Goodies to Go ™
January 7, 2001–Newsletter #162
This newsletter is part of the internet.com network.
http://www.internet.com
Please visit http://www.htmlgoodies.com
Editorial Goodies
Well, first things first. Thanks so much to everyone that
wrote me with well wishes, suggestions and comments. I
sincerely appreciate your input.
So far I have received over 700 emails regarding the
newsletter and I have come across only 1 negative email. Obviously, I have not read all of your emails yet
but I am working through them.
So, without further ado, here are the results. The Quiz
Goodies are getting about a 70% approval rating so far
from those who have commented on it. Being that as it
may, I’m going to try it out for a few issues and see how
you like it. If everyone isn’t getting something out of
it I’ll do some rearranging.
The Q & A Section seems to be a big hit. I would estimate
an approval rating of over 90%. I was very pleased to see
that. So, keep your questions coming in and be sure to
let me know if it is alright to publish your first initial
and last name with your question. Also, please send me any
suggestions you might have on tutorial topics that you
would like to see. I, like Joe, get many of my topic ideas
from questions and suggestions that you, the subscriber, send
in so keep them coming.
Next, the News Goodies. Not many comments on this yet. I
wonder if you aren’t quite sure what to expect from this.
Well, it’s pretty short and sweet. This will be simply a
few links to technology related news that I think you might
find interesting or funny. We’ll just how it goes.
Now I’ll bet you were wondering about the Remember This
section. In fact, most of you mentioned this. Yes, I will
be keeping that section alive and well just as soon as
I get Joe to reveal his source for all of those great
little factoids. Look for it to reappear before the end
of the month.
Lastly, the editorial section. This section will be much
like the Goodies to Go newsletter that you have become
accustomed to. It will have comments and opinions on
technology related topics. (usually) Granted, you haven’t
seen it yet but you will.
Thanks again!
Quiz Goodies
Below you will find a question regarding opening a new window
in JavaScript. My question is how do make a hyperlink that
your viewer can click on to close a window?
Q & A Goodies
Q. Would the existing tutorials remain or should we expect
changes in that respect?
A. This is an easy one. Our plan is only to grow the list
of tutorials and articles that you currently enjoy.
Q. I WAS VERY CLOSE TO FINISHING A WEBSITE IN WHICH I USED
MOSTLY FRAMES. Well, all was fine and dandy until I finished.
You see, I was working with a 1600×1200 resolution on my
monitor and when I changed it to 800×600 …well…I think
you know the reaction I had.
A. You’re not going to like this answer much. Unfortunately,
there is no easy fix for this with frames. Frames can be
your best friend and your worst nightmare which is probably
why most browsers are talking about terminating support for
them in future releases.
As a general rule, most designers create pages in the lowest
common denominator which is usually accepted to be 800×600.
This is a hard lesson to learn but we have all been there.
Your only real alternative is to redesign your pages which,
hopefully, won’t be too many.
Pages with frames can give you a very nice presentation when
done right but the problem is they are very unforgiving.
Many professional designers these days actually avoid using
them for just that reason and opt for using tables. By using
tables in your designs you will find your site be be much
more flexible.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Good luck!
Q. I had a question about opening new windows…
How can I do it so that I can open two different new windows?
For example, I’ve got my index page, which opens the main page
to a new window (I needed it a certain size). But the problem
is, I want the downloads section to open a new window,
separate from the main window. But since I can’t figure out how
I can do that, it keeps opening in the main window, rather
than in a new one.
A. By reading your question I’m not exactly sure what you are
trying to accomplish but here it goes. It sounds like what you
need is the help of a little JavaScript.
Opening a new window and even multiple windows is fairly easy
with JavaScript. First, you might want to read the the tutorial
"So You Want to Open a New Window, Huh?" at
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/openwin.html
Next, create a JavaScript function on your page that opens a
a new window. You can then pass that function the name of the new window and the name of the
page that you want opened. For Example:
function NewWindow(window_name,page_name) {
window.open(page_name,window_name,config=’height= …
Now all you have to do is send the function the page you want
to open. You can open as many new pages as you like, however,
keep in mind that a whole bunch of pages open at once can
easily confuse and annoy a viewer.
If you want to open several pages at once you can simply call
your function from within the <SCRIPT> section of you pages
like this:
NewWindow("HomeWindow","Home.html")
NewWindow("DownloadWindow","Downloads.html")
…
Or you can open a new window from a hyperlink like this:
<a href="javascript:NewWindow(‘dlwin’,’downloads.html’)">
That’s it. A word of caution, be careful not to use two sets of " or ‘ in your
tag like this:
<a href="javascript:NewWindow("downloads.html")">
the extra set of quotes will confuse the heck out of the browser.
Hope this helps!
Q. Every time I try to connect to my website I have to
type (www.domainname.com/home.html) I wanna be able to
just type (www.domainname.com) and get there!
Can you please help me by telling me how to do that.
A. You simply need to do a little file renaming. Instead of
naming your home page home.html rename it index.html or
default.html. When a browser arrives at your site the
first thing the server does is look for the beginning page by
filename. It knows to look for two choices by default: default
and
index. That’s how it knows where to begin.
You can also tweak your web server
to look for whatever page names you like and in whatever sequence you like but
that is a whole other discussion.
News Goodies
Technology has been making a comeback of late. Will it
continue in 2002? Read about some of the companies and
products that are expected to do good and bad this year.
Click here to read the article
Had enough SPAM to last you a lifetime? Read how the laws
are beginning to change and how a California court
hammered some spammers!
Click here to read the article
What virus was the worst of the worst for 2001? What can
we expect for 2002? Who knows, but it will likely arrive
at your machine in the form of email attachments.
Click here to read the article
Quiz Answer
By using this combination of HTML and JavaScript:
<a href="javascript:window.close()">Close Window</a>
Special Thanks
This online version of the newsletter contains some revisions and added
explanations that were not in the emailed version. Thanks to all of you that
emailed me with your comments and suggestions.
Thanks for reading Goodies to Go!
