It's old news by now that ketchup
has slipped as America's favorite condiment, making way
for that upstart salsa. But ketchup still cuts the
mustard as far as I'm concerned, so I'm desperate to
find validation on the Web. In the past, such a search
might have generated a Heinz 57 variety of sites, but
with Internet Explorer 5 search features it's easy to
find what I'm looking for.
Start
from scratch with AutoSearch
With Internet Explorer 5's AutoSearch
feature, I can simply type
the word I'm looking for into the Address bar. Then by
clicking either the new Go button or pressing the ENTER key,
Internet Explorer returns a list of pages that match my
search, recommending the one that most closely matches
what I'm looking for. So the only question now is how to
begin?
You
say catsup, I say ketchup. Even the dictionaries don't
agree
Nobody really
knows how to spell it, and the Web is full of
contradictory information about which variation means
what. I try searching with three different spellings:
"catsup," "ketchup," and an
international variation, "ketjap." One
site Internet Explorer recommends is Planet Ketchup, which includes just about
everything you'd want to know: that Baskin Robbins once
made a ketchup-flavored ice cream, and that it was a
flop; that ketchup can restore the glow to copper pots
and pans; and that no, ketchup does not contain pig's
blood, a vicious rumor someone has been circulating that
doesn't help ketchup's case at all.
Using
Search Assistant to get the nitty-gritty
With Internet Explorer 5's new
Search Assistant feature, I can make the most of my
search by telling Internet Explorer exactly what kind of
information I'm searching for: Web pages, e-mail and
home addresses, companies and organizations, maps,
encyclopedia articles, and newsgroups. I can also choose
which search engine I want to use, or let Internet
Explorer 5 choose the best one for the type of
information I want.
Where
did ketchup come from?
As with the universe, love, and crop circles, the
origins of ketchup are inconclusive. Typing in a
combination of words, I use Search Assistant's Find in encyclopedia option
to track down several purported histories to try to
resolve this issue. Ketchup may have come from China or
South America, or from New England in the late 1700s. I
want something more concrete, so I use Search
Assistant's Find a business
option to find where my favorite ketchup comes
from: H. J. Heinz in Pittsburgh, PA. I also find their
street address, which then makes it easy to use Search
Assistant's
Find a
map option to locate them, and to get a slew of
Pittsburgh-related news, weather, and, among other
things, driving directions. From Redmond, WA, I take a
right, a left, and then keep going.
All of this
ketchup talk makes me yearn for the old ketchup cliches:
ketchup on hamburgers, french fries with ketchup,
ketchup smudged along the side of hot dogs. And this
makes me wonder why ketchup tastes so good. So I search
for ketchup recipes, telling Search Assistant to Find a Web page and come
across lots of trendy fare: recipes for banana ketchup,
and mango ketchup. This isn't what I'm looking for, but
I'm not out of luck.
Use
the Next button to make a new start -- without starting
over
With Internet
Explorer 5, I can run exactly the same search with a
different search engine simply by clicking Search
Assistant's
Next
button. I do this, and come across
Snap's Ketchup Recipes: recipes
with tomatoes, garlic and onion, a touch of vinegar and
pickling spice. This is what I'm after, and I want more
like it. Turning to related links
By clicking Internet Explorer 5's Related Links
feature, I can tell Internet Explorer to find sites that
are similar to the one I'm looking at. One of the sites
Related Links leads me to from Snap's Ketchup Recipes is
the
Recipes Archive, which contains
pages of ketchup recipes from the glory days, complete
with all the trappings. And after perusing these
pages, I think I've seen enough to make even an alarmist
like me confident that ketchup will persevere.
![Susan Hutton](../../../images/edtSusan.gif) Susan
Hutton likes ketchup best on Coney Island hot dogs, with
lots of onions and mustard.
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Searching is a snap With Internet Explorer 5's new AutoSearch
feature, you can type a keyword into the Address bar,
then click the new
Go button or hit your ENTER key, and
Internet Explorer returns a typical Web search, along
with a specific suggestion for a matching site, if one
exists.
Using the Search Assistant
feature, you can tell Internet Explorer exactly what
you're looking for, such as:
- Another Web page
- A person's e-mail or home
address
- A business
- Your previous searches
- A map
- Encyclopedia entries
- Newsgroup articles
You can also:
- Perform the same search
using a different search engine simply by clicking Next in the
Search Assistant window.
- Choose which search engine
you want to use to perform specific searches, or use
the search engine Search Assistant suggests.
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