Power Search

The internet is a huge place, and one may get lost when there is no direction. Also, if there is no direction, the person may wander in all the directions. Plus with the advent of so many Search Engines, be that Google, MSN, Bing, Yahoo, and many others, there are times, when these search engines are giving different / same results depending on the index that they are having.

Still, for a conscious person (surfer) who is gathering information from the web, tries to looks are all the sources, as to verify each and every results. Whenever, we do this kind of  stuff, that is, simultaneously searching on different search engines, we sometimes get lost. To overcome this problem, I developed Power Search. Yes, the idea is very similar to what Firefox offers are their search engine at the top right corner, but this one is with a twist. It is a full-blown web page, where simple information, like Chosen Search Engine and Entered Keyword is in front of the user all the time. Anytime, if there is need to change either one, it is simply a matter of few clicks.

When I developed the power search, I has no idea it will be liked by people. Now, that I have developed, and I have started using it, I asked, myself, why not public it, so that others could also benefit from it. So here I go with this post for illustrating how easy it is to search using Power Search (http://bit.ly/Power-Search).

Following are the few of the features presented in Power Search.

Weather Forecast

1. Choose, “Weather Forecast” or “Mozilla Forecast” from the Search Engines.
2. Type City name, example “Karachi“
3. Press ENTER. Complete Weather information will be displayed.

Search within Twitter

1. Choose “Twitter Search (Plain)” from the search Engines
2. type twitter username, any trending term, or a complete customized string. More on Customized String here.
3. Press ENTER.

Search twitter for tweets from a specific user

1. Choose “Twitter Search (Posted From)” from the search Engines
2. type the twitter username without the @ sign.
3. Press ENTER. It will display the most recent posts from that user.

Word Mania

Dictionary

1. Choose “Dictionary” or “Webster” or “Urban Dictionary” from the search Engines
2. type the word whose meaning you’ve been aching to learning
3. Press ENTER.

Thesaurus

Thesaurus comes handy when you are looking for different words having the same meanings.

1. Choose “Thesaurus” from the search Engines
2. type the word whose meaning you’ve been aching to learning
3. Press ENTER.

Visual Thesaurus

Visual Thesaurus is another fancy way to look at words.

1. Choose “Visual Thesaurus” from the search Engines
2. type the word whose meaning you’ve been aching to learning
3. Press ENTER.
4. After a few seconds, once the page is loaded, click “LOOK IT UP” to see the word associations in action.

Anagrams

Anagrams are another interesting things in Words. Anagram is the process of  moving the positions of letters in a word and forming one or more words.

1. Choose “Anagrams (Wordsmith.org)” from the search Engines
2. type the big word. Usually this is performed when you are looking for different combination of word.
3. Press ENTER

Acronyms

Acronyms are the short forms of words we usually find when people who are too lazy to type the whole word. For keeping in touch with those short forms, use Acronym Finder

1. Choose “Acronym Finder” from the search Engines
2. Type the short form. For example, RTOFL
3. Press ENTER

Movies (Internet Movie Database)

Where else would you be going to know about your favorite movies. Internet Movie Database.

1. Choose “IMBD – Internet Movie Database” from the search Engines
2. Type the short form. For example, “Matrix“
3. Press ENTER

Images

Your report is done, but you need to jazz it up with the right kind of images at the right place. Try these embedded search engines.

1. Choose either one these
   1. Google Life Images (this will provide the older images of the searched term.)
   2. Google Images
   3. Flickr
2. Type your report keyword. For example if you are reviewing Matrix Movie, try using Matrix, Oracle, Agent Smith.
3. Press ENTER

HTML Color Values

I was on the look out for the HTML Color codes, and kudos to W3c Website, which offers just this.

Color Names Supported by All Browsers

The list below is a complete list of the color names supported by all major browsers.

You can click on a color name (or a hex value) to view the color as the background-color along with different text colors.

via HTML Color Values.

Web Development Insights on Sign Up Forms

I came across this website, which provides in detail about how to properly design Sign up Forms, whether or not to set the texts right aligned or left aligned, or the (dreadable) center aligned. I am quoting the final conclusion below. For full reading, head over to the links below.

I honestly think, we should point out Seniors, Managers whom we go on endless discussions, about how should the things be, to simply re-direct them to these websites and then, properly, Diiissscuuuus. (meant, read as discuss).

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Part 1

Let’s conclude the first part of the survey results with a brief overview of the main findings of our survey of current web form design patterns. Please keep in mind that we have considered only sign-up forms.

• the registration link is titled “sign up” (40%) and placed in the right upper corner,
• sign-up forms have a simplified layout to avoid distractions for users (61%),
• sign-up forms are one-page-forms (93%),
• sign up forms attract visitors by explaining the benefits of registration (41%),
• titles of the input fields are highlighted bold (62%)
• no trend in the label alignment can be identified,
• Designers tend to use few mandatory fields,
• designers tend to use few optional fields,
• vertically arranged fields are preferred to horizontally arranged fields (86%).

Please stay tuned, we’ll present the second part of our findings next week.

Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms | How-To | Smashing Magazine

Part 2

Let’s conclude with a brief overview of the findings presented above. Please keep in mind that we have considered only sign-up forms.

• sign-up forms don’t have any hover, active or focus-effects (84%),
• hints and help are either static (57%) or dynamic (33%) and appear below the input field (57%) or on the right side of the field (26%),
• static validation is as popular as dynamic validation — no trend toward Ajax;
• e-mail confirmation is not used (82%),
• password confirmation is used (72%),
• captcha can be used or not used (48% vs. 52%),
• cancel button is not used (92%),
• the submit-button is left-aligned (56%) or centered (26%),
• thank-you message motivates users to proceed with exploring the services of the site

Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms, Part 2 | How-To | Smashing Magazine

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Reading these two pages really opened my mind, and made me realized, how often we made mistakes that completely send the usability of user out of the website / mind / and ultimately throws us, out of business.