Category Archives: Internet

Posts related browsing or otherwise working online.

Internet – Ixquick Search Engine

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Today I read the posting September 1, 2006 “Search Engine Embraces Privacy” on Sandy Berger’s Blog “Keeping It Short and Simple” and the related Compu-Kiss article “Ixquick Search Engine Embraces Privacy”.

I was intrigued enough by these, to try out Ixquick myself; from what I have seen and experienced so far I think that I will be using this myself, along with my current favorite Google.

My reasons are not so much privacy related. If the Justice Department really wants to know my surfing habits, I am sure they can find out by other means anyway.

I like the star system to show the relevancy of the search results, see the Compu-Kiss article for more details. As Ixquick is a Meta Search Engine, you are actually searching multiple search engines at the same time and the stars indicate how many of those turn the result up in their top 10.

All in all, at this point, I think the Ixquick Meta Search Engine, is well worth trying out.

Once you have tried it out, let me know what you think.

Internet – Web Page Saving

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The current BPCA meeting place does not have broadband access and only very slow dial-up access to the internet. At a recent meeting it was suggested that the various sites available through the BPCA Links page be shown at a future meeting.

This brought up a discussion of how long it would take, with the available technology, to bring up each page. I suggested that the sites be downloaded and placed on a CD or thumb drive.

It seems that no one in attendance knew how to do such a save. As a result, I have decided to give some basic instructions through this blog.

These instructions will involve using either the Internet Explorer or Firefox browser; there are other ways of saving a web page locally, such as the Web Capture capabilities in the full Adobe Acrobat software and others, but most of us do not have access to such expensive software.

The following table shows the options available for each of the browsers being used:

 

Browser Save As Type Save As Result
Internet Explorer
Firefox		 Web Page, complete (*.htm, *.html) A file named with the page title and an htm extension,
containing the HTML and a folder with the same name containing
all other information needed to display the page. (Includes
images, CSS, etc.)
Internet Explorer Only Web Archive, single file (*.mht) A file named with the page title and an an mht extension, that
contains all the information needed to display the page.
NOTE: Firefox, to my knowledge and experience can neither
read nor open a file that has an mht extension.
Internet Explorer
Firefox		 Web Page, HTML only (*,htm, *.html) A file named with the page title and an htm extension,
containing the HTML only.
Internet Explorer
Firefox		 Text File (*.txt) A file named with the page title and an txt extension,
containing the text only.

Once the page has been saved to your local hard drive, you can copy it to a CD, thumb drive, or other device not connected to the internet and open them with your browser of choice, except that you can not open the mht Web Archive in any other browser than IE. Of course, the links within the pages will not be operational, as they are pointing to another web page that would need to be accessed online.

Try the different options for yourself to find out what works best for your purposes. As always, let me know by commenting of this posting if this works for you, or if you have any questions.

Internet – Tabbed Browsing

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At last nights BPCA meeting, I was showing some of the different sites that I frequent. One of the members asked what the tabs were for. I was using Firefox at the time.

The question prompted me to give a short version of the reasons I prefer to using a browser with tabbing capabilities. As it turns out, a good number in attendance use Internet Explorer exclusively for their web browsing, which does not currently have tabbing capabilities. I have not checked things out for myself, but I have read that there are plug-ins available to enable tabbed browsing in IE and that the new IE 7 will have it.

Years back I experimented with the Opera browser, which I believe was the first to offer tabbed browsing, and liked the idea, so when Firefox came along I switched to it and have been using it for quite a while now.

Now to my reasons for preferring a tab capable browser.

I can have a large number of sites open all at the same time, and be able to keep track of where they are very easily. By contrast, without tabbed browsing all these sites would be open in different windows, making it very hard to separate them from other open programs.

When I am using a search engine, regardless of which one, I can open links to the results in separate tabs, which load in the background, letting me keep looking at the results for more pertinent information.

I do a lot of research with my browser and keeping sites open in separate tabs enables me to quickly retrieve information, without the necessity of continually using the back or forward buttons or the history to keep going back and forth between sites.

It is very easy to move from tab to tab, or even rearrange the order of the tabs, once you get used to it.

There are probably a lot more reasons users like tabs for browsing, those listed above are just my main reasons. If you have any thoughts regarding tab use or even just have a different reason for using them than what I have listed, please let me know.

Try tabbed browsing. If you do not like it, you can always go back to the non tabbed browsing that works for you.