Spotlight Preferences and device icons on desktop

[JTToft]

Two quick questions:

1. I want Dictionary hits to always appear first in Spotlight results - even above the "Top Hit". Is this possible?
I know about Spotlight's preferences, where you can edit the order of your results, but Dictionary lookups don't appear on this list.

2. Is it possible to hide a specific device icon on the Desktop? I am trying to make Time Machine operation as invisible as possible. I have removed the icon from the menu bar, but I would also like to remove the hard drive's icon from the desktop.
I want all other devices (CDs, DVDs, other external hard drives and so on) to appear, but not my Time Machine drive.

Thanks!

 

[TheSimple1]

Answer to question 1 - I think that dictionary is a extra add on to spotlight and the definition will only show if the computer has an idea of the word your spelling. In the 2 images I put with this reply I'll show you that the reason why its not the top hit is because it doesn't know if I'm spelling hell or hello
therefor you can not modify this unless you are lucky enough to find a video on YouTube that shows you how to hack spotlight. But without hacking the system there is one thing you can do.. Inside of dashboard you can add a dictionary bar, there you can instantly and fast get the definition you are looking for..

Answer to question 2 -
Follow these steps and if need follow the pictures I provided
step 1 - left click the background of your computer so that up in the left hand corner by the apple you see "Finder"
step 2 - click finder and navigate to the preferences
step 3 - deselect External Disks
NOTE : This will hide the external drives but I don't think there is a safe way to hide JUST your time machine drive I gave you this anyways though. A good thing to do is look on Google and put in.. How to hide time machine from desktop there should be some already answered question just like yours.

PS. Sorry if the pictures got you confused. Anyways I hope this helped

Sincerely,
Jesse Wood

 

[JTToft]

Thanks for your reply.

Regarding my Spotlight question:
The Dashboard widget is not an advantage over the standard Spotlight behaviour. The reason I wanted to make the adjustment to Spotlight is that Dictionary lookups are what I mainly use Spotlight for, and it would be great to be able to just hit cmd + space, type in the word I want to look up and hit return - without having to worry about whether the Dictionary lookup is the top result in Spotlight. It is a bit frustrating when you want to look up a word and it starts some application instead.

With your Dashboard suggestion, I would have to use my mouse as well (to position the cursor in the search field), which slows down the process significantly.

So it appears my little tweak is not possible to do.

Regarding my Time Machine question:
I know about the option to hide external drives altogether from the Desktop, but that's not what I want. I just want to hide one drive.

Even though your suggestions didn't help me, I thank you for your contribution!
If anyone else has ideas, please share them.

EDIT: I just found this article, which solved my "problem" with the Time Machine drive. It is a bit complicated, but didn't take more than 3 minutes to do.