EP01-5 How to use search engine for finding particular information on the Internet and save the webpage into your local computer

How to use search engine

Four Tips to Help Make the Most of a Search

1-  Make your keywords as precise as possible. If you're looking for information on Tyrannosaurus rex, don't type in "dinosaurs." You'll get too much general information about dinosaurs and not enough specific hits about T-rex.

2-  Use two or more keywords in your search. But put the most important keywords first. For example, if you wanted information about what the T-rex ate, you might use the following keywords in this order: Tyrannosaurus rex diet. The search engine will look for Web pages that contain all these words.

3-  Make sure you spell the keywords correctly. If you typed "dinasour" as a keyword, your search would turn up empty. If you're not sure of a word's correct spelling, use a dictionary.

4-  Always try more than one search engine. Each search engine doesn't look through every site on the Web. Instead, most search engines check Web site pages every once in a while to create their own databases. So when you use a search engine, you're actually looking at one small slice of sites. Different search engines will usually come up with different results. So it makes sense to use more than one.

How to save the webpage into your local computer

Here are five different ways to copy a Web page's content for offline browsing, plus a reason why you may never need to bookmark another page.

1- The Quick Draw McGraw approach: The fastest way to capture what's currently in the browser window is to press Alt+Print Screen in Windows to copy the currently active window, or Command+Shift+3 on a Mac to take a snapshot of the entire screen. (On a Mac, Command+Shift+4 lets you select the portion of the screen to capture.) Then open any image processor (such as Paint in Windows) and press Ctrl+V to paste the window or desktop capture into a new file. Save the file as a JPEG, PNG, BMP, or other image format.

2- The screen capture is fast, but you probably want to copy more of the page than can fit in one browser window, or you may want just some of the page's text or images, not the whole enchilada. Also, you won't be able to copy text from or otherwise interact with the duplicated content: it's one big image.

3-The Content Capture approach: To copy all of the page's content, press Ctrl+S to open the Save As dialog box. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome let you save the page at the default "Web Page, complete" setting or "Web Page, HTML only." Firefox adds two other file-save options: "Text files" and "All files."

4-"Web Page, complete" saves the HTML file and a folder containing other elements on the page, such as images and scripts. When you open the local file in your browser, links, images, and other elements on the page may or may not work, depending on network connection, availability of the host Web server, and other variables.

The Firefox Help site explains your page-saving options in that browser. Microsoft's Help & How-to site provides the same information for IE 9.

5-The Text Only approach: If you merely want the page's text without images and interactive elements, the fastest way is to press Ctrl+A to select the entire page, press Ctrl+C to copy it, open any word processor or text editor, and click Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted text. The resulting text file includes all the text on the page, some of which you probably don't want, such as the page's site navigation.

6-The text-pasting is more precise if you use the mouse to select only the text you want to copy rather than the entire page. Then press Ctrl+C, open your text editor/word processor, and press Ctrl+V to paste the semi-formatted text. In many word processors, links in the resulting text will be Ctrl-clickable. Alternatively, you can click Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted text to paste plainly.

7-The Print as PDF approach: Google Chrome's built-in support for "printing" a page to a PDF file gives the browser an edge over Firefox and IE. Simply click the wrench in the top-right corner and choose Print > PDF > Save as PDF. In Windows the print-preview window lets you adjust the page layout from portrait to landscape, select only certain pages, and access other options by clicking Advanced.

8-The Read It Later add-on for Firefox puts a button in the upper-right corner of the browser that provides quick access to your list of saved pages. You can filter, search, sort, or sync your list, and access your account options. Right-click anywhere on the page and choose Read This Page Later to add the current page to your offline-browsing list.

To add pages to your Read It Later list from Chrome and IE, drag the service's bookmarklets to the IE's Favorites toolbar and Chrome's bookmarks bar. If the bookmarks bar isn't visible in Chrome, click the wrench icon in the top-right corner, select Preferences, and check "Always show the bookmarks bar" under Basics.