Goodies To Go! Newsletter #382

Featured this week:

 

*   Goodies Thoughts - Easy Email
*   Q & A Goodies
*   Discussion Goodies
*   News Goodies
*   Feedback Goodies
*   Windows Tech Goodie of the Week 
*   And Remember This...

Easy Email

 

My cousin, and a few other folk over recent times, asked me for an opinion of Google Mail.  I thought I'd share a few thoughts in that regard with you today.  Though I'm talking about gmail (as Google calls it) I could be talking about any of several similar free web mail services, except that Google is the one that I have checked out and that I use for some of my mail, and it has a feature that seems to distinguish it a bit from others.

 

To address that last feature first, Google mail is available by invitation only.  That's right, you have to be invited to get an email account!  An existing Gmailer can send you an invitation to your current email address.  Of course, you can invite yourself, but the process involves your cell phone (you send an invitation code to your phone via a txt.)  The good thing that this accomplishes is to slow down abusers who would create an account, use it for malicious purposes and abandon it.  This form of abuse has caused more than a few corporations to block inbound mail from Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo and the like.

 

As to the other features -- what can I say?  Everything is there!!  You can receive mail to a variety of email addresses, including the one you get from Google, send mail from a variety of addresses, including automatically replying from the address to which an email was sent.  You can store all your contacts, integrate with you email client program (if you should so choose) and, perhaps best of all, search through your old email using Google style filters and searches rather than the more traditional sort and search techniques (if you want to know the details, Google "Google Searching", if you just want to know the effect, try it!)

 

Google offers tons of storage space.  This is a big deal because I think that old email is a valuable historical record that should never be discarded.  Anything that would require me to lose old mail would be a bad thing in my book.  It has been said that disk space "is basically free now, and it's only getting cheaper!" which being so, would mean that it's only reasonable for these email services to offer lots of it for free.  What they hardly ever mention, and that seems to me, as a user, to be so critical, is that they take on all the responsibility of protecting all my data from loss.  To me, that's HUGE!

 

Obviously, I'm a fan of Google mail!  I recommend it to all kinds of people, including many small business people.

 

On the down side.....  a friend told me today that when he receives an email from my gmail account it shows up in his email client as "from" my gmail account rather than from the email address I wanted to show.  If he "Reply"s, the reply is addressed to the correct address.  This is different from, for example, Hotmail, and I will look into it and let you know what I find.  Watch this space!!

Thanks for reading!

- Vince Barnes

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Q & A Goodies
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Questions are taken from submissions to our Community
Mentors. You can ask a Mentor a question by going to
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/

 

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X                        X
X   Please take note:    X
X                        X
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We have had a number of people indicate that their email client programs are interpreting code examples in this newsletter as actual HTML code instead of text.  To overcome this problem and to enable everyone to read the newsletter, there is a period after the "<" in each tag.  If you cut and paste to try out code examples, please remember to remove the periods.  Wherever we intend you to use "<." in your code, the example will show "<..".  In this way, you will be safely able to use a global edit to change "<." to "<".  Thanks to all of you for your patience with this; if this technique creates an undue problem for you however, please let us know via our feedback address (see Feedback, below).

*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community.
     The answer was provided by one of our Mentor Volunteers
    
Q. Is there a way of adding Powerpoint presentations into a website without the viewer having to download the file?

 

A. The user must have PowerPoint installed on their computer to be able to view the presentation. There may be a PowerPoint viewer available but it still needs to installed on the user's computer. In PowerPoint 97 and up you can save the presentation as HTML and it will create all of the buttons and navigation for you as HTML. The downside is that it creates an enormous amount of files. I am not sure if this will help but Microsoft offers the Microsoft. Producer for PowerPoint 2002 Resource CD. This is an "add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint. version 2002 that makes it easy to create media-rich presentations for the Web." The cost is only about $6. Here is the link: http://www.producerresourceCD.com

*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community.
     The answer was provided by one of our Mentor Volunteers
    
Q. I need a list of special characters in HTML. Like the "a" with the two dots ontop of it, and the copyright symbol... can you help me?

 

A. I don't offhand know of a site with a list of the codes. However, if you use Windows, you have an application called Character Map which is probably in the accessories folder. It has the character codes. The HTML code is &#[code];, like the code for the "a" with an umlaut (two dots) is "&#228;".

*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community.
     The answer was provided by one of our Mentor Volunteers

 

Q.  What is the html tag to prevent people from "lifting" my artwork from my site?

 

A. There is no such tag. There is no technical means to prevent copying that can't be gotten around. Nontechnically, there are a couple things you can do. You can put a copyright notice in big letters across the picture so it can't be removed without ruining the picture. You can post just small versions and and require viewers to contact you for permission to see the larger image. You can have pages and images which aren't linked to, so no one can find them without you giving them the link.

*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community.
     The answer was provided by one of our Mentor Volunteers
    
Q. How do you set up a forum?

 

A. Instead of creating one from scratch, you should look into the many free forums available on the web. If your server supports Active Server Pages go to http://www.aspin.com and do a search for "forums". If your server supports PHP, go to http://www.code4u.com and choose a site to visit from there.

*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community.
     The answer was provided by one of our Mentor Volunteers
    
Q. I am looking for JavaScript help in order to pre-select a option in a select field inside a form.  I am using server-side scripting (PHP) in order to provide the selected value.

 

A. You could use PHP to create your option tag and select the option you want that way.  I have a small Help Desk application written in PHP that I have set up dropdowns to select the date.  I have them default to the current date.  Here is an example of the dropdown for the
month:
<.select name="beg_req_month">
   <.?php
   for($i=1;$i<.=12;$i++)
        {
         if($i==$prob_month)
           {print "<.option value='" . $i . "' selected>" . $i .
"<./option>\n";}
         else
           {print "<.option value='" . $i . "'>" . $i . "<./option>\n";}
        }
   ?>
   <./select>
The variable $prob_month is set to the current month in some previous code.  For Javascript to set the selected option you would use a statement like this (which sets the first option tag to selected):
document.form_name.select_name.options[0].selected=true
[Beware of the period following the less than symbol in the "for" statement above -- this is one of the periods inserted as a part of the technique mentioned in the note at the beginning of this section & does not belong in the code you execute -- Ed.]

*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community.
     The answer was provided by one of our Mentor Volunteers

 

Q. Q. I'm trying to set up an email form.  How do I send form data to an email address instead of a file?  My email form just brings up outlook; how do I get it to send email directly?  When I get data to me email address it is in an attachment with an ".att" extension -- what is this and how do I read it?  How do I get my email form data to be formatted as text instead of being full of stuff like "1=on&2=on&3=Better+Management"?

 

A. To get rid of the .att extension (and formatting problems) add enctype="text/html to the form tag like so:
<.form action="mailto:somebody@somewhere.com" method="post" enctype="text/plain">
NOTE, HOWEVER:
Version 6 (and above) browsers do not support email forms (action="mailto:... etc.) Instead, it is necessary to use CGI scripts (PERL, CGI Shell Scripts, PHP etc.)  Alternatively, if your server supports FrontPage extensions, there is a "WebBot" in FrontPage that automatically handles sending form data to an email address (as an option to, or in addition to saving it to a file.) Also, take a look at:
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/articles/emailforms1.html  and
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/articles/emailformphp.html

*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community.
     The answer was provided by one of our Mentor Volunteers
    
Q. I have link that is targeted to open in a new browser window.  I want to force the behaviour of the new window but cannot find out how to do so.  The behaviour I want to force is as follows:
The browser window has no nav bar, address bar etc.; the size of the browser window is dictated by me.

 

A. This script opens a new window:
<.SCRIPT LANGUAGE="javascript">
<.!--
window.open ('titlepage.html', 'newwindow', config='height=100,
width=400, toolbar=no, menubar=no, scrollbars=no, resizable=no,
location=no, directories=no, status=no')
-->
<./SCRIPT>
The first parameter is the file that opens in the new window, the second is the name of the window, the third is the configuration of the window like size, toolbars and such. "No" keeps them off, and "yes" includes them.

Discussion Goodies
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Have you seen the discussion forums on the HTML Goodies website?  It's a great place to get help from others who, just like you, are developing web pages.  Many different topics appear in the forum, and a new one will appear if you create it!  Here's a sample of recent topics:

 

Access a Select item inside a FORM:
http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=100786

 

unit conversion script not working:
http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=99083

 

validate form and redirect?:
http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=74403

 

Pop out box:
http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=100718

 

JS keep restarting all over again, like a refresh:
http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=100582

News Goodies
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Skype, Kazaa Named in $4B RICO Lawsuit
[March 28, 2006] StreamCast asks for $4 billion in lawsuit charging an 'elaborate shell game.'
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3594936

 

Critics: Telecom Bill Guts Net Neutrality
[March 28, 2006] New draft legislation belted as vehicle favoring telephone and cable companies.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3594861

 

Linux Kernel Point Release Fixes Flaws
[March 28, 2006] A potential vulnerability is quickly plugged as kernel developers issue the first point release of the 2.6.16 kernel.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3594856

 

JBoss Gears Up For Messaging, Web Servers
[March 28, 2006] JBoss steps up its bid to wrest control of the infrastructure software market from IBM, BEA and Sun.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3594806

 

Google, Microsoft Sneak in New Search Gems
[March 28, 2006] The new features debut as one company slips in and the other dominates the market.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3594896

 

Critics: Telecom Bill Guts Net Neutrality
[March 28, 2006] New draft legislation belted as vehicle favoring telephone and cable companies.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3594861

 

Keeping PHP From Prying Eyes
[March 28, 2006] Zend's Safeguard beta promises to keep your source code close to the vest.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3594731

 

PC Growth Declining, But Don't Blame Vista
[March 27, 2006] Research report sees growth in notebooks, but overall PC sales slowing.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/3594656

 

Microsoft Gains in Server Market
[March 27, 2006] The company took the lead in Unix replacement last year, and it's taking customers away from Novell.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3594261

 

Memo to Microsoft: 'If I Were You...'
[March 24, 2006] Analysts and pundits take up the Vista Microsoft future and offer lessons learned from the Vista/Office delay.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3594281

 
 
 
Feedback Goodies
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Did you ever wish your newsletter was an easy two way communications medium?  Ploof! It now is!
If you would like to comment on the newsletter or expand/improve on something you have seen in here, you can now send your input to:

 

mailto:nlfeedback@htmlgoodies.com

 

We already receive a lot of email every day.  This address helps us sort out those relating specifically to this newsletter from all the rest.  When you send email to this address it may wind up being included in this section of the newsletter, to be shared with your fellow readers.  Please don't send your questions to this address.  They should be sent to our mentors: see http://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/

Thanks for all your feedback!

Windows Tech Goodie of the Week 
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Sorting Custom Paged Results

 

Last week I wrote an article on implementing custom paging in ASP.NET 2.0 aptly named Custom Paging in ASP.NET 2.0 with SQL Server 2005. In this article we'll see how to augment custom paging to include support for bi-directional sorting of the results. Read on to learn more!

 

 

*** AND ***

 

Database Sort with Arrows Sample Code

 

Based on user feedback, we've published an alternate version of our classic database sorting sample with a cleaner and simpler looking header and arrows which indicate the current sort order.

 

 

*** AND ***

 

Introducing the ASP.NET 2.0 GridView Control - Part 2

 

In the first part of this article series, Ziran Sun introduced one of the new data-bound controls available in the .NET Framework version 2.0 -- the GridView. In this part, he'll continue to examine this versatile control and introduce you to some of its more powerful capabilities.

 

And Remember This ...
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On this day in.....

 

1738 Parliament in England declared war on Spain; 1794 La Louvre art gallery in Paris opened to the public; 1922 the first microfilm device was introduced; 1854 Britain and France declared war on Russia; 1917 Turkish authorities expelled the Jews from Tel-Aviv and Jaffa; 1930 Constantinople and Angora changed their names to Istanbul and Ankara; 1939 the Spanish Civil War ended as Madrid fell to Francisco Franco; 1970 1,086 people were killed by a 7.3 earthquake in Gediz, Turkey; 1979 there was a major accident at Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in Middletown, Pennsylvania - no deaths, however;

Born today were: in 1902 English actress Dame Flora Robson; 1914 actor Frank Lovejoy; 1921 English actor Dirk Bogarde; 1924 Iriah actor Freddie Bartholomew; 1942 English musician Lewis B Hopkin (Brian Jones, Rolling Stones); 1944 actor Ken Howard; 1948 British musician John Evan (Jethro Tull); 1955 country singer Reba McEntire; 1963 Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr.;