5 years using DuckDuckGo
Makzan’s Dispatch 2020 week 18
Hey friend.
I have been using DuckDuckGo as the default search engine for around 5 years.
Roughly 80% of the time I get what I need from DuckDuckGo. Otherwise, I fall back to Google search. Especially when searching with Chinese queries. That’s when DuckDuckGo falls short.
DuckDuckGo is very useful when I know what I’m searching for. One thing I like using DuckDuckGo is their Bang! commands.
Bang (!) to go to the first search result directly
When I have a specific query string, I use an exclamation mark to directly go to the first result. It is like the “I’m feeling lucky” button in Google search, but directly using in search query.
For example, when searching CSS stuffs in MDN. I can use "clamp css mdn !" to directly go to MDN’s CSS documentation. Or I can search "namedtuple python doc !" to directly go to Python’s namedtuple documentation page. This saves the page loading of search results and time needed to click on the first link.
Bang for WAVE tool
Occasionally I will check accessibility for certain websites. I can simply use "!wave" bang command to turn certain URL into WAVE inspector.
Bang for google search
When I need to fall back to Google search, I can use "!g" to search the query in Google. Or "!gi" to search the query in Google Image. When I need to translate something. I use "!gtchinese" to directly translate that into Chinese, or "!gten" into English.
Links worth sharing
CSS min, max, and clamp
https://gist.github.com/una/07af675be8bcc58c4a824c602d60e42d
The clamp() CSS function clamps a value between an upper and lower bound. clamp() enables selecting a middle value within a range of values between a defined minimum and maximum. —MDN
Shell tips and tricks
https://blog.balthazar-rouberol.com/shell-productivity-tips-and-tricks.html
Time is the only real currency we have
https://blog.theboringtech.io/2020/04/16/time_is_the_real_currency.html
Avoiding hiding important nav behind a hamburger icon
Whenever we hide important nav behind a hamburger icon, it will get less attention, and result in less engagement and conversion.
Roam Research: Why I Love It and How I Use It
https://www.nateliason.com/blog/roam
Roam is an outlining tool that goes beyond outlines with wiki-like cross-referencing.
Code worth sharing
Visualize responsive font-size calculation
https://codepen.io/fgeierst/pen/mdeOQLG
font-size: min(max(16px, 4vw), 22px); 
Until next week,
Thomas Mak
