Goodies to Go ™
November 25, 2002–Newsletter #208
This newsletter is part of the internet.com network.
http://www.internet.com
Featured
this week:
* Goodies Thoughts
– Pop-Up — Pop Outta Here!!
* Q & A Goodies
* News Goodies
* Feedback Goodies
* And Remember This…
Goodies Announcement
Just in case you missed
it before, the new Beyond HTML Goodies book is now available!
Go beyond the basics
and learn how the pros add and use dynamic HTML features and advanced
JavaScript techniques. Beyond HTML Goodies demonstrates dozens of new and
different features readers can add to their existing Web pages using HTML and
JavaScript. The book starts with simple text and image tips, such as adding a
clock to a Web page or causing text to appear when the mouse moves over an
image. It gradually builds to more complex tricks, including manipulating forms
or working with cookies behind the scenes. Throughout the book, readers enjoy
Joe’s snappy style and “to the point” discussion of each “goody” in the book.
http://books.internet.com/books/0789727803
| Goodies Thoughts – |
Pop-Up — Pop Outta Here!! |
I hate ’em! I’m sure you hate ’em!
Yes, it’s those annoying pop-up ads that I’m talking
about. They’re the latest scourge on the Internet.
There’s the pop-up which opens in addition to the
page you expect when you browse to an address.
There’s the pop-under, which hides itself behind
what you’re looking up and lurks there until you
close your window and there it is. There’s even the
new "Messenger Service" type of ad that appears out
of nowhere. Often you get more than one window
opening – did you ever mistype an address and wind
up on a porn site, only to find that as you close
your window, two or three (or more) other porn sites
open up, each of which opens even more when you
close them too. It can take forever to get them all
closed — to the point where you sometimes want to
just switch off the computer to stop them. Then
there’s the history — you’ve told the kids they’re
not to go to those sites but when they look in the
history they find that you have been there yourself!
Explain that one away!
I have been asked how to make these pop-up ads. Well
here’s my answer: forget about it! I have no
intention of contributing to this kind of annoyance
on the Internet and I hope you don’t either. As a
reader of HTML Goodies and Goodies To Go you are, I
am sure, one of the web’s civilized citizens and a
proponent of user-friendliness. As such, pop-ups,
pop-unders and all related forms are something you
fastidiously avoid; of this I am pretty much
certain!
On the other side of the coin there is the defense
against these evils. How can you protect yourself
from becoming a victim of the ad barrage? I have a
life-preserver to throw out to you, but before I do,
let me also mention one more insidious net demon.
There are certain pieces of software that are being
offered on the internet, ostensibly to help you
fight off undesirables, that are themselves the very
devils you wish to excise. For example, there is a
website called
http://www.PurityScan.com that offers to
help you scan your computer for "inappropriate"
pornographic files that can "make their way onto
your computer when you surf the Internet". When you
accept their offer and download and use their
software they install a pop up ad server into your
computer that you will have a nightmare of a time
trying to remove. This server will deliver pop-ups
to you regardless of what you are doing on the net!
Unbelievable? Here are a couple of extracts from
their "Terms" (which, of course, you always read
before you install any company’s software — NOT!):
"PurityScan will make the following changes to your
Internet Browser"; "Several PROMOTIONAL CONSOLES
(daughter console/interstitial) may be launched for
the duration of time you spend online"; "these
changes cannot be reversed"; "If you try to change
the items above manually, your changes will be lost
when you reboot or turn off your computer". I’ll bet
you don’t like the sound of that now, do you! Even
that "inappropriate" porn doesn’t seem so bad. Wait
though; you haven’t heard the worst yet!
Try this on for size:
"Our site’s registration form requires users to give
contact and demographic information such as name,
e-mail address, age, gender, zip code and country of
residence. We may use customer contact information
from the registration form to send the user
information about our company and promotional
material from some of our partners. The customer’s
contact information may also be used to contact the
visitor when necessary and shared with other
companies who may want to contact our visitors.
Demographic and profile information may also be used
to tailor the visitor’s experience at our site,
showing them content that we think might interest
them. We may disclose information you enter during
the join process to third parties."
You will be giving them all your personal
information, allowing them to send targeted ads to
you, allowing them to track what you do on the
internet and allowing them to share this information
with (i.e., sell it to) whomever they please! All
this in the name of "Purity" and to help you rid
yourself of files that can make their own way onto
your computer (which they can’t unless you go and
get them!) If you find all this hard to believe,
read their full terms for yourself; they’re on their
website. I recommend that you don’t download
anything from them, though!!
I mentioned a life-preserver before, and here it is.
You may be familiar with the capabilities of
browsers such as Opera to block pop-ups, but even
they won’t get them all. Matina Fresenius heads up a
company in the North West corner of the US called
Panicware, inc. Her company has some terrific
software for you to use. They have focused their
efforts on solving these annoyances and on
preserving the privacy of web surfers. While there
are some other offerings you may have received in
bulk email (another net scourge), Matina’s company
is the only company with this specialization, with a
technical support group and with legitimate
credentials that I have found. If there is another
such out there, I apologize, but I was not able to
find them. Panicware’s line of products includes a
free version of Pop-Up Stopper, a Pro version with
additional intelligent features and the
top-of-the-line Companion version which prevents the
ads, selectively removes cookies and prevents
Internet use tracking. The Companion is only $39.95
and buys you peace as well as peace of mind! They
also have (and it’s free!) a program called Pop-Up
Scanner which is specifically designed to heal you
from the harms of PurityScan and other such
programs. If you are concerned about your privacy
with regard to your computer, also check out "Don’t
Panic!" and "SpyCop". The reference to Douglas
Adams’ "Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Universe" is a
very nice touch! Go on over to
http://www.panicware.com and get yourself
covered. By the way, while you’re there, read their
privacy policy. It’s reads like a privacy policy
should; it’s about privacy, not publicity.
Thanks for Reading!
– Vince Barnes
Q
& A Goodies
Questions are taken
from submissions to our Community Mentors. You can ask a Mentor a question by
going to https://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/.
Q. I have a webpage that has a navigation
bar on the left, and want that navigation bar to
always be visible no matter how far a user
scrolls down the page. Do I need a frame, or do
I need JavaScript?
A. Take a look at this site:
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/index.html
They have many navigation menus you can use.
Just keep in mind that not all of the menus will
work with all of the browsers. Choose one that
says it will work with all of them unless you
have a captured audience and know that they all
use a particular browser.
Q. Do you know of any commands that will
not display the password as you type it, or put
in a series of asterisks, while still keeping
the data so that it can be compared to the
values in a database?
A. HTML has a password form field that
displays asterisks.
<input type="password" name="var name" size="40"
maxlength="80" value="default value">
Q. I have some experience with HTML and
JavaScript, but I recently visited a site that
had a bunch of applet windows that popped up and
disappeared. I would love to know how to get
that.
A. What you were looking at was actually
a Java Applet. This is very different from
JavaScript – they are barely even related
(except that they can both be used on the web).
A Java Applet is like a program and JavaScript
is what it’s name implies, a scripting language.
The only way to get something like that is to
see if the developer at that site would be
willing to share it with you.
Q. I would like to make a word a clickable
link to to another word…… such as 1st Th
5:17 clickable to the scripture.
A. You can set an anchor that will
bring up a certain part of the page where the
word is.
< A name="1st_th517"> is placed by the word.
<a href="#1st_th517">Th 5:17</a> is placed as
the link
Q. I’ve been using the <BASE FONT=3> command
within the head tags thinking that would "fix"
the page fonts at a certain size, but it
doesn’t. Is there any way to "fix" font size to
the way I need it for my designs to work?
A. I don’t use it but it does have to be
used correctly. This element can be used only
within the BODY element or the HEAD element.
BASEFONT should appear before any displayed text
in the body of the document. It can be
overridden using the FONT tag within the
document. Maybe this is what is happening:
No BASEFONT size specified yet.
<BASEFONT SIZE=4> Set the BASEFONT size.
<FONT SIZE=2> Temporarily override the BASEFONT
size.</FONT>
Resume the BASEFONT size. End of example.
Did you try using a Cascading Style Sheet? You
can manipulate the style of the font using it.
<HEAD>
<TITLE>CSS Example</TITLE>
<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
H1 { font-size: x-large; color: red }
H2 { font-size: large; color: blue }
</STYLE>
</HEAD>
The above style sheet tells the browser to show
level-one headings in an extra-large, red font,
and to show level-two headings in a large, blue
font.
News Goodies
Volunteers Wanted For IT National Guard
[November 25, 2002] Looking to volunteer on behalf
of your country’s (the USA’s) safety? The NET Guard
bill is an effort to corral cutting edge tech
assistance for the nation’s emergency workers.
Click
here to read the article
Macromedia Readies Director Upgrade
[November 25, 2002] The firm makes improvements to
its workhorse product (including support for the new
Apple OS) to help developers build multimedia
content for CD/DVD-ROMs, kiosks and the Web.
Click
here to read the article
Dell Delivers on Blade Server Promise
[November 25, 2002] After a bit of delay, Dell is
ready to rock and roll with its first ever blade
servers; meet the PowerEdge 1655MC.
Click
here to read the article
Verizon Unwires Businesses
[November 22, 2002] Following up on selling Wi-Fi
equipment to its broadband customers, the company is
launching a wireless local area network solutions
program for small businesses, starting in the Boston
area.
Click
here to read the article
MPEG-4 Becoming Louder, Clearer?
[November 22, 2002] FEATURE: A new component
that halves the size of digital audio files is up
for adoption the MPEG-4 standard but questions about
licensing prices and DRM shortcomings still linger.
Click
here to read the article
UnitedLinux Takes Aim At Microsoft, Sun, Red Hat
[November 19, 2002] SCO and SuSE work to lure
customers away from Linux ‘wanna-bes’ with new
distributions based on United Linux 1.0.
Click
here to read the article
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:
We already receive a lot of email every day. This address will help 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.
Thanks for those who pointed out that the link in
last weeks newsletter should have been to
http://www.FlashKit.com not to
http://www.FlaskKit.com Just for fun, try
these two!
Thanks also to Tres London for providing this
additional tip:
I noticed the #207 newsletter some advice was
featured regarding this question:
"Q. I want to change the background color of a cell
containing a link, but only when the mouse is on
that link. Then it should go back to the original
color."
Actually, I have accomplished this very easily, and
it works in Mozilla and Internet Explorer. Here is
the code: <td onMouseOver="this.style.backgroundColor=’#3A3A3A’"
onMouseOut="this.style.backgroundColor=’gray’">
Also, some of you last week received either a black
newsletter with red fonts or some similar, difficult
to read, combination of colors. Please know that
this was not planned! There was an example in one of
the Q&A pieces that certain email clients actually
interpreted as code. Notably, AOL had a hard time
with it. Outlook and Outlook Express did not
misinterpret the example. Eudora Pro (the version I
tried) changed the colors of links. We’ll try to
make sure that examples are included in such a way
that these client programs interpret them only as
text. It might be a bit tough on some clients,
though.
Top
And
Remember This . . .
On this day in…
1996: Excite Buys Webcrawler
America Online announced that Excite would buy its
Webcrawler search engine for $20 million worth of
Excite stock, giving AOL a 20% holding in Excite.
Excite was created in 1996 by six college grads
(Stanford) who borrowed $15,000 from their parents
and created it in a garage. In 1999 Excite was sold
to the cable company At Home Corp for $6.7 billion.
By my calculations that means those guys made about
$890 million each. That’s more than I made over the
past three years — how about you?
1952 The Mousetrap opens in London
Written by the famous murder mystery playwright and
author Agatha Christie, The Mousetrap opened on
November 25th 1952 at the Ambassador Theatre in
London’s West End to an audience of 423. It is the
longest continuously running play in history, with a
total of more than 20,000 performances. It is still
running at the St. Martin’s Theatre, where it moved
in 1974. More than 10 million people have seen the
play. When it opened, Sir Winston Churchill was
Prime Minister of England, Josef Stalin headed the
USSR and Dwight D. Eisenhower was President-Elect of
the US.
And born today were:
1835 Andrew Carnegie; 1914 Joltin’ Joe
DiMaggio; 1920 Ricardo Montalban; 1960
John F. Kennedy Jr.; 1971 Christina Applegate
Thanks for reading
Goodies to Go!
