Strategy to Make Searching a Little Easier

I thought about this today. I use this strategy almost automatically. It's very useful, especially on computers with a slow internet connection or the computer itself is simply running slow.

After you've done a search and have a list of results in front of you, the next step is to click on one of the links. Right?? WRONG!!!

Certainly you have to click on the link to see what you've found, but if you look at the result and it's less that what you need, you have to hit the back button and your search page has to reload. The time for the reload can be FRUSTRATING to say the least.

So....how about leaving the search results on one tab and opening the results in a new tab or even a new window. That preserves the search results so that if the link opens to a page you don't need, just delete it a your original results page is still there....no waiting.

Now I suppose you'll want me to tell you how to do this. Actually, there are 2 ways to open your new link in a new tab and 2 ways to open your new link in a new window. The first method is to RIGHT CLICK the link. A drop down menu will open and there are the 2 options: Open in a new TAB or Open in a new WINDOW. If the new TAB isn't what you want, delete it or keep it to compare with other results. Same with the new window. Either way, your search results ARE STILL THERE AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO WAIT FOR IT TO POP UP AGAIN....because it never went anywhere!

That's the first way, and this all depends on how you use your keyboard. I always use SHIFT + Click to open the link in a new window or CTRL + Click to open in a new tab. There are reasons I use one or the other. If you're still reading....as I ramble along.... I'll use a new window when I want to just bounce from one window to the new window and back again. That's another trick: ALT + TAB will let you "scroll" through all your open windows. If there's only, then you'll be able to go easily from on to the other. If you have multiple windows open, it will flip you from the current window to the LAST WINDOW OPENED. If you watch your screen while holding ALT + TAB, you'll see all the open windows! Just keep the ALT key down and tap the TAB button to move through all the open screens. CTL + TAB will flip you through all the open tabs in order. Again, if you only have 2 tabs only, you'll just go from one back to the other over and over again depending on how many times you click TAB while holding the ALT key.

Either way, the goal was to preserve the results of your search so you don't have to re-load the search results page. If you get good at this, you'll save yourself incremental minutes over the course of days or weeks or months giving you more time to figure out what the names are on that ancient deed you found!!

Good grief, if you're still reading, congratulations!! I could go on all night....and I hope I got all of this right!!!

If you have any questions, comment on the blog (so others can see the question and the answer) or send an e-mail to dave@oldbones.co---

Visit Old Bones Genealogy and Family Research of New England at http://www.oldbones.co and remember to share the blog or tweet the blog or reblog the blog….Whatever it is that works toward spreading it around!! And if you do, thanks!