Module 1 Answers

Using Web Browsers

• 1a. I was defaulted to Login | Roll20: Online Virtual Tabletop at https://app.roll20.net/sessions/new.
• 1b. This is the homepage that I set for my web browser a while ago. I can change it by going into Settings > Appearance, then changing the homepage.
• 2. I can zoom, and also change the font size and select custom fonts in the settings, under Appearance. This might help make a website easier to read.
• 3. I use Google. I can open a new tab and type in the search bar on that page, or I can type searches in the URL bar.

Searching the Web

• 4a. I got 6,180,000 results, and it looks like most of the ones on the first few pages are relevant.
• 4b. I got 16,100 results. It looks like about half of them are relevant, and many of the rest are from other students who completed this course in the past.
• 5. The number of hits was not at all consistent, with Bing and Yahoo getting millions more results than Google, DuckDuckGo getting only a few pages each time, and Kartoo not getting any. I believe Bing and Yahoo filter their results less thoroughly, while DuckDuckGo gives higher-quality results. Kartoo is probably a specialized search engine that doesn't search for web design-related information. I might use DuckDuckGo for its regional search utility, if I ever needed localized information.
• 6. I would call Wolfram Alpha a tutorial resource, rather than a search engine. It seems to query a curated list of resources, rather than searching the Web at large.

Using Metasearch Sites

• 7a. A search engine is a tool for searching the Web, while a metasite is a tool that uses multiple search engines to answer a query, then aggregates the results for the user.
• 7b. I got about 5 pages of results. They were organized into 5 categories: web, images, video, news, and shopping.
• 7c. It looks like almost all the results are highly relevant.
• 8a. I didn't get any matches...
• 8b. There were matches in search 7. It looks like mamma.com is designed to search for coupon codes and discounts, not web design-related information.

Finding Multimedia Elements

• 9a. I can click the "images" tab in Google to look for specific types of results.
• 9b. I can search for images, videos, news, shopping, maps, books, flights, finance, and personal.
• 9c. I found several hundred pictures of cats.
• 9d. Whenever I click to expand an image, there is a warning beneath that says "image may be subject to copyright."

Web Hosting Sites

After a brief period of searching, I became interested in the Gwiddle Foundation. The Gwiddle Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing free web hosting to new student developers so that they can improve their skills. While I don't envision myself using their service in the long term, I would consider using them for my final project in this class. It seems like I fall squarely into their target demographic. Also, the price is right.