a. What is the title and URL of the web page you are defaulted to?
The title of the webpage I am defaulted to when clicking “home” in the firefox web browser is, New Tab, and the url it shows me is about:home.
b. Why did this appear?
The page that appeared is the home page, which is why it’s URL is about:home, but it is titled new tab because the home page of a browser also functions as a new tab page when opened, unless new tabs are set to blank. The home page is opened because it is the default setting in the browser.
How can you change this default setting so that another web page automatically loads when you launch the web browser?
To change this setting in Firefox, so a a different webpage is opened when the browser is launched, or the “home button is pressed, do the following:
Your designated Firefox hompage should now be changed
In firefox you can change the appearance of web pages in the browser settings. To do so:
You may want to this because you do not like the default font and size used for web pages, or it may be for accessibility reasons. Certain fonts may be easier to read for you, and bigger sizes may make text easier to see.
For Firefox the default search engine is google, and you can to it by opening the browser, opening a new tab, or clicking home. Doing one of these will open up a homepage/new tab with a search bar powered by the default engine, and to use it just type in it and hit enter. You can also get to it by searching for it in the search bar, but this is redundant as you are already using it.
a. In the search box, type inlearning to make web pages and click on the "Search" button. How many matches did you get? 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?
After typing learning to make web pages into google I got 443,000,000 matches. After clicking on a few of the results, only some of them directly related to how to make web pages, while most were either barely relevant, or only adjacent. Many of the links were ads for website builders, like Winx. While everything was related to building a website, their were only a few related to learning how to build it yourself with html, and only a few of them were on the first page. I would estimate all of the results relate to the search inquiry, "learning to make webpages," but only some of the results are direct matches that teach you webdesing and the basic coding needed to make web pages.
b. 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? 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?
After refining the search into “learning to make web pages” the matches were narrowed down to 17,000. After clicking on these links:
After visiting these sites, and looking at the other result pages, I would estimate most of the links are direct matches, as the ones I visited, and the titles of most of them were all related to learning how to code a webpage using html, with one that had a tutorial for CSS. However, some of the links and pages were only matched in terms of featuring a key word from my search on the page and were not actually relevant to learning to make webpages.
Are the number of hits consistent across search engines? If not, what do you think accounts for the differences?
The number of hits across the different search enginges seemed consistent with eachother, but not consistend with google, having more overall results. However, I do not know exactly how consistent or inconsistent they are, as google is the only one I could get to show me the exact number of hits. However, the amount of pages of results was slightly different across each engine as the amount of results pages differed, with all three having more results than google, but less direct matches. On the other three engines looking up the search terms in parantheses did not help, as it only took off one or two pages from each engine's results list. Bing, Yahoo, and Duck Duck Go, all had broader results that needed more specific terms to be narrowed down. I think this difference is accounted for in how each engine is structured compared to google, and the frequencie of which I use them compared to google. In the background information articles it is explained that search engines rank the results by relevancy. Google also curates to you by not only ranking results against how relevant they are to your terms, but hey relevant they are to previous searches and your personal information. If you have looked up coding tutorials before, google is more likely to give you those when searching the term, learning to build webpages. Putting it paranthese seems to treat it as a title, or as something that needs to be featured within the listed results, so it gets more specific. Bing, Yahoo, and Duck Duck are built simarly, however google has more resources, so they can afford more and faster proccessors, and they have better data collection resources, and own more companies like youtube that give your search data to google. While the other three engines are consistent with eachother, Google is able to work with less because of the resources. I beleive the ammount I use each engine effects this as well. I use google and youtube alot, so it has more data on me and my preferences, than the other three so it can better understand what I am looking for when I type in "learning to code webpages." This is why Yahoo, Bing, and Duck Duck Go, give me results like websiter builders over coding tutorials because they are paid to promote them and those engines have less of my search data.
After looking at each of the above search engines, in what cases would you use a search engine that is not your current default (most likely Google)?
After looking at, and using, all of the above search engines, a case where I would use a search engine that is not my ccurrent one is when I want a broader option of results. Google still gives broad options, but they are catered to my previous searches and data. If I want something more broad, I would use the other three. They are still influenced by my previous searches and data, but their ranking systems seem less advanced than googles.
Is there a way to search specifically for multimedia?
Google provides different ways to search for and with multimedia, by using search tabs, like the images and video tabs, and by allowing you to use your device's camera and your voice to search.
b. If yes, what specific elements can you search for? What are your options? (If not, try another site!)
With googles multimedia searching, you can use elements like shapes, colors, and sounds to search for something using your device’s camera and microphone. You can also use the search bar, like usual, and filter out other results to get the media you are looking for by using it’s respective tab.
c. Do a search for a specific media item (e.g., your favorite song, a picture of Britney Spears). How many matches do you get?
When searching for the song, “Another Life” by Motionless in White, I get 1,360,000,000 matches, or results. All I did was search the song title and click on the videos tab, but I also got songs with the same title by other bands and a show I have never heard of.
d. Are there any warnings, disclaimers, or other information provided about using the results of your multimedia searches embedded in the search interface?
There are no disclaimers when using the multimedia searches.
a. What is creative commons? Why might you want to use this search engine for images and other media?
Creative Commons is a search enter that is based on the sharing of ideas. It focuses on media and information that is unlicensed, or licsenced using a creative commons liscense. I would use this search engine for multimedia resultst that are not copyrighted. Creative Commons deals in uncopyrighted material that is free to use and transform as one pleases. If I am doing an art project in photoshop, or if I need a photo to add to a product or company project, I can use Creative Commons to find free to use results.
After exploring search engines I have learned that key words and ranking systems matter in web design. As a web designer my choices on how to organize my website and what content goes on it, and how that content is presented, must be oriented towards relevancy and keywords. After exploring the engines I learned that it is not the most relevant pages that rank the highest, but it is the pages that are both relevant to the terms and draw in viewers. The pages that both match my search terms and have been frequented the most often will be what is most pushed. I need to design my webpage around getting seen, around the search engine catching a keyword within it, and seeing it as similar to sites it pushes to specific users. I need to make it easy for my site to slide down the filter and into the upper ranks results page. I also want to use elements that fall under creative commons to make it easier for my site to stay on the web, and to allow peole to be able to take content from my site and creatively use it in their own way. I want to design a website that is easy to find and completely shareable.