- Browser history
- LYNX (1991)
- Mosaic (1993)
- Netscape (1994)
- Internet Explorer (1995)
- Opera (1996)
- Browse features
- Set home page.
- History list
- Print selection rather than entire page.
- Save and organize favorites.
- Extensible
A search engine is a special type of web site that enables you to locate
information on the WWW. Search engines use a computer programs called
spiders which travel from one web site to another and indexing the content
of the web pages it finds based on the keywords used in a search.
Search engines access only a small fraction of the web and are generally about 6
months behind. Some of the search engines listed below offer much more
than a searching utility. They offer subject guides, email, references,
news and sports, chat rooms, online shopping malls and other services.
- Google
- AltaVista
- Yahoo
- Excite
- MSN
- AOL
- Teoma
- basic search
- wild cards - to search for aids research center, aids research
centers, aids research centre and aids research centres simulataneously use
the wildcard symbol * and enter aids research cent* into the search engine.
- phrases - use quotation marks to searching for words in a specific
order.
- metasearching
A metasearch engine searches the Internet using more than one search engine.
The searches are conducted simultaneously and the results are organized.
The downside is that a metasearch engine may not use the best search engines
since it is more expensive and your results may vary each time you use a
metasearch engine since the individual engines used change frequently (a
search engine may be busy or may go out of business). Some metasearch
include:
- Search.com
- Dogpile
- ProFusion
- MetaCrawler
- power searches
- narrow the search with the AND operator
- widen the search with the OR operator
- limiting the search with the AND NOT operator
- search by proximity using the NEAR/ and W/ operators
NEAR/ 100 means within 100 words of each other. If order matters use W/
(within).
- combine operators
- filters
Text box filters available at Google include filter by language (ex.
Spanish only), date, domain (ex. .edu only). Some command word filters
available at Google include inurl (limits search to words contained in
the URL), intitle (limits search to words found in the title), site
(limits search to words found at a certain domain type ex. "fun
activities" site:.fr for fun activities in France) and link (limits search to
web pages linked to a specific URL).
subject guides
Subject guides are created by people and organize information on the Internet
in a hierarchical form. Subject guides start with a general list of
topics. Clicking on a topic brings you to a list of subtopics.
This process can be repeated until you find what you need. Subject may
come with local search engines.
- About.com - general purpose
- Librarians' Index to the Internet
- INFOMINE - university level research sites
- LookSmart - commercial
- Virtual Library - general purpose
trailblazer pages
A trailblazer page provides links to many useful web sites. The subject
guides often link to trailblazer pages.
specialized search engines
Specialized search engines limit the web pages searched to a specific subject.
specialty information
- people - Yahoo! People Search
- places - Yahoo! Maps
- businesses - AnyWho, SuperPages, Switchboard, Europages
- government - FirstGov
- periodical databases - TIMESONLINE, Librarians' Index to the Internet
Magazine Topics, NewsDirectory.com, MagPortal.com, FindArticles. More
extensive online databases such as InfoTrac and ProQuest are available in
libraries.
- online references - dictionaries and encyclopedias. Some online
references about the internet include FILExt (file extensions), Webopedia,
Living Internet, Librarian's Index to the Internet and Internet Tutorials.
- Mailing lists
invisible web
According to some estimates as much as 95% of the web is invisible to
traditional search engines.
- LexiBot - an intelligent agent capable of searching through web space off
limits to traditional search engines such as databases.
- invisibleweb.com
Author last name, author first name. "Web page title." Web
site title. Date created or revised. <Full internet address>
Date you viewed the webpage.
- How email works
- Outlook
- read and send messages
- signatures and attachments
- manage messages
- manage contacts
- scheduling
- tasks
When a URL contains ftp, it means you are connecting to a file server and not
a web server. FTP is a two way system in which files may be transferred
back and forth between a server and another computer.