ISALC, Lewis and Clark College

• There are two basic types of search tools on the World Wide Web:
  1. Browsable Index - You search for your topic by clicking on a list of topics/categories which are supplied by the index.
  2. Searchable Index - You search for your topic by entering a keyword(s) plus some symbols
     
• You can get access to many of the most popular Internet search tools by clicking the "Net Search" button on the Netscape tool bar. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see links to the search tools.
  
• When using search indexes, don't use capital letters (or you will only get matches of entries with capital letters)
  
• Clicking "Text only" will make search indexes faster to use (e.g. scroll to the bottom of the page in Alta Vista to find text only)
  
• After finding pages on your topic, use the "Find" button in the Netscape tool bar to locate your search term in the document. This can be *very* helpful because some Web pages are *very* long.

Yahoo is one of the oldest and perhaps the most popular browsable index. It also now has a search feature. See Yahoo Advanced search help for complete instructions.

Alta Vista and Inference Find are searchable indexes. Alta Vista searches millions of web sites and returns results which include the first few words of the web page to help you know if it will be helpful to you. Alta Vista also ranks the results according to relevancy. See Alta Vista help for complete instructions. Inference Find searches many of the major search tools, compiles them, throws out duplicates, and returns results organized by topic. Often I use this tool first because it does not return so many results. If I can't find what I want, I move on to Alta Vista. You can use the same search terms in Inference Find that you use for Alta Vista (though these may not always work).

Using these powerful search tools will often find *too many* documents (sometimes several hundred thousand!). The trick is to make your search more specific. This will return fewer documents, but hopefully ones that are more useful.

• NOTE: If you want a great way to remember the basic rules for effective searching, just remember, "My Plump Starfish Quickly Lowered Lincoln's Tie." What does that mean? Click here to find out! You'll learn all the basic rules you need to be an excellent Web searcher!

1. To Bookmark a Site and Save to Your Disk:
   1. You must be in the page which your wish to bookmark.
   2. From the "Bookmark" menu, choose "Add Bookmark".
   3. Choose "Bookmarks" from the "Window" menu.
   4. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see your most recent bookmark.
   5. Drag the bookmark icon onto your floppy disk and it will be copied.
      

   To Return to a Bookmarked Site:

   1. Double click the bookmark icon on your floppy disk.
   2. If Netscape is open, you will go directly to the site. If not, Netscape will load and open to the bookmarked page.

   To Save a Graphics File:

   1. When you see an image you want to download, click on it and hold the mouse button down for a second or two.
   2. A dialog box will appear in your browser. Choose "Save this image as" to download the file.
   3. Navigate to your floppy. Click "Save".
      
      • NOTE: Converting Graphics Files - To use a graphic in your Web project, it must be in either "GIF" or "JPEG" format. (You will know by looking at the filename when you download a graphic--if it ends with ".gif, .jpeg, or .jpg"--it's OK). If it does not, you will have to convert it. Follow these steps:
        1. Open the "Multimedia/Graphic Tools" folder
        2. Open "GraphicConverter"
        3. Select "Open" from the "File" menu.
        4. Navigate to your picture file. Click "open".
        5. Select the part of the picture you want by dragging a box. Choose "Trim Selection" from the "Edit" menu.
        6. On the "Picture" menu, select "colors" and "Change to 256 colors"
        7. Select "Save as. . ." from the "File" menu. Format: Select "JPEG/JFIF". Name the file. (it must end with ".JPEG or .JFIF"). Save the file to your floppy disk.
        8. Choose "Quit" from the "File" menu.
           

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Created by: krauss@lclark.edu
Updated: 9/19/99