New improved Search page

64Guitars · September 10, 2017, 05:52:53 PM

I've made some improvements to the Search page today.

1) There's now a Clear button to reset the search input field so you can type something new. And there's a Help button that takes you to the SMF Help page for Searching.

2) You no longer have to click another link to get to the Advanced Search. It's already on the same page as the Simple Search. Use whichever one you prefer.

3) There's now a really handy Web Search form below the Advanced Search.

Just type something into the search box, then choose which Search Engine you want to use and the Search Type (web pages or images), then click the Search button. The results will be loaded into a new browser tab. If you didn't find what you were looking for, go back to the browser tab for the Search page. Your search text is still in the search box, so all you have to do is select a different Search Engine and click the Search button again. Easy!

In addition to the four search engines (DuckDuckGo, StartPage, Google, and Bing) you can also search Wikipedia and Wiktionary. Of course, searching for images at Wiktionary doesn't make sense, so you'll get the same results regardless of the Search Type you've selected. But you can search for images with any of the other Search Engine choices, including Wikipedia (though actually it uses Wikimedia Commons when searching for images).

I prefer to use DuckDuckGo and StartPage because they both claim not to track you or save your search history and IP address in their databases. Google and Bing, of course, will track you and record all of your searches indefinitely. Have a look at this page from DuckDuckGo which offers a few reasons why you should avoid using Google and Bing if you value your privacy: https://donttrack.us/

Of course, the choice is yours, so you can use Google and Bing if you want to. But give DuckDuckGo and StartPage a try. You might like them.