12.0

Using Dragon NaturallySpeaking with the Internet

What you can do on the Web with Dragon depends on what Web browser you are using. A key difference

between Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox is that Dragon doesn’t have Full Text Control in Firefox.

This lesson introduces commands for typical Web-related actions, including shortcut commands. The Command

Browser lists many more. Be sure to see the Help for details about using your voice on the Web and about Web-

related Dragon options.

The Web Shortcuts including “open top site for…”

Dragon includes commands you can say anytime to perform general Web searches, as well as searches in

specific categories (maps, news, products, images, videos) or specific websites, such as Wikipedia. You could

say for instance ‘search images for purple chrysanthemum.’ Dragon will then present, in your default Web

browser, the results your default search engine found for those words in its image category.

A key advantage of

these “Web search

shortcuts” is that they

can be used anytime,

no matter what

program is currently

active on your screen.

No need to first switch

to your browser. These

commands don’t even

require your Web

browser to be open!

TIP These commands

let you take advantage

of capabilities of

specific search

engines. For example:

conversions and

calculations, as in

‘search Google for 61

percent of 1400’ and

‘search Bing for 77

euros in dollars’.

These shortcut commands can be disabled or enabled on the Commands tab of Dragon’s Options dialog.

Controlled by the same option is a different type of Web shortcut command: open top [web] site… Instead of

presenting search results, this command directly opens the website corresponding to the top result of the

keywords you included in the command. Using such a command can be the quickest way to open the website

for an institution or Web-based application: for example, you could say “open top site for Facebook” or “open

top site for Nuance Communications.”

Before these shortcut commands are executed, Dragon gives you a chance to edit the search string: it opens a

small dialog box which lets you revise, replace, or augment your keywords. This lets you make your search

commands very precise, which means you will find more quickly what you wanted.