Using Web Browsers
1a. The title page is called Home - Blackboard Learn and the url can be found by clicking the following link. Home Page Link
1b. Your pages title helps your web page to be found when people are using a search engine. To change your home page you will have to click the menu button in the right hand corner of the web page, then select "settings" then under "appearance" tick the box Show Home button, bellow the button you should select "Change" you will be able to input the URL you want to be your homepage.
2. Can you change the appearance of web pages within your browser (e.g., the font face and size)? If so, how? Why would you want to? You can change the appearance of a web page temporarily by right clicking on the web page you are on, selecting "Inspect Element" then the html code will come up. From there you can change whatever you want on the page. You would want to change the code to help you to have a larger font or to make the page do what you want it to do.
3. What's the default search engine associated with your web browser? How do you get to it? Google is the default search engine associated with my current computer. I determined this by simply typing something in the top bar and the search engine that did the searching for me was Google.
Searching the Web
4a.In the search box, type in learning to make web pages and click on the "Search" button. How many matches did you get? When Googeling "learning to make web pages" I had 197,000,000 matches. I would say that the first 100 links would be about making a web page.
4b. Visit a couple of the sites in the search results list. Can you estimate how many of the searches actually relate to learning to make web pages? Return to the front page of Google. In the search box, type in "learning to make web pages" (with quotation marks) and click on the "Search" button. How many matches did you get? When searching the same thing with quotations my search resulted in 8,320 hits. I would say double the amount of links would result in pages that are involved in actually making a web page.
5. Are the number of hits consistent across search engines? No. If not, what do you think accounts for the differences? The search results ended up as follows: Bing, Yahoo, and Google had a large number of hits when searching without parentheses. Bing, Yahoo, and Duck Duck go had similar hit numbers when it came to using parentheses which was around 40~ hits. Google had 200x more hits than the other three with the parentheses. I would probably use Bing when wanting to have a specialized search because it doesn't narrow down the results as thinly as they could be.
6. Take a look at Wolfram Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com/). Is this a search engine? No. If not, what would you call it? Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine, but it is a computational knowledge engine.
Using Metasearch Sites
7a. What is the main difference between a metasite and a regular search site? A meta search site returns the best results from a regular search engine.
7b. Do a search for learning to make web pages. How many matches did you get? I don't see count of results. How are the matches organized? It returns results from Google, Yahoo, and Yandex.
7c. Link to a couple of the sites in the search results list. Can you estimate how many of the searches actually relate to learning to make web pages? I would say that 90% of the sites are about making web pages.
8a. Do a search for learning to make web pages. How many matches did you get? How are the matches organized? I do not see the number of web pages. The results are organized by Ads first then search results.
8b. How do the matches on Mamma differ from the matches you found in search 7? The dogpile results seem to show you where the pages come from and slightly more specialized.
Finding Multimedia Elements
9a. Is there a way to search specifically for multimedia? Yes
9b. If yes, what specific elements can you search for? What are your options? (If not, try another site!) Options for Images and Videos are available
9c. Do a search for a specific element (e.g., your favorite song, a picture of Britney Spears). How many matches do you get? I searched for cats and got 622,000,000 hits
9d. Are there any warnings, disclaimers, or other information provided about using the results of your multimedia searches embedded in the search interface? After clicking on a photo it says that the images are subject to copyright.
Web Hosting Sites
10. Finally, do a search for web hosting sites. You'll want to explore cost, features, and the benefits of using a hosting service. Create a separate section in your module1.html web page and provide a bit of data that describes the web hosting site you would most likely choose if you needed to host a website.
I searched specifically for free web hosting sites. In my search I determined that I would use weebly because the interface that I would be using seems like it is the most user friendly. The site is also nice because it gives you an option to have different types of membership status' depending on how much you want to spend.