Category Archives: Internet

Posts related browsing or otherwise working online.

Google – Exact Phrase Searching

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You have moved to a new area and want to find a computer user group nearby. You go to Google.com and search for: computer user group,(results: about 366,000,000).

To search for the exact phrase in Google just enclose the same phrase in double quotation marks like this: “computer user group”, (results: about 123,000).

It should be a lot easier to narrow down when you use an exact phrase search. As you can see by the very broad example above, you would have to dig through over 300 million results of sites without the exact phrase, but only a little over 100 thousand with the exact phrase.

If I search within the 100 thousand for CT (Connecticut) it is narrowed down to 587, for MD (Maryland) 810, etc.

Coming up with a good search phrase and searching for that exact phrase, should keep you from getting frustrated.

Internet – Firefox Multiple Home Pages

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Would you like to have more than one home page automatically open when you start Firefox? Here is one way to do so:

  • Open the pages you want to see in separate tabs.
  • Go to the Tools menu.
  • Select Options.
  • Click on “Use Current Pages”, in the Home Page of the General Tab.
  • Click on OK.

I use this to show tabs with a blank page, the Broward Personal Computer Association home page, and the Boca Raton Computer Society, each time I open my Portable Firefox on my thumb drive  That way I can see if there is any updated information for the user group pages and have a blank tab for anything else I want to check on.

See my July 17, 2006 post Open Browser To A Blank Page for how to set your browser to open to a blank page and the reasons I like to do that.

Internet – Open Browser To A Blank Page

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To set your browser to open to a blank page:

In Internet Explorer:

  • From the menu bar click on Tools then Internet Options.
  • In General Tab / Home Page / Address type “about:blank” (without the quote marks).
  • Click on Apply.
  • Click on OK.

In Firefox:

  • From the menu bar click on Tools then Options.
  • In General / Home Page / Location(s)type “about:blank” (without the quote marks).
  • Click on OK.

In other browsers there should be a similar method, though I have not tried in any others.

I set both Internet Explorer and Firefox to open to a blank page on the computers I use. My Portable Firefox on my thumb drives also is set to open to a blank page.

My reasoning for this is that many times at work the server is down, yet the browser, in this case Internet Explorer, still goes and searches and then comes back with an error message. I find this waiting very irritating, especially as I am usually wanting to go somewhere else anyway.

Another advantage of using a blank page as the default is that a browser hijacking is immediately noticeable and can be taken care of right away.

I know this is a day early but, I have a bunch of meetings tomorrow at work, as well as the monthly BPCA SIG and General meetings.