not the search box to the right) and clicking on the green Go button will do an "I'm Feeling Lucky" search and return the page of the top result.
Tip: to see how recently a page has been modified, click Tools, Page Info
Put quotes around a phrase to search for the entire phrase, e. g. "martha's vineyard". Works the same as Google's 'use exact phrase'
Use AND, OR and NOT for Boolean searches, e.g. apple recipe AND (pie OR tart). Google does not need the AND
Omit verbs and common words such as: a, an, the, of.
Use synonyms such as: "automobile emissions” OR "vehicle emissions" [also illustrates use of quotes and Boolean OR]
Try the same search on different engines. No search engine indexes all sites.
Some search engines use the asterisk ( * ) to stem a word. (but not Google) Stemming means use the root or stem of a word. If you search for something like teach math* it will find math teacher or teaching math. Google stems automatically.
Google also uses the tilde ( ~ ) to search for synonyms. ~car will also search for auto, autos, truck, trucks, etc.
Truncate the URL to move up in the file structure of a site.
e.g. Change www.mvrhs.org/library/index.html to www.mvrhs.org
Read more about search engines at:
http://www.mvrhs.org/library/search_engines.html
Impediments to searching
limited vocabulary
limited knowledge of the subject
limited knowledge of how information is categorized
impatience
Some solutions
Generate synonyms
encyclopedia or overview article
How is information organized? in general, on this site?
MVRHS 01/20/2006