Web Finder LE basics
If you are using a system version prior to MacOS 8.0, or you have MacOS 8.0 or later but do not have the "Internet scripting" scripting addition installed, the preference window will appear. As you do not have the ability to launch a 'default browser' you will have to set up the 'Browser toggle' feature which is covered in the 'Settings and Customisation' part of this manual. Read this first before continuing.
The Web Finder LE Interface at a glance:
The Recent popup menu, located at the right hand side of the text entry box, contains the recent phrases or keywords searched for. To quickly search for one of these items again, select it from the menu and press search. To find out how to customise the length of the Recent Menu or clear it please read the next section of this manual titled "Settings and Customisation"
The get info button displays information about the currently selected search engine. If you are unfamiliar with a particular search engine and what it searches then click this button to find out. Getting information on the engine is also a good way of finding out what search conditions a particular engine supports. You can jump to the homepage of the search engine by clicking the "Homepage" button in the dialog.
Refer to "Settings and Customisation".
*Only available if the browser toggle function is enabled
When this button is depressed, each time a search is performed a new window will be created within the browser to display the results. Setting up the browser toggle function is covered in the "Settings and Customisation" section of this manual.
Click this button to set preferences and settings for Web Finder LE. Setting preferences is detailed in the "Settings and Customisation" section of this manual.
If you are having trouble with Web Finder LE or need a quick explanation on a certain part of Web Finder LE then click this button. A dialog will appear giving brief descriptions of the elements of the interface. There is also a button to take you to the online trouble shooting page.
Users of older Web Finder versions may have noticed that to search another channel of a search engine (e.g. the News Channel of Infoseek instead of the WWW engine) you had to load up another Infoseek plugin that contained the URL (Uniform Resource Locater). This is no longer necessary as all channels are contained within one plugin!
The Category popup menu contains all the available channels for the search engine currently selected. For example, to search the news channel of Infoseek instead of the World Wide Web, select "Infoseek" from the search engine pop up, and the select "News" from the categories popup menu.
The contents (channels available to the selected search engine) of the Categories menu will change depending on which search engine is selected. This means that you must select the search engine first before selecting one of it's categories.
If only one category is available for the selected search engine then the category menu will be greyed out.
Search engine categories are designed to make life easier. Many of the general purpose engines, such as Infoseek, Lycos, and Metacrawler use them. For example, searching for a news article under a category such as 'The Web' will most likely not return useful results. But searching a 'News' category for a news article will return the results you are after.
To better understand categories and when to use them, the common category names that appear in Web Finder LE are listed below along with their definitions.
The Web: This category appears in general purpose search engines such as AltaVista, Lycos, Infoseek, Excite, etc. They will look for anything requested. However, if your request is really intended for one of the other categories then you should use them as better results will be obtained. News: Searches news articles on the Internet. Usenet or News groups: Usenet Newsgroups are mailing lists.There are thousands upon thousands of different Usenet news topics on the Internet which thousands of people read each day. These search engines will look for the Usenet topic you want. Files: This category will search each respective file archive or hyperarchive they are designated to, for a specific file or program. |
There are many more types of categories. These are just the most common ones. For a more detailed and technical explanation of categories please read through the 'Web Finder plugins" section of this manual.
The Parameter Menu: Conditioned Searching
Note: Do not include brackets in your conditioned search, they are only around the examples below to separate them from the text.
Some search engines, particularly the general purpose ones, allow conditioned searching for multiple words. In simple terms a "conditioned search" is a condition that can set for a particular search engine to force it to return more accurate results. For example, selecting "Basic" from the parameter menu enforces no conditions on the search engine and results in a standard search. Standard, or 'Basic', searching will return results that contain your keywords in any order.
Example: A Search for (word1 word2 word3) will return pages containing (word1 ) AND/OR (word2) AND/OR (word3)
Every page containing the any of words will be listed which is why it is sometimes possible to be presented with a choice of 6,000,000 plus pages to look through. That is unless you use a search parameter as listed below.
Every Word: (AND Searching)
Manual key: "+"
"AND" searching is a useful feature for multiple word searching. It forces an engine to find only results containing all words, regardless of order. A search for (word1 word2) could return (word1 word2) or (word2 word1), as long as (word 1) AND (word 2) are next to one another on any given page. Selecting "Every Word" from the parameter menu will set this condition.
Exact Phrase:
Selecting "Exact Phrase" will force the search engine to return results that contain your exact search in it's exact order. A search for (word1 word 2) will only retrieve pages that contain (word1 word 2).
To manually enter exact phrase commands, place quotation marks (") at both ends of the text being searched for.
Link:
Link searching is to see which pages are linked to a site. This search requires that the query text be a URL.
Example: www.apple.com/products/ will return all pages connected to Apples Web product site.
URL:
Use this parameter if you want to search for a term embedded in a URL.
Example: mac will return results with URL's containing "mac"
Site:
The Site parameter will bring up all pages of a particular domain. As with Link searching, the query text has to be a URL.
Example: bungie.com will list all pages in Bungies' web site.
Title:
This parameter will force the search engine to return only those results that have the requested text in their page titles.
Example: Web Finder will only return pages that contain "Web Finder" in their title.
Custom Conditioned Searching:
Search conditions selected from the "Parameter" menu will be applied to all keywords. To apply conditions to individual words or groups of words, appropriate symbols can be entered into the search string.
The following condition symbols are supported by Web Finder but are not found in the Parameter Menu.
Name searching:
Symbol: ","
This conditioned is used when searching for more than one name. Most search engines will return results when searching for one name but how do you search for two names? Do the following - (name1, name2). The key is the comma that separates the two names.
The Exclusion command:
Symbol: "-"
Web Finder now supports the exclusion commands which will force a search engine to retrieve results that exclude text containing a keyword.
Example: (word1 word2 -word3) will find all pages containing word1 and/or word2 but not word 3.
Refining a Search:
Symbol:"|"
Some search engines, such as Infoseek, allow the ability to refine a search still further. Essentially, they will search for words within search results before presenting the results to you! This kind of search defers from the "Every Word" search mentioned above in that the keywords do not have to be adjacent.
Example: (Macintosh games | Myth: The Fallen Lords) will find all Mac gaming pages that mention Myth: The Fallen Lords.
As said above, not all search engines will allow conditioned searching, and only a few engines support all of conditions listed. If a search engine does not support a particular condition, the symbol will be taken as normal query text by the engine you are searching.
Performing a search can be done in three simple steps:
Select the search engine you wish to use from the search engine popup
menu.
Enter the text you wish to search for in the text field.
Press search, or press enter.
Web Finder LE will load your web browser and peform the search. The results will appear in the browser window. That is essentially all there is to it.
To quit Web Finder LE click the close box in the top left hand corner of the window.