I was surprised to learn that many people don’t know what I know about how to find things in web pages and documents. For as many comments and web pages we have on WUWT, I wanted to make sure everybody knows this. There’s a test at the end.
From Slashdot:
Google search anthropologist Dan Russell says that 90 percent of people in his studies don’t know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page. ‘I do these field studies and I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve sat in somebody’s house as they’ve read through a long document trying to find the result they’re looking for,’ says Russell, who has studied thousands of people on how they search for stuff. ‘
At the end I’ll say to them, “Let me show one little trick here,” and very often people will say, “I can’t believe I’ve been wasting my life!”‘ Just like we learn to skim tables of content or look through an index or just skim chapter titles to find what we’re looking for, we need to teach people about this CTRL+F thing, says Alexis Madrigal. ‘I probably use that trick 20 times per day and yet the vast majority of people don’t use it at all,’ writes Madrigal.
‘We’re talking about the future of almost all knowledge acquisition and yet schools don’t spend nearly as much time on this skill as they do on other equally important areas.’
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OK, knowing that, who had in WUWT Tips and Notes (the largest online web page we have) the word “Chilean” in their tip? Just navigate there and use CTRL+F.
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Eddie
REPLY: You win a cookie. – Anthony
I got “Firefox” as a webbrowser after “Climate Audit” put in a new security feature which automatically rejected posts I made using my prior browser.
At the top of the “Firefox” menu bar is th option, “Edit, Find” which is the equivalent of
“Control, F”. Needless to say, I use it all the time
I’ve been doing this for years on my Mac using the Apple-F key combo.
If a person is using Firefox, then they can set their Options->advanced->general setting to “Search for text when I start typing” and Firefox will search without even pressing ctrl-f.
Please Sir? Sir Sir. pleeeze! I knew that. May I bring you an apple tomorrow?
REPLY: I’ll just eat it and throw away the core – Anthony
Another trick I have learned as a teacher to find a paper or to detect plagiarism is to GOOGLE an exact sentence.
Example: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation”
You would be amazed how many students turn in Wikipedia articles as their own work..
When will they ever learn ?
Lots of people (my wife and daughter, for two examples) see computers as nothing more than televised typewriters
Also you can skip the CTRL+F bit and just press ‘/’ and it brings up the search bar and puts the cursor in place.
Try it =)
This definitely works for Firefox, and while I’m pretty sure other browsers have the same (or at least a similar) shortcut I’m not 100% on anything except Firefox.
@ur momisugly netdr,
You sir are a GENIUS! please do tell us more of your clever tricks.
Other shortcuts people don’t know about:
Windows Key + D: Minimize all windows (pressing it again restores them)
Windows Key + L: Locks the computer (great for leaving your desk with something sensitive open)
F2: Rename a highlighted file
Most know about ALT+TAB to switch from one window to the next, but do you know about CTRL+TAB? It allows you to move from tab to tab within a window (like in a web browser or PDF reader with multiple PDFs open).
Enjoy =)
Interesting. Could Mr. Russell next please examine how many environmentalists have no imagination of the consequences of their actions?
netdr says:
August 21, 2011 at 8:44 am
“Another trick I have learned as a teacher to find a paper or to detect plagiarism is to GOOGLE an exact sentence.”
A similar trick: If you look for graphs that show the dependency of one variable of another, go to images.google.com and enter the two names of the variables.
I would have thought people knew this… but obviously not. I use it all the time. 🙂
Another incredibly useful FireFox feature is the plugin UnMHT that makes it possible to save web pages with pictures and all into a single file. Very useful for web pages that tend to disappear after a while, or discussion forums with hyperactive “moderators”.
Well, to those of us who began programming BEFORE there were screens, who had to cut holes on 80 character IBM punch card, then run the cards as batch files, even a “televized typewriter is kind of cool.
Ah … But the CTRL+shortcuts are easier to remember if you think about their beginnings:
CTRL + F is “Find”
CTRL + V is “Insert” (or Paste” the buffer) … from the old “inverted v” used by paper editors.
CTRL + C is “Copy” (copy to the buffer)
CTRL + X is “Cut” (Erase) to the buffer.)
CTRL + Z is “Undo”. (Zero it out.)
CTRL + Y is “Undo my Undid” (Redo; Repeat, Often done after a “Why did I do that?” statement
Ctrl-f…….ahhhh but what is the keyboard shortcut for closing the search tab once opened (no mouse clicks allowed).
Another one that seems to amaze some people:
If you have a url on a web page that you want to open which is just text, not a link, select (highlight) the url, then hold down the control key and type the letters ‘c’ ‘t’ ‘v’ then press “Enter”
This works with most modern browsers – on the Mac use the Apple-F key instead of control.
What you are actually doing is:
cntrl-c (copy the text)
cntrl-t (open a new tab)
cntrl-v (paste the text)
it relies upon the browser automatically placing the cursor in the URL bar when it opens a new tab.
On one hand, I agree that you should know the shortcuts on something you use every day. On the other hand, why should I be forced to memorize the features on whatever new product I buy? Most software has pull-down menus that accomplish the same thing as the short cuts, and I don’t have to memorize keystrokes. Microsoft is losing market share because they’re going away from pull-down menus in Office 10. Instead they are reducing my screen area by adding icons that I rarely use.
Another example is the cute little camera I just bought. I was a semi-professional photographer many years ago, and I was quite proficient in controlling aperture, exposure time, depth-of-field, etc. I could pick up any professional camera and learn to operate it in a minute. This also teaches the science of optics, which is useful in learning how the world works. Knowing how the world works is extremely useful for example you can make your own assessment on claims of AGW. But this new little camera is packed full of features I’ll never use, and the controls are about the features, not about capturing light onto a focal plane. I fear that kids today are learning to interact with software instead of how the world works.
WOW!! for functions that have been around the computing world for over 30 years (longer if you consider mainframes) I’m amazed a the ignorance of the masses and just how little they know.
Geez, this is basic knowledge everyone should have when working with a computer…
Aw, knew that one! (Oh, and C. Shannon – you can also get rid of the “Find” bar after your search with the “Esc” key (a shoddy old DOS trick, but it’s often still there, on my old FF 3.6, at anyrate).
But – more a matter of maintenance than operation – what we really, really need is a quick and painless way of dealing with cruft. Now, that would be a useful trick. Enjoy the link. 🙂
the_Butcher says:
August 21, 2011 at 8:58 am
“@ur momisugly netdr,
You sir are a GENIUS! please do tell us more of your clever tricks.”
And if anyone needs to know how to have a constructive dialogue, just ask the_Butcher. (Nice Avatar picture, BTW; but conversational skills… Hmmm…)
You can now do a find in safari on iPad by using the google box at the top of the page. At the bottom of the suggested completion lis is a “find on this page” option.
Lots of other old DOS commands still work besides CTRL-F. I suppose it shows my age, but I use them often. Some of us were using computers before windows and mice came along.
One of the joys of this site is wandering around it and finding new things that you never knew existed. Sometimes it’s the journey, not the arrival at the destination that is important.
Ctrl-F works fine, but as usual with Microsoft products there is another way to accomplish the same thing.
Left clicking on the “Edit” function on the Internet Explorer Menu Bar toolbar gives a drop down menu that includes “Find on this page…” and indicates that Ctrl-F does the same thing.