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Site search
As well as the Page menu (left) and the Site summary outline, there are two simple ways of finding people, places or particular topics of interest among the many pages of the 211 Squadron site.
Within a page
When looking for something specific on any one page, use your browser’s Find on this page function.
For Windows 10 and earlier, all major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera eg) use the same keyboard short cut [Ctrl] F which opens a small Find window. Enter the search word/s, select the search option, and review or scroll the results.
A great many keyboard shortcuts are common across various browsers and text editors. Guides to them are easily found by on-line search.
Across all the site
To search through the whole of the 211 Squadron site, use your chosen Search engine directly, by adding a site:url condition to your search text. Examples:
This form of focussed search was once reasonably effective in the two best known search engines but effectiveness has fallen in overall quality and scope in recent years. Simple search results have become increasingly clogged with irrelevance or distorted by search history filtering and the like, and exact phrase searches have declined noticeably in coverage and relevance in both major engines, especially when combined with either the site: condition or the date option.
Launched in 2008, DuckDuckGo (DDG) may be a worthwhile alternative. The results page now includes a date option. Searching an exact phrase (either alone or with the site:url condition) produces fair although not exhaustive results: as of late 2021 accuracy/relevance seems to be declining.
A newcomer in 2020 was OneSearch. Whether it is a worthwhile choice remains to be seen: for example, as of October 2021, the latest Firefox version refuses to load it (but silently re-added unwanted and previously deleted eBay and Wikipedia).
Swapping the default search engine in your chosen browser is simply done, the option to do so being easily found. Your choice.
Hints for site searches
- Search on Fred Smith finds all the Freds, as well as all the Smiths.
- Exact phrase searches (eg bounded by quotes as “Fred Smith”), once far more useful, have become less and less effective in both main search engines
- Use of AND or the + key ought to sharpen the search further:
“Fred Smith” +Daba or
“Fred Smith” AND Daba
should find hits just for Fred Smith at El Daba
Either + or AND work in Bing, DDG and OneSearch, Google removed the + option in late 2011 for crudely commercial reasons but AND still works.
- Results will be shown as a page of website links for each hit. Clicking on each will take you to that page of this site
- Use your browser’s Find on this page function to search through that page. Use your browser’s Back function to return to the Search results
- Dependent upon crawl frequency, it may be some time before Search engine results catch up with latest site updates.
Malware & viruses
This website does not use plug-ins, pop-ups, JavaScript or Activex controls of any kind. I make every effort to ensure my own PC is clean. All files for the site are monitored before loading to my webspace and the site is checked frequently thereafter.
- Depending on your browser and its settings, if you’ve chosen to have Activex Filtering “on”, warnings that "Some content is filtered" while viewing my site should be a sign that something's not right (though the culprit should be blocked)
- Sadly, malware can lurk anywhere these days. The best protection is to make sure your PC is always fully up-to-date, with automatic updates to your system, your browser and associated software, protected by appropriate privacy and security settings and regular scans with good, up-to-date anti-virus/anti-malware.
- As the site runs under the HTTP protocol, when presenting Search results, some modern browsers see only the HTTP prefix and automatically wag an admonitory digital finger, declaring "site not secure", "be careful" and the like, with some warning icon.
www.211squadron.org © D Clark & others 1998—2023
Site created 15 Apr 2001, last updated 31 Jul 2023. Page created Nov 2006, last updated 11 Oct 2021
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