Most people don't want 270 search engines, especially people who are internet beginners. Most users want a single search engine that delivers three key features:
Relevant results (results you are actually interested in)
Uncluttered, easy to read interface
Helpful options to broaden or tighten a search
With this criteria, 10 Reader Favorite Search Engines come to mind. These 10 search sites should meet 99% of the searching needs of a regular everyday user.
Below is a changing list of user favorites, compiled from reader email suggestions. The sites below are in random order, and are updated regularly to reflect changes and user suggestions.
Years ago, Dogpile was the fast and efficient choice before Google. Things changed, Dogpile faded into obscurity, and Google became king. But today, Dogpile is coming back, with a growing index and a clean and quick presentation that is testimony to its halcyon days. If you want to try a search tool with pleasant presentation and helpful crosslink results, definitely try Dogpile. More ».
The Ask/AJ/Ask Jeeves search engine is a longtime name in the World Wide Web. The super-clean interface rivals the other major search engines, and the search options are as good as Google or Bing or DuckDuckGo. The results groupings are what really make Ask.com stand out. The presentation is arguably cleaner and easier to read than Google or Yahoo! or Bing, and the results groups seem to be more relevant. Decide for yourself if you agree... give Ask.com a whirl, and compare it to the other search engines you like. More »
At first, DuckDuckGo.com looks like Google. But there are many subtleties that make this spartan search engine different. DuckDuckGo has some slick features, like 'zero-click' information (all your answers are found on the first results page). DuckDuckgo offers disambiguation prompts (helps to clarify what question you are really asking). And the ad spam is much less than Google. GiveDuckDuckGo.com a try... you might really like this clean and simple search engine. More »
Google is the undisputed king of 'spartan searching'. While it doesn't offer all the shopping center features of Yahoo!, Google is fast, relevant, and the largest single catalogue of Web pages available today. Make sure you try the Google 'images', 'maps' and 'news' features... they are outstanding services for locating photos, geographic directions, and news headlines. More »
Bing is Microsoft's attempt at unseating Google. Bing used to be MSN search until it was updated in summer of 2009. Touted as a 'decision engine', Bing tries to support your researching by offering suggestions in the leftmost column, while also giving you various search options across the top of the screen. Things like 'wiki' suggestions, 'visual search', and 'related searches ' might be very useful to you. Bing is not dethroning Google in the near future, no. But Bing is definitely worth trying. More »
Yippy is a Deep Web engine that searches other search engines for you. Unlike the regular Web, which is indexed by robot spider programs, Deep Web pages are usually harder to locate by conventional search. That's where Yippy becomes very useful. If you are searching for obscure hobby interest blogs, obscure government information, tough-to-find obscure news, academic research and otherwise-obscure content, then Yippy is your tool. More »
Webopedia is one of the most useful websites on the World Wide Web . Webopedia is an encyclopedic resource dedicated to searching techno terminology and computer definitions. Teach yourself what 'domain name system' is, or teach yourself what 'DDRAM' means on your computer. Webopedia is absolutely a perfect resource for non-technical people to make more sense of the computers around them. More »
Yahoo! is several things: it is a search engine, a news aggregator, a shopping center, an emailbox, a travel directory, a horoscope and games center, and more. This 'web portal' breadth of choice makes this a very helpful site for Internet beginners. Searching the Web should also be about discovery and exploration, and Yahoo! delivers that in wholesale quantities. More »
The Internet Archive is a favorite destination for longtime Web lovers. The Archive has been taking snapshots of the entire World Wide Web for years now, allowing you and me to travel back in time to see what a web page looked like in 1999, or what the news was like around Hurricane Katrina in 2005. You won't visit the Archive daily, like you would Google or Yahoo or Bing, but when you do have need to travel back in time, use this search site. More »
Mahalo is the one 'human-powered' search site in this list, employing a committee of editors to manually sift and vet thousands of pieces of content. This means that you'll get fewer Mahalo hit results than you will get at Bing or Google. But it also means that most Mahalo results have a higher quality of content and relevance (as best as human editors can judge).
Mahalo also offers regular web searching in addition to asking questions. Depending on which of the two search boxes you use at Mahalo, you will either get direct content topic hits or suggested answers to your question.
Try Mahalo. You might like it enough to even become a editor there. More »
A free, open source, Linux-based program, which closely resembles the Dreamweaver environment, with similar features for supporting JavaScript, CSS2, XForms, RSS, etc. Features syntax highlighting support for PHP, HTML, JavaScript, Perl, XML and others. However, there is no direct support for SVG or HTML5.
There are drop down menus and auto completion for parsing linked documents from CSS to PHP. As a tag editor, Quanta can remove hard-coded HTML and will plug-in the same as XML and other tag languages. It requires a plugin for SVN (Apache).
2. Aptana
Aptana is open source, built on Java, free, and supported on Windows, Mac, Linux and BSD. Like Dreamweaver, it has similar support for common web coding languages, including Ruby on Rails, and applications for Apple iPhone can also be developed. There is no WYSIWYG editor, no spell check, and no support for RSS, Atom, or Xpath.
It's not as capable in JavaScript debugging or PHP development, since the autocomplete does not recognize objects. There is no Internet Explorer preview for Mac or Linux users.
3. CoffeeCup HTML Editor
Priced at $69 and only supported on Windows with no support for Java, MathML, XForms or Xpath. For Mac users, they can get the OS X Web Editor. Like Dreamweaver, it has code completion to auto suggest tags. Features support for HTML5, PHP, XHTML, and CSS3 with 3 editor options, code, visual and a preview editor.
The first editor to support JavaScript, split-screen editing or to have a built-in FTP. Has a website color scheme chooser for picking a color and have other appropriate colors to match.
4. OpenBEXI
This is an open source, free, WYSIWYG editor compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux with a browser-based interface. Designed to drag and drop widgets including images, text, graphs, and more. Includes FTP upload and allows server-side scripting. However, it is difficult to get objects to work when added to a page and you need to use a server.
It allows for creating a Mac style menu, you can create line, pie and bar charts plus it supports RSS. However, it does not support MathML, Xpath, or shared editing.
5. Bluefish
Bluefish is free, open source, compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, and Unix systems. There is no WYSIWYG editor feature and you cannot do shared editing. Multiple browsers are useful to check work. However it is similar to Dreamweaver's support for developing HTML, XHTML, CSS, etc, and in addition it supports Google Go, Vala, ColdFusion, Ruby and Shell. It has auto-recovery of changes after a crash as well as a FTP upload, server-side scripting, spell checker and page preview feature.
6. Microsoft Expression Web
Tech support is available only for those who bought the program, as it is now a free application. It runs on Windows only, has the same editor features of Dreamweaver and a similar interface, with WYSIWYG and hard code panes. It has support for W3C for designing for people with disabilities.
It does not support XForms or SVG. Not as helpful to those new to CSS or AJAX, as there are no drag-and-drop features, drawing tools, wizards, or drop-down menus.
7. Amaya
Free, open source, compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux. Features a WYSIWYG editor, spell checking, page preview, SVG, and MathML. However, does not support Frames, Java, JavaScript, XSLT, XForms, RSS, or Atom, with only partial support for CSS2. Requires a high-resolution monitor, to view all features.
There is no FTP support, and it is not an intuitive interface, because many standard keys such as HOME and END do not move the cursor to the start and end of lines, as other editors do.
8. Microsoft Visual Web Developer
This software is free, supported only by Windows, and has a WYSIWYG editor as well as a code view. It supports the same editor features as Dreamweaver but offers no support for SVG or for XForms. It does not offer color coding for syntax and has no spell checker, unless you have the paid version.
However, it does have a drag-and-drop feature, includes a local testing server for creating dynamic webpages, and it can open Internet Explorer as a tab within it.
9. KompoZer
KompoZer is free, open-source, compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, and BSD. Features a WYSIWYG editor that is similar to Dreamweaver, can also edit by hand, but does not support server-side scripting, shared editing, frames, XSLT, MathML, XForms, RSS, Atom, XPath, or SVG.
Support for tabbed editing of multiple pages opened in one window, built-in FTP, including a color picker for grabbing hex values. However, adding Flash objects is not as easy as with Dreamweaver and it does not work with Dreamweaver templates.
10. BlueGriffon
This is a free, open source, WYSIWYG editor compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux. FTP is available only with an add-on. It supports page preview, spell checking, templates, web fonts, and includes an SVG editor for drawing vector graphics within the application.
Requires the purchase of some features separately, such as a project manager, CSS style-sheet editor, and full-screen viewer; this is to support future development, but there are many features that are free. It has a similar interface to a word processor and is much like that of Kompozer's.
CONCLUSION
When choosing an editor, price, features, and the available support are important factors to consider. A free editor may serve your needs, but may also be unsupported or require paid add-ons for full functionality.
Do you use Adobe Dreamweaver or another similar application? Do you think these products are a good alternative to Dreamweaver? Please feel free to share your views and thoughts.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Onextrapixel.
Be clear on your goals. The first thing we should do, is that we should be clear on our goals. What is the purpose of us doing an activity? We should set a goal for whatever we plan to do, and then only if we plan to challenge ourselves will we achieve that target. It is an important step because it will lead us to create another goal and reach another larger goal. This will help to build up self confidence.
Self-Confident
Low Self-Confidence
Doing what you believe to be right, even if others mock or criticize you for it.
Governing your behavior based on what other people think.
Being willing to take risks and go the extra mile to achieve better things.
Staying in your comfort zone, fearing failure, and so avoid taking risks.
Admitting your mistakes, and learning from them.
Working hard to cover up mistakes and hoping that you can fix the problem before anyone notices.
Waiting for others to congratulate you on your accomplishments.
Extolling your own virtues as often as possible to as many people as possible.
Accepting compliments graciously. “Thanks, I really worked hard on that prospectus. I’m pleased you recognize my efforts.”
Dismissing compliments offhandedly. “Oh that prospectus was nothing really, anyone could have done it.”
Face your fears. We usually cope with fear in whatever things that we do, and this emotion will have great impact against our self confidence. We should try our best to not let fear be an obstacle to our success. Facing your fears is the best way to get rid of them.
Look at What You've Already Achieved
Think about your life so far, and list the ten best things you've achieved in an "Achievement Log." Perhaps you came top in an important test or exam, played a key role in an important team, produced the best sales figures in a period, did something that made a key difference in someone else’s life, or delivered a project that meant a lot for your business.
Build up more positive thinking. Positive thinking and emotions such as excitement can greatly improve self confidence helping us to deal with any difficulties. We shall make this a great motivation step to control our feelings and do not let those negative feelings stop us for reaching our goals. Find more guidance. It is true that self confidence can be gained through ourselves, but sometimes we need some intensive guidance from successful people. We can learn from them, treat them as our mentor, and emulate their success and confidence. This is essential because whenever we are facing any difficulties, we will continue to be inspired and motivated by these successful persons. Hence, this will eventually greatly improve your self confidence. Take action and make all those things that we learned happen. We receive information to gain self confidence, even if we went to many as seminars or read a lot of books about motivation, it will not work if we don't do this last step. Remember the goals that we set, implement that particular goals every single day, day and night. Revise what went wrong and try to improve it. This will help to improve your self confidence. Take pride in your good qualities.
Think About Your Strengths
Next, use a technique like swot analysis to take a look at who and where you are. Looking at your Achievement Log, and reflecting on your recent life, think about what your friends would consider to be your strengths and weaknesses. From these, think about the opportunities and threats you face.
Make sure that you enjoy a few minutes reflecting on your strengths!to take a look at who and where you are. Looking at your Achievement Log, and reflecting on your recent life, think about what your friends would consider to be your strengths and weaknesses. From these, think about the opportunities and threats you face.
Make sure that you enjoy a few minutes reflecting on your strengths!
If you work with hazardous or airborne materials on the job or at home, wear safety glasses or protective goggles every time.
Certain sports such as ice hockey, racquetball, and lacrosse can also lead to eye injury. Wear eye protection (such as helmets with protective face masks or sports goggles with polycarbonate lenses) to shield your eyes.
Maintain moisture. Maintaining the natural balance of moisture within your eyes is one of the most important things you can do to keep them healthy. Dry eyes can be itchy, red and even painful. Try to blink frequently, even when you are focused on watching TV or working on your computer. Take regular breaks. If your eyes must focus on a task for long periods of time, take regular breaks. Taking a ten minute break every hour can help prevent eye strain and give your eyes a chance to heal themselves.
Wear Sunglasses
The right kind of sunglasses will help protect your eyes from the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays.
Too much UV exposure makes you more likely to get cataracts and macular degeneration.
Choose sunglasses that block 99% to 100% of both UVA and UVB rays. Wraparound lenses help protect your eyes from the side. Polarized lenses reduce glare when driving.
If you wear contact lenses, some offer UV protection. It's still a good idea to wear sunglasses for more protection, though.
Stay hydrated. The average human body is made up of about 60% water, sometimes more. If your eyes are often dry, tired and blurry, try increasing your water intake. In addition, drinking plenty of water is important for your whole body. Eat foods that promote eye health. While you probably can't change your vision with diet alone, you can make sure your eyes have all the nutrients they need. Try to incorporate these foods into your meals:[3]
Leafy greens (such as kale, chard, collards and spinach) are great, as well as carrots.
Omega-3 fatty acids (found in fish like salmon and tuna) are great for your body.
Citrus fruits and juices (such as oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruit) are also good for your body.
Non-meat protein sources (like bananas, beans and nuts).
A vitamin supplement that contains omega-3 fatty acids, lutein, zinc, and vitamins C and E.
Eat for Good Vision
Protecting your eyes starts with the food on your plate. Nutrients such as omega-3 fatty acids, lutein, zinc, and vitamins C and E might help ward off age-related vision problems such as macular degeneration and cataracts, studies show. Regularly eating these foods can help lead to good eye health:
Green, leafy vegetables such as spinach, kale, and collards
Salmon, tuna, and other oily fish
Eggs, nuts, beans, and other non-meat protein sources
Oranges and other citrus fruits or juices.
Take amino acids. Amino acids, especially Taurine, are essential for eye health. Amino acids protect your eyes from the free radicals that can cause damage over time - they keep eye tissue healthy and prevent eye deterioration. Exercise your eyes. If you think about the way your muscles work, then you probably understand that the less exercise they get, the worse off you are. The same thing goes for your eyes. There are specific exercises you can do, that may be able to help you see better.
Use the 20/20/20 exercise. Every twenty minutes, focus on an object that's at least twenty feet away, for twenty seconds. You'll be surprised at how much better your eyes feel.
Put your thumb five inches away from your face and focus on it, after five seconds focus on something behind it. Do this for about ten times and whenever you have time.
Quit Smoking
Smoking makes you more likely to get cataracts, optic nerve damage, and macular degeneration. If you've tried to quit smoking before and started smoking again, keep trying. The more times you try to quit smoking, the more likely you are to succeed. Do relaxation exercises. Place your hands together palm to palm and rub them together briskly creating heat. Place them over your eyes and let your eyes relax. Imagine a relaxing place. Do not let light in. Do this whenever you have time during the day, especially when you're sitting at the computer.
Use alternating hot and cold compresses on your eyes daily to help relax them.
Look Away From the Computer Screen
Staring at a computer screen for too long can cause:
Eyestrain
Blurry vision
Trouble focusing at a distance
Dry eyes
Headaches
Neck, back, and shoulder pain
Taking the following steps to protect your eyes:
Make sure your glasses or contact lens prescription is up-to-date and adequate for computer use.
Some people may need glasses to help with contrast, glare, and eye strain when using a computer.
Position your computer so that your eyes are level with the top of the monitor. This allows you to look slightly down at the screen.
Try to avoid glare on your computer from windows and lights. Use an anti-glare screen if needed.
Choose a comfortable, supportive chair. Position it so that your feet are flat on the floor.
If your eyes are dry, blink more.
Every 20 minutes, rest your eyes by looking 20 feet away for 20 seconds. At least every 2 hours, get up and take a 15-minute break. (refference wikihow,webmd)
How Does This Work? Why do Diet Coke & Mentos and Coke Zero & Mentos create such exciting geysers?
It’s mostly due to a process called nucleation, where the carbon dioxide in the soda is attracted to the Mentos (they are awfully cute). That creates so much pressure that the soda goes flying. We then built nozzles that make the opening smaller and that makes the geysers go even higher.
In June 2008, Dr. Tonya Coffey of Appalachian State University and her physics students published a paper on the phenomenon in the American Journal of Physics. They were inspired by a 2006 MythBusters episode that, according to the paper, "did a wonderful job of identifying the basic ingredients in this reaction ... [but] did not sufficiently explain why those ingredients affect the explosion, nor did they provide direct proof of the roughness of the Mentos—a tall order for an hour-long television program." Coffey and her students decided to dig deeper.
Coffey and company discovered that the ingredients in the Mentos and Diet Coke and, more importantly, the structure of the Mentos, allow carbon dioxide bubbles to form extremely rapidly. When this happens fast enough, you get a nice Diet Coke fountain. (It’s not just Diet Coke and Mentos that react; other carbonated beverages will also readily respond to the addition of Mentos.)
Each Mentos candy has thousands of small pores on its surface which disrupt the polar attractions between water molecules, creating thousands of ideal nucleation sites for the gas molecules to congregate. In non-science speak, this porous surface creates a lot of bubble growth sites, allowing the carbon dioxide bubbles to rapidly form on the surface of the Mentos. (If you use a smooth surfaced Mentos candy, you won’t get nearly same the reaction.) The buoyancy of the bubbles and their growth will eventually cause the bubbles to leave the nucleation site and rise to the surface of the soda. Bubbles will continue to form on the porous surface and the process will repeat, creating a nice, foamy geyser.
In addition to that, the gum arabic and gelatin ingredients of the Mentos, combined with the potassium benzoate, sugar or (potentially) aspartame in diet sodas, also help in this process. In these cases, the ingredients end up lowering the surface tension of the liquid, allowing for even more rapid bubble growth on the porous surface of the Mentos—higher surface tension would make it a more difficult environment for bubbles to form. (Compounds like gum arabic that lower surface tension are called “surfactants”).
Diet sodas produce a bigger reaction than non-diet sodas because aspartame lowers the surface tension of the liquid much more than sugar or corn syrup will. You can also increase the effect by adding more surfactants to the soda when you add the Mentos, like adding a mixture of dishwasher soap and water.
Another factor that contributes to the size of the geyser is how rapidly the object causing the foaming sinks in the soda. The faster it sinks, the faster the reaction can happen, and a faster reaction creates a bigger geyser; a slower reaction may release the same amount of foam overall, but will also create a much smaller geyser. This is another reason Mentos works so much better than other similar confectioneries: The candies are fairly dense objects and tend to sink rapidly in the soda. If you crush the Mentos, so it doesn’t sink much at all, you won’t get a very dramatic reaction.
The temperature of the soda also factors into geyser size. Gases are less soluble in liquids with a higher temperature, so the warmer your soda is, the bigger your Mentos-induced geyser will be. This is because the gases want to escape the liquid, so when you drop the Mentos in, the reaction happens faster.
Fun with Nucleation You can learn more about nucleation sites in action if you coat the inside of a small glass with vegetable oil. Move the glass around to get a nice smooth coating of oil and then pour in some soda. What happens? No fizz. Why? No nucleation sites. Now sprinkle in some granulated sugar. What happens? Lots of fizz! Why? Lots of nucleation sites!
While caffeine is often cited as something that will increase the explosive reaction with the soda, this is not actually the case, at least not given the relatively small amount of caffeine found in the typical 2-liter bottle of soda generally used for these sorts of Diet Coke and Mentos reactions.
You’ll also sometimes read that the acidity of the soda is a major factor in the resulting geyser. This is not the case either. In fact, the level of acidity in the Coke before and after the Mentos geyser does not change, negating the possibility of an acid-based reaction—though you can make such an acid-based reaction using baking soda.
Try This at Home! This is a great thing to try yourself – if you’re careful. Here’s how. Make sure you wear your goggles and lab coats, so that you are not only protected, you also look cool as you run away from the flying soda.
Interesting Links Thanks to Tonya Coffey at Appalachian State University in North Carolina for publishing a scientific study of Coke & Mentos in the American Journal of Physics. New Scientist has this great summary of the explanation.
