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.’
=============================================================
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.
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.
@ 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
“@ 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.
Another useful search tip:
How to limit your Google search to a single web site (or a sub-set of that site).
Google this:
Hansen site:/wattsupwiththat.com
Then, Google this:
Hansen site:/wattsupwiththat.com/2011
You can use the embedded search at the top of the WUWT page. But, in my experience, embedded searches are not very reliable (and, you cannot use it to search a sub-set of the site).
C. Shannon says:
August 21, 2011 at 8:53 am
Also you can skip the CTRL+F bit and just press ‘/’ and it brings up the search bar…
Now, that I did not know! I’ve been using CTRL+F for years but never knew about the “/” method. Shame it doesn’t have “next/previous” options, but I’m sure I’ll still use it occasionally. Nice tip.
Okay, here is my tip. To save looking through a thread on which I have made a comment , I put in my own name, if I get more than 1 match I know someone has responded and I select next to read the reply or move on to the next thread.
I regularly find myself telling people about ctrl+ functions because they always work, whereas right-click pull-down menus sometimes don’t materialize. Years ago I got quite bad mouse-RSI and out of self-defence went a-hunting for ways of doing things without the mouse. ctrl+v is invaluable if you are doing multiple pasting – and fast!
Using Ctrl-F within Tips and Notes is useful for finding out whether or not someone else has already posted the same information. Saves time and bandwidth.
While we’re on the subject of Tips and notes-
Those of you who like to embed YouTube videos, could you post just the link instead? Tips and Notes loads painfully slow for those of us with dial-up or XRTT connections.
Thank you for your consideration.
I find these Control-whatever commands to be a blasted nuissance. Having fat fingers syndrome, I often hit two keys at once and I’m forever turning some annoying function on and I don’t know how turn it off! Usually it’s some annoying overtype feature!
This doesn’t surprise me. Twenty-two years of providing PC and network technical support led me to conclude most people learn exactly what they think (or what they are shown) they need to know to get their job done on a computer and aren’t often interested in putting in effort on their own to search for easier methods. “I didn’t know you could do that” was an often heard phrase.
Control-F search has been around at least since WordStar days 30 years ago when I first started using it. It’s been the standard in almost everything since then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar
Maybe most people are just too familiar with Unix and they keep looking for a shortcut key for GREP. 😉
Been using Firefox ‘Find’ for years, but I didn;t know about this:
C. Shannon says:
August 21, 2011 at 8:53 am
“…. just press ‘/’ and it brings up the search bar and puts the cursor in place.
REALLY useful tip – thanks!
Taphonomic says:
August 21, 2011 at 10:11 am
Ctrl-F works fine, but as usual with Microsoft products there is another way to accomplish the same thing.
======================================================
Indeed, for those that may not know, the menus across the top of the application often have letters underlined. Like the word File at the top of my Firefox web-browser. Press the “Alt” key on the keyboard, and then the unlined letter. In this case it would be the letter “F”. So, key combination “Alt+F” drops a menu down with several options. To the right in the menu, there is other key combinations that would bypass the drop down. So, “Alt+F” and then P, would print, or one could simply “Ctrl+P”. Note, that once the drop down menu is activated, one can use the “arrow” buttons (the right arrow if starting at the File drop down) to peruse other shortcut keystrokes.
Using a mouse is cool, but when it comes to speed, keystrokes are the bomb! Some IE users will have to change the view before the menu will be shown.
Doug in Seattle says:
August 21, 2011 at 9:46 am
“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.”
A fewer number of us were using CTRL-F before DOS came along. Digital Research CP/M in my case. WordStar for CP/M came out in 1978. My first personal computer was an Altair-8800 purchased at auction around 1979 from a company called Pertec in Irvine, CA which was quickly going out of business. They had acquired MIPS, the maker of the Altair, in 1976. Lots of interesting stuff at that auction. I also picked up a pair of double-sided double-density 8″ floppy disk drives for a song. Those babies would hold 1.2megs each. I could put Digital Research Pascal on a single floppy and use the other for program store. I wire wrapped my own floppy controller card for the S-100 bus Altair using a Western Digital floppy controller chip. I also wire wrapped my own S-100 RS-232 serial interface card and, also purchased at the Pertec auction, a clunky old black and white RS-232 terminal.
When I was taking structured programming in college in the late 1970’s Pascal was the language being used in the courses. My prof agreed to let me use my homebuilt machine to do my homework assignments instead of the HP-2000 mini-computer on the college campus. In fact I think all but one prof let me do that as I also had Basic, Fortran, and Assembly language for the old Altair. The prof that didn’t let me do it was in a class on microprocessor archtecture where we had to write an emulator in Fortran for a hypothetical microprocessor. The prof had to be able to submit a program written in the hypothetical machine language and the emulator had to produce the proper results. We had to emulate all the shift registers and stuff in the hypothetical uP. It was a bit on the difficult side even for me but mine worked flawlessly. Cognizant of the challenge in the term project and aware of my level of talent in computer architecture and programming I asked the prof after the last class was over “So how did everyone do on the emulator?” He smiled and said “Abysmal. Yours was the only one that worked correctly.” That was my favorite computer prof. We used to hang for a while after class talking about the brand spanking new, not yet released for production, Intel 8086 microprocessor which were both keenly interested in and was very far beyond anything being taught at the university. Back in those days the university courses in computer science were years behind the bleeding edge in industry.
I have SO many stories from the old days. One of my first designs where I was a principle engineer was a portable computer (CP/M based, STD bus) that appeared on the cover of Popular Science in 1981 alongside the KayPro, Osbourne, and a few others. I first met Michael Dell around 1988 when he wasn’t yet old enough to drink and his company was called PC Limited. He’d advanced by then beyond selling refurbished IBM PCs out his dorm room at UT but it wasn’t long after that point.
I actually prefer the shift+insert shortcut for paste. It is not only more intuitive, but it is much easier and quicker to type for me.
Another thing that can save a lot of time is to use a feed reader instead of a browser for blogs and other rapidly-changing content sites. If the site offers a “full feed” (this one doesn’t), I can read most of an article in the time it takes the full site to load in a browser. Best of all, the feed reader checks intermittently, so I don’t have to. And I don’t miss any postings, the way that I do when I find links in my Twitter stream.
BFL says:
August 21, 2011 at 9:11 am
Ctrl-f…….ahhhh but what is the keyboard shortcut for closing the search tab once opened (no mouse clicks allowed).
Could it be the “Esc” key?
Ctrl + D bookmarks the page.
BFL says:
August 21, 2011 at 9:11 am
Ctrl-f…….ahhhh but what is the keyboard shortcut for closing the search tab once opened (no mouse clicks allowed).
oh, the humble key of yore.
C. Shannon says:
August 21, 2011 at 8:53 am
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 =)
Thank you! I didn’t know about that feature either.
Even more useful tip.
Install Google toolbar, highlight a word or phrase on a web page with a sweep of your mouse, hit CTL-C, and it’s automatically transferred into the Google search box.
Instant expert in a box on almost any subject imaginable given a few minutes lead time to find the information you need to make your argument or answer an argument. Google is the biggest advance in learning since the printing press if you ask me. Like being inside the library of congress and having the ability to move around and flip through books at the speed of light. Incredible. I’ve been using Google like a madman for going on 15 years and before that, since about 1993 when I went to work for Dell, I was using a Unix program called Archie, which is considered the first internet search engine. I was one of the first 500 people in Austin, TX to have a home broadband cable modem from Time/Warner. I got hooked up while it was still in the initial test phase. You to submit an application to get in on the rollout. It wasn’t generally available to the public until a year or two later. Up until that point my only high speed connection to the internet was from my office at Dell. I damn near lived in that office putting in my 8 hours for the company every day then spending another 8 hours surfing the web at night.
Actually I mispoke about Google toolbar. You don’t have to hit control-C anymore. Just highlight the phrase and as soon as you let go of your mouse button it appears in the search bar. It only works with Internet Explorer that way. In FireFox I still have to copy & paste. I usually use Firefox for searches and Internet Explorer for casual surfing. I may have to change my habits now.
Carsten Arnholm, Norway says:
August 21, 2011 at 9:04 am
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.
How does UnMHT compare to the ScreenGrab add-on I’m already using in Firefox?
F3 works and has “next/previous” options.
Shortcuts for Windows XP.
http://foliovision.com/seo-tools/computers/windows/xp-run-commands
Start+pause/break brings up System properties.
Alt+Prnt Scrn captures the active window. Useful for uploading screen captures.
Carsten;
Thanks for the unMHT addon.
Here are a few more:
Lazarus (status bar bug and context menu, recovers any typing into forms like this comment box)
ReadLater Saves page link to a searchable dated list
F3 repeats the last “Find on this page” (‘Find next’)
Here’s another good tip. Ever see somebody write like an expert a little TOO easily?
Catch them out by selecting a unique looking bit of text from their posting and google the snippet inside quotation marks so you only get back exact matches. If you get a hit and he didn’t credit the source you found yourself a plaigiarizing mofo. If you don’t get a hit then you should be suitably impressed because he’s probably written that off-the-cuff and really knows whereof he speaks if the stuff is accurate.
And: my #1 all time repeated recommendation: try and buy ClipMate. Everything saved/copied with Ctrl-C is archived, temporarily or permanently. Just check out clipmate.com — if you get it, you’ll wonder how you lived without it.
@BFL >>>Ctrl-f…….ahhhh but what is the keyboard shortcut for closing the search tab once opened (no mouse clicks allowed).
Esc(ape)
Does everyone here know they can right-click the “Start” button to bring up a context menu, to open Windows Explorer?
In general, right-click gives “more choices” in Windows, in many contexts.
Duke C. says:
August 21, 2011 at 10:40 am
WordPress automatically changes text only youtube links into embedded videos. I realise that really bites for dialup users, but no-one ever said life was fair. 😉 I vaguely recall reading somewhere that one can set the browser to display just the text in webpages? Anyone?
Well, I was going to reply to one of the comments above that I had read earlier today, but this afternoon when I came back to this thread it was too long and tedious to scroll through all the comments and I can’t seem to find it now. If only there were some way to quickly search this whole thread . . . 🙂
I love it when Sir Anthony posts articles like this… So many useful “geek” tips show up in the comments. I particularly like the “/” one.
I have a tip that might just save your marriage one day. If you find yourself getting tired and irritable due to spending long hours in front of your computer, use the off button and things will improve enormously.
Cheers!
Dave Springer,
Tried it. Got 8 hits on “plaigiarizing mofo.”☺
C. Shannon says: “Also you can skip the CTRL+F bit and just press ‘/’ and it brings up the search bar and puts the cursor in place.”
Sehr niftlich! Works in Opera, too.
I probably have some WordStar files on this machine, somewhere. All the CTRL-x functions still work. I used to like to tell my co-workers about the undocumented feature (invert screen or some such nonsense) invoked with CTRL-ALT-NUM PAD period. Doesn’t reboot, anymore, though. It just calls the Task Manager.
i believe that Dave Springer was the first guy on this page to bring up the subject of word processing software when at 11:17 AM on 21 August he wrote:
I got WordStar 3.3 for CP/M bundled with a Kaypro Business Pack I bought for my office about thirty years ago, and modified the program in hex to incorporate a spooling function that enabled the editing of one file while another was being sent to that big, noisy Juki 6100 daisy-wheel printer included with Kaypro’s “Darth Vader’s Lunchbox” in the Business Pack.
That same “CTRL-F” function has been incorporated in all the word processing software I’ve since worked with, including PC-Write, the shareware program that could be run in MS-DOS from a 3.5-inch microfloppy disk without difficulty (and was therefore shirt-pocket portable from one machine to another) when I finally transitioned from CP/M to the Windows environment.
When I began fiddling with Web browsers back in the 1990s – starting with Netscape Navigator – the “CTRL-F” function (insofar as I recall) was already well-established in such software, too.
I’m using Firefox 6.0 right now (and its “feeping creaturism” is making me regret the upgrade more than a little bit as it routinely eats up clock cycles on my aged CPU). I keep that “Find” function open pretty much all the time.
But it’s nice to learn that I’m apparently a smarter computer user than about 90% of people who browse the Web.
Hell, I oughta be.
My free iPhone / Climategate app is a handy reference to the emails, for times when you dont have an Internet connection – such as during your daily commute. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/climategate/id386480628 .
Amazing what you can learn just reading the emails, or the highlight link reference reproduced (with permission) from Australian Scientist John Costella’s excellent analysis. I only really came to appreciate the full depth of what the Climategate scientists did, while creating the app.
True Northist says:
“I vaguely recall reading somewhere that one can set the browser to display just the text in webpages? Anyone?”
If you know the “a href” HTML command you can link to the video with a word or phrase, like this.
For Windoze users Alt+F4 or Alt+Tab will get you out of Kiosk mode.
From the run box: iexplore -k whatsupwiththat.com
Caution! Opens Internet Exploder!
clipe says:
August 21, 2011 at 12:32 pm
As clipe says, in the Windows world, F3 brings up the search box and Esc gets rid of it.
Why press two keys when one will do?
DirkH says
“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.”
This should be an interesting tool, but I put in debt and year and it seems that google has no ability to display information past 2008/2009. Similary for deficit, year. Everything stops with Bush, no Obama information
I wonder what predisposition enables Google images to filter the facts?
Delete One
And for us old bifocal folks. Press Ctrl and scroll your mouse wheel.
Hint for old DOS-habituated keystroke-loving coots like me: There’s a subfamily of Windows programs that are strongly focused on single-letter keystrokes. Most of these are made by ex-Soviet area programmers, and most are elegant and amazingly fast compared to Western-made progs. Look up “Eastern Orthodox editors” to get a look at some of these.
Am I going OT here?
If you have trouble remembering your various identities and passwords associated with bookmarks…
Right click bookmark, >properties>location. Add question mark to url followed by (coded?) username and password.
Username password will appear in address bar next time you open bookmark..
It seems to be somewhat different on the Mac. I clicked on:
Firefox -> Preferences -> Advanced -> “Search for text when I start typing” (2nd option from the top)
And CTRL+SHIFT+Tab moves from tab to tab in the reverse direction (so you can retrace your steps).
Interestingly I can remember finding this function. I did it just by guessing – I wanted to find something so logic suggested Ctrl-F. Good ergonomics, so the interesting point is that so few have found this function. Suggests to me they fail to imagine the possibility and have faith in the programmers. If they imagine a search facility would help them (as I did), and have faith that the browser was programmed by someone who would realise this, then they would either try Ctrl-F or at least look in the menu for the function.
Billy Liar:
“in the Windows world, F3 brings up the search box and Esc gets rid of it.
Why press two keys when one will do?”
Ergonomics.
Firstly I can actually hit Ctrl-F more quickly than F3, as both keys are ones I use frequently so can hit by simply looking toward the keyboard; I have to look at function keys directly. More importantly Ctrl-F is obvious enough that I found it by guessing, indeed it was my first guess. F3 I would have to find out then learn.
RossD says:
August 21, 2011 at 4:14 pm
And for us old bifocal folks. Press Ctrl and scroll your mouse wheel.
I was just about to bring that subject up. 😉
On the Ctrl-F history. Before there was CP/M, there were graphical editors that ran on timesharing systems. A popular editor then was emacs (short for “editing macros”) written in a concise language that just happened to be the command language for an editor called TECO (text editor and corrector, IIRC). Both are still around, though emacs was rewritten in a variant of Lisp. The original authors are still around. Richard Stallman wrote emacs, I first met him when he crashed a DEC User Society meeting and told everyone if they weren’t using emacs they didn’t deserve to be using computers. He’s mellowed a little bit, though the last time I saw him was when he was an invited speaker at Franklin Pierce Law School. The person who introduced Stallman said he was a pioneer in “Open Source Software.” Stallman interrupted to point out it was “Free Software,” as in his Free Software Foundation and that “Open Source software” may not be covered under the FSF’s “Copyleft” license and therefore he rejects Open Source code as something to be respected.
I figured it wouldn’t take long.
Oh – In Emacs Ctrl-F moves the cursor forward one character (it took a while before keyboards got cursor keys). Ctrl-S is used to start a search. Woe to the newbie who stumbles his way into emacs. The best way to get out is Ctrl-X/Ctrl-C, but since you can switch between several files (and display files in sub windows) I start emacs when I boot the system and exit when the power goes off.
I also have the “It’s All Text” Firefox add-on and have it configured so I can shift editing one of these text subwindows to emacs.
TrueNorthist says:
August 21, 2011 at 1:13 pm
Duke C. says:
August 21, 2011 at 10:40 am
Those of you who like to embed YouTube videos, could you post just the link instead?
WordPress automatically changes text only youtube links into embedded videos. I realise that really bites for dialup users, but no-one ever said life was fair. 😉 I vaguely recall reading somewhere that one can set the browser to display just the text in webpages? Anyone?
————
With Opera Browser you can press F12 and untick the item “Enable Plug-Ins”
remember to re-enable it again. Other quick configuration options are there too.
The Full Monty is here: http://help.opera.com/Windows/11.50/en/keyboard.html
OT: On searching for past posts at WUWT.
Over on Tips and notes is:
I frequently hunt down old references for people who’ve forgotten about them or who weren’t here when they were hot news. I often start with the search window up at the top of this page. It will search text in all the WUWT posts, but not comments. Usually good, sometimes not. Next is generally Google, which does look at comments. I’ll often add |site:wattsupwiththat.com| to restrict hits to WUWT (I like to use vertical bars as quotes for search strings).
For this, let’s see. I generally start too broad and narrow if necessary. Using the WordPress search box I looked for |when children should die|. Die is a pretty good word, though it can apply to bacteria, trees, animals, and computer companies.
The first page of results didn’t have a match (visual search), but I wasn’t surprised, it was a couple years ago. (Search results are in inverse chronological order.) Aha! On the second page, I see:
Oh rats, my ancient Netscape just crashed. Another reason to use It’s All Text, I still have my emacs buffer. Restarting Netscape, I see:
TV Network Tells Kids How Long Their Carbon Footprint Should Allow Them to Live
Posted on May 31, 2008 by Anthony Watts
This is environmentalism jumping the shark: Click image above to play the game I don’t know where to begin, except to say that when we see things like this, we should complain loudly and incessantly. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has …
Oh, the link in Tips and Notes goes to a May 26, 2008 story. I should have simply started with my monthly table of contents at http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/toc_2008_05.html – it’s the very first item (last post of the month)!
No followup in June that I see. I do see “Thanks to you [readers] I’ve hit another traffic high with over 402,000 unique page views for the month of May.” Hah – we do that in 5 days now.
Aug 20: 85,957,910 views to date
Aug 15: 85,551,233
Ric Werme,
Very good analysis, thanks. In addition, WUWT has had 650,000 reader comments posted from all over the world, in less than 5 years.
At 5:30 PM on 21 August, Ric Werme just had to bring up Emacs and TECO from the days when a “minicomputer” was something the size of a restaurant refrigerator and the PDP-11 was the neatest gadget on the planet.
And then he evoked rms Oy, gevalt! Guaranteed to get us old farts flashing back on the ’70s and the ’80s, when Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” suckage represented absolutely the worst we thought could possibly come out of the Oval Office.
Little did we know, right?
So are we now gonna start reminiscing about Guy Steele and Eric S. Raymond and quoting our favorite Jargon File entries?
While we’re on the subject, ( and I hate to sound technologically incompetent here, but I sure can be sometimes) how do you make a previous commenter’s or guest post appear in Italics?
For the life of me, I can’t figure it out, and I’ve just been putting the whole thing in quotations.
There are a number of answers to this. The 1st 2 involve using HTML (HyperText Markup Language) tags (codes).
1. Easiest: Enclose the material between these two tags: <i> </i>
2. Next: Enclose the material between <blockquote> </blockquote> This also indents.
3. Most elaborate but eventually easier: Use the FireFox GreaseMonkey add-on, and install the CA Assistant ‘script’ (tool). It puts bolding, italics, linking, and more in an icon toobar over the Reply form.
Wow, all you PC users have my sympathy. I just apple-F like the other happy mac users.
But here’s something I have found extremely useful beyond searching on single pages: site search. It’s a feature of Google with endless uses when you wish to scan an entire blog for something you saw, say, last year some time, or to determine whether or not a site to which you’re new discusses let’s say, volcanoes:
After your Google search term, in the search field, add “site:” where can be anything location on the web. shortcut hint: you NEVER need the initial “www” that many sites use — that is automatically added if it is needed.
For example, to find every mention of Al Gore on wattsupwiththat.com, paste the following into the search field:
“Al Gore” site:wattsupwiththat.com
I just did this, and got about 15,100 hits.
Try the same on pjtv.com:
“Al Gore” site:pjtv.com
and I get 12,500 hits. Popular guy 🙂
Have fun everyone!
Tucci78 says:
August 21, 2011 at 6:28 pm
Of course – I have half a sentence in the Jargon file, a reference to a Carnegie Tech (now Carbegie Mellon Univ) frat that used thermite to weld a street car to the tracks on Forbes Ave.
ESR wins some credit for why I program in Python whenever I can get away with it.
… when Jimmy Carter’s …
I was working on a Heathkit stereo (AR 1214?) while Carter was winning the election. I accidentally soldered a couple transistors backward right around then. Fortunately they didn’t let out the magic smoke when I turned it on.
Hey, if there was ever a post to hijack with computer folklore, this is it! Open Flood Control Dam #1.
J. Felton says:
August 21, 2011 at 7:04 pm
See the bottom of my Guide to WUWT, http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/index.html (or click the appropriate image on the right side navigation links near the top of the page).
It also has notes on special characters so you can “right” 20°C or El Niño.
“Get yourself a real editor” (take-off of a famous Dilbert comic) – I have an emacs macro where I highlight text, and use the macro to bracket the text with a <blockquote> command.
From Duke C. on August 21, 2011 at 10:40 am:
Got a Mozilla-derived browser like FIrefox, or Seamonkey or even Netscape? Get the FlashBlock plug-in and stop loading all of that unnecessary/unwanted Flash content. It can additionally block that M$ Flash-wannabe, Silverlight. Instead each individual Flash object will get a box with a little icon, click to load that individual Flash object.
This also reveals little hidden Flash objects you likely didn’t know were there. Since installing FlashBlock, I regularly notice a little “Flash detect” object. Could you be loading one that’s accessing your camera and microphone, are files (like perhaps viruses) being stored on your computer by one? Do you know what your Flash Global Settings are, have you already turned those functions off by default?
Also useful is the ultimate Flash E-stop, Flash Killer, that’ll get rid of all Flash content on a page. Want to stop a Flash object from doing something you don’t want happening, right now? Flash Killer gives you a button for that, replaces the area occupied by a video or game with a blank space.
With both on my system, I have a right-click option to remove individual objects, which works before I click on the object. After I click then the Flash takes over that space, right-click only yields the Flash menu, Flash Killer is the option.
Try FlashBlock. See how much faster Tips & Notes then loads.
I can highly recommend this very usefull add-on for firefox, I use it for fast screenshots:
“download youtube videos + 3.3.51”
—————————————————————————————–
-Screenshot – Ever wanted to take a screenshot of an entire page (or just part) to archive or easily share with a friend or associate? The screenshot button has mutiple features to let you capture any page you are viewing at any time such as : Save complete page, save visible portion, save selection, save complete page as, save visible portion as, save selection as, copy complete page, copy visible portion, copy selection,, in .png or .jpg format with customizable key bindings.
—————————————————————————————–
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/download-youtube-videos/
I like ctrl enter in the address bar of my browser. Just type in wattsupwiththat and hit ctrl enter and it automatically adds the http://www. and the .com.
Smokey says:
August 21, 2011 at 1:21 pm
“Dave Springer, Tried it. Got 8 hits on “plaigiarizing mofo.”☺”
Hahaha – good one.
I usually take a partial sentence of 8 or 10 words that are unlikely to be arranged exactly the same way by different writers expressing the same information. If you get any hits on that you usually find it was a lot more than 8 or 10 words that were copied verbatim. There are programs that college professors use to detect plagiarism that don’t get fooled by changing a few words here and there but I figure most blog posters are too lazy to bother making enough changes to escape easy detection. I meam how many mofos like me would bother looking for plagiarizing mofos on a stupid blog in the first place? For me it’s just a way of figuring out if I’m talking to a genuinely knowledgable person or just a parrot.
Another sign of parrots is what a few of us in the intelligent design wars have termed the “literature bluff”.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=%22literature+bluff%22&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS290US290&ie=UTF-8
This is where some person like R.Gates throws out a list of links to peer reviewed literature to make a point without any actual quotes of what’s in said literature. The bluff is that he hasn’t actually read any of that literature himself, wouldn’t understand it if he tried, and relies on you not taking the time to sort through it to see if it actually supports his points or not.
I don’t bluff like that and will usually provide a quote or a reference to a figure or illustration within the paper. Usually the subject gets changed or the quote is just ignored. If someone else actually quotes from a paper I’ll go have a look at it if isn’t behind a paywall because another tactic dishonest parties is called “quote mining” where further reading around what’s quoted reveals that the author of the paper wasn’t really saying what the short quote appears to say i.e. it’s taken out of context.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS382US382&q=%228+or+10+words+that+are+unlikely+to+be+arranged+exactly+the+same%22
Anthropologists creep me out!! I like to study them, find out what makes them tick and write about their stupidity, and tell the world how astounded I am with them being astounded that some people lack a skill that they assume the
Lab-ratspeople they study should have.Thanks in principle.
In MSIE 8 that’s the “Find on this page” command in the pulldown beside in the “Live Search” box at top right of the header. (Do not click the magnifying glass, use the down arrow to get the pulldown menu. It finds the first occurrence and puts a Previous-Next dialogue at the top of page content. )
Very useful. Not magic, not the salvation of humanity, but does save time.
One problem is poor design of User Interface. MSIE 8 for example has more menu locations than necessary – for example, there is a Tools pull-down in the traditional top-left location and one in a new location on the right side a bit lower down. What mentality does things like that?
I assume everyone knows that in Firefox, control + (the plus sign without the shift) will increase the font size on a page and control – (the negative sign) will decrease the font size and sometimes the images as well. It becomes more useful the older you get.
Even Neolithic Larry knew about Apple-F. But I picked up some other good pointers here. Thanks.
Dave;
“plaigiarizing mofo” is a particularly good phrase to search for, because it includes a misspelling! Error-matching is very diagnostic.
😉
;p