Using Web Browsers

  1. Home - Blackboard Learn, https://mymasonportal.gmu.edu
    This appeared because it is saved as the home page by the browser. You can change this default setting by changing it in the Options menu.
  2. You can change the font type, font size and even font color by going to Options > Content in the drop down menu on the right. You may want to change these things due to bad eyesight, colorblindedness or personal preference.
  3. Google is the default search engine associated with my web browser. You get to it by clicking the search bar at the top of the page

Searching the Web

Google

  1. I got 153,000,000 matches.
  2. Perhaps half of the search results actually relate to learning to make web pages.
  3. I got 9,530 matches.
  4. Learning to Make Web Pages, The Easy Way!
    Interestingly, here is a link to the class page
    It seems like the majority of these searches relate to making web pages, maybe 75%.

Bing

  1. 56,800,000 matches.
  2. Most of these search results seem relevant.
  3. 14,100 matches.
  4. A Yahoo Answers result for learning to make web pages
    How To Make A Web Page And Create A Website
    I would estimate the same as before - perhaps 75% of these links relate to making web pages.

Yahoo

  1. 58,000,000 results.
  2. From the beginning, it seems like 50% or more of these results are relevant.
  3. 22,900 results.
  4. So, you want to make a Web Page!
    A website for making a website.
    I would assume that 75% or more of these links are relevant to making a website

Ask

  1. I can't find a number that indicates the number of matches.
  2. Again, I think half of these results are relevant.
  3. There is no result number here.
  4. Our class website appears again.
    This appears to be an outdated and vague tutorial for web authoring
    The specified results seem even less relevant this time around; maybe 30% of these are relevant.

Kartoo

  1. This website has no results when I type in "learning to make web pages," with or without quotes in the search bar.

The number of hits is not the same across web pages. Google has the most results. Bing and Yahoo follow with approximately 1/3 of Google's results. Ask does not list its result number, and Kartoo had zero results.
Perhaps because Google is the oldest search engine, it has had the most time to accumulate searches. That and perhaps it is being updated much more frequently than older engines like Ask and Kartoo. Bing and Yahoo are both advanced and relevant today, but they fall behind Google because they are not as old as Google and so only have newer websites in their memory. This is only speculation.
I might use Bing or Yahoo for more specified results, since these two websites seemed to provide relevant search information regardless of whether or not the searched text was quoted.

Wolfram Alpha seems to be more like an encyclopaedia than like a search engine. It directly provides information on what you need to know rather than directing you to multiple websites with relevant (or irrelevant) information.

Dogpile

  1. Apparently Dogpile compiles search results from both Google and Yahoo.
  2. I do not see the number of search results on the page.
    According to the Preferences menu, they are organized by relevance to the searched text.
  3. Most of these searches, maybe 75%, seem to be related to making web pages. However, I am only looking through the first few pages, so I cannot be sure about the results near the end.

Mamma

  1. Again, there is no number of search results listed on the page.
    The searches seem to be organized by relevance again, especially because many of the pages that are appearing are the same as those on Dogpile.
  2. It seems that the matches on Mamma do not differ from the matches on Dogpile; many of these web pages appear on both metasearch engines.

On Bing, you can search for images and videos by clicking the "Images" or "Video" tabs in the top-left corner of the screen.
I searched for "angels" in the Images engine of Bing. There is no indication of the number of results, but the search can be specified with options like "size," "color," and "Type."
There are no disclaimers or warnings on Bing when searching for images.

Module 1