GoogleTip: Set the Default Font Size in Google Sites Wiki

Google has a great free wiki at http://sites.google.com. Although it lacks some of the cool features of its predecessor (jot), it is still a really nice wiki.



The problem I have been running into is there seemed to be no easy way to set the default font size for a page. Using the built in formatting options, you can highlight all the text and then set the font. However, this does not actually set a global font, but instead wraps each piece of content with nasty <font> tags. Then when you add some new text, it does not get wrapped and you end up with a mess.



Google Sites does actually allow you to edit the HTML directly, with some limitations. (This is how I found out about the nasty <font> tags.) For example, you cannot use the style tag to add CSS to the page. However, you can use style="" attributes to tags. So, to set the default font do the following.

1. Edit the page and choose the HTML option to edit the page.


2. At the top of the content add the following: <div style="font-size: 11pt;">
   
   


3. At the end of the content add </div>

Now by just adjusting the font point size in the <div> statement, you can control the default font size for all the content between the

<div> tags.

GoogleTip: Movie Showtimes with Google

Have you ever wanted to check movie showtimes really quick? Well then, a simple Google search is all you need. If you type in the word "movies" or "showtimes" along with a zip code in  Google search box, voila! You get a list of theaters, movies and times. For example. If I want the movie times for the 80021 zip code I could type:



movies 80021

or

showtimes 80021



And you get a link at the top of your search page like this:

Once you click on the link, you get a page like this:

Quick and convenient. Enjoy.

Google Search Tip

I have been meaning to share this tip for some time. There are a number of tips included in this book:

One of the more useful tips is the use of the site: parameter in a Google search. What the parameter allows you to do is perform Google searches of a specific site. For example, if I wanted to search this web site for information on CSS I could write:

site:http://blueskyworkshop.com css

You can also limit the search using site directories and paths. I tried this same trick on Yahoo search the other day, and it seems to work there as well. Very useful stuff.