Goodies To Go! Newsletter #353

Featured this week:

 

*   Goodies Thoughts – Easy Learning
*   Q & A Goodies
*   News Goodies
*   Feedback Goodies
*   Windows Tech Goodie of the Week 
*   And Remember This…

 

Easy Learning

 

My mother was full of sayings when I was a child.  Much of what she said I didn’t listen to (shame on me, but then, I was a child!)  Of the things she said that I do remember, there are some priceless items and some just plain useful ones.  Among the priceless are such as, upon seeing me climbing the plum tree, “Don’t come running to me if you fall and break your legs!”  Among the useful ones is the inspiration for today’s thoughts (having said which makes me a little less concerned that she might read this!)

 

My mother would say, “If you want to teach somebody, show them.”  Now there’s a good idea!  I know I find it easiest to learn something if somebody will take the time to sit down and show me.  At HTML Goodies we would love to be able to sit down with all of our readers and show you everything we can.  Unfortunately, there simply isn’t enough time.  We have decided, therefore to come up with the next best thing.

 

Those of you who have visited the site over the past few months may have noticed the development of a new feature called “Webmaster Projects” — you’ll find it in the index list on the left.  The idea of Webmaster Projects is that we take a basic web development task and show you, from start to finish, how the job gets done.  We decided that the project should include all the elements of a fairly sophisticated project, but should be simplified as much as is reasonable, for the sake of clarity.

 

Each project must include more that one technology, such as HTML and JavaScript or a server-side language, in order to show how these technologies work together to provide a solution to a task.

 

We are pleased to announce that the first such project is now complete!  You will find “A Simple Order Form” under the Webmaster Projects section of the site.  This projects shows the basics of the development of an order form from the HTML for the page and form itself, to the JavaScript used for automated calculations and validation on the client side, to the PHP used for processing the form on the server, including sending out confirmation emails, confirmation screens (pages), order department notification emails and adding the orders to a MySQL database.

 

It is our belief that many of our readers will be able to make good use of this information and the examples it contains.  Please check it out, I hope you find it to be a good resource.

 

 

 

 

 

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
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/

 

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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. How do I attach the “onClick” event handler to plain text? What I am trying to do is load the Javascript function contained in the code in a new window using a text link to pop the referenced URL in a specifically-sized window with most of the bells and whistles disabled. While the code I have below works “okay”, it doesn’t work the way I want it to.  I think I need to use the ‘onClick’ handler to accomplish this, but the only references to that handler I can seem to find on HTMLGoodies uses form buttons, or regular HTML links.  I want to use plain text links.  I tried this:
<.a href=”” onClick=”javascript:popup(“URL”)”>Text here<./a>
..but all I got was my local desktop in the window when I tested it.  Here is the code I am using to call my popup window on page load:
<.!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN”> <.html>
<.head>
 <.title>BridgeMon<./title>
  <.!– TWO STEPS TO INSTALL POPUP WINDOW:
  1.  Paste the first into the HEAD of your HTML document
  2.  Use the code to open the popup page on your site  –>
<.!– STEP ONE: Copy this code into the HEAD of your HTML document  –>
<.SCRIPT LANGUAGE=”JavaScript”>
<.!– Idea by:  Nic Wolfe (Nic@TimelapseProductions.com) –>
<.!– Web URL:  http://fineline.xs.mw –>
<.!– This script and many more are available free online at –>
<.!– The JavaScript Source!! http://javascript.internet.com –>
<.!– Begin
function popUp(URL) {
day = new Date();
id = day.getTime();
eval(“page” + id + ” = window.open(URL, ‘” + id + “‘,
‘toolbar=0,scrollbars=0,location=0,statusbar=0,menubar=0,resizable=0,width=320,height=210’);”);
self.close();
}
// End –>
<./script>
<.!– STEP TWO: Paste this onLoad event handler into the BODY tag –>
<.BODY onLoad=”javascript:popUp(‘URL’)”>
<.!– Script Size:  0.73 KB  –>
<./head>

 

A. Part of your problem is that you left the “href” blank.  This causes problems with the link.  There are some different ways that you can accomplish what you want.  The first one is to use the “#” pound sign to void the link so that only the onClick event works.  For example: <.a href=”#” onClick=”popup(‘somepage.html’)”>Text here<./a>
(You also do not need to specify “javascript” in the onClick event)
You can also call the function by placing the function call in the “href” like this.
<.a href=”javascript:popup(‘somepage.html’)”>Text here<./a>
This does away with the onClick event.  I also noticed that you surounded the URL with double quotes and at the same time surounded the function call with double quotes.  When you are doing a function call like your example it should be single quotes within double quotes or double quotes within single quotes.

 

 

 

*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community.
    The answer was provided by one of our Mentor Volunteers
    
Q. I have developed a website for a consulting business.  What steps do you need to take to make sure that copyrights are not infringed by using photos and graphics from other sites?

 

A. Website items are like any other property. If you use any images or any content for that matter from another website, you should get permission from the owner first, before you use them for your site.

 

 

 

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

 

Q. Could you please tell me how to link one page to a specific point on another page? Also, how do I link the top of one page to the bottom of the same page?
 
A. If you want to link to a spot on a particular page you can use the NAME ANCHOR. For instance if you had a long page and wanted to give the user an easy way to get back to the top after reading the article you would place this in the HTML near the top after the <.BODY> tag:
<.a name=”top”>
At the end of the article you would place this code:
<.a href=”#top”>TOP<./a>
That creates a link to the top of the page. If you want a link to a certain area on another page it is done in a similar way. On the page you want to link to you place the NAME ANCHOR in the spot on the page you want to jump to:
<.a href=”jump”>Jump Here<./a>
On the page you are coming from, the link would look like this:
<.a href=”#jump”>Click here to Jump<./a>
Here is the tutorial from the HTMLGoodies site:
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/pagejump.html

 

 

 

*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community.
    The answer was provided by one of our Mentor Volunteers
    
Q. How do you get your brower reset because I have no status bar and no scrollbar?

 

A. You could provide a link like this to reload the document:
<.a href=”javascript:window.location.reload()”>Refresh<./a>
When the link is clicked on it would refresh the page.
[If you wish to restore the browser status bar (in Internet Explorer) click “View/Status Bar”

 

 

 

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

 

Q. I have created two pages one for high res and other for low resolutions, and want to create a “splash” page that will show some content while redirect the user to the correct resolution main page. This is the code I´m using to redirects the user to the correct res page.  I need to add a delay of X seconds so the user can see the content of “splash” page before being redirected. How can i do this?
<.script>
<.!–
if (screen.width<=640)
top.location.href=”index640.html”;
if (screen.width<=800)
top.location.href=”index800.html”;
if (screen.width<=1024)
top.location.href=”index1024.html”;
top.location.href=”index1280.html”;
//–>
<./script>

 

A. You could use setTimeout() to perform a function to redirect after so many milliseconds.  Here is an example that will redirect to the specified link after 2000 milliseconds (2 seconds):
<.script>
<.!–
function Redirect(linkid)
  {
   top.location.href=linkid
  }
if (screen.width<=640)
   setTimeout(‘Redirect(“index640.html”)’,2000);
if (screen.width<=800)
   setTimeout(‘Redirect(“index800.html”)’,2000);
if (screen.width<=1024)
   setTimeout(‘Redirect(“index1024.html”)’,2000)
top.location.href=”index1280.html”;
//–>
<./script>

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Q. (Re. Search Engine Submissions) I typically submit my sites using the tool provided by my web host. That’s not because I want to, but more because I’m confused by all the ‘services’ out there that offer site submission – from $24.95/month to $500 one time fee for software that promises to submit, analyze and everything else in between other than fixing my breakfast.  Before spending money on anything that I’m solicited to via email and ads on sites that I visit, I wonder if anyone might have a suggestion on a site submission tool that is really worth the money spent.
 

 

A. I am not a search engine/marketing guru be any means. I tell my clients up front that I do not guarantee a good placement in any search engine. There are people that do just website marketing and get paid very well. I do, however use this site to submit the websites of my clients: http://selfpromotion.com  Another site I use for information is: http://www.sitepoint.com/ It has a lot of information about web sites from coding to marketing. I don’t know if you are interested in PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing, but I suggest you take a look at http://www.overture.com It has a really nice tool for seeing the amount of times a certain keyword was searched for in the preveious month. It may help your META tags.
[There is a lot of information about all aspects of Search Engines, including a submission service, at http://www.searchenginewatch.com  – Ed.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News Goodies
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Google, Microsoft Personnel Fight Back in Court
[September 6, 2005] UPDATED: Judge may decide this week if former Redmond executive can begin work with Google.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3532216

 

MontaVista Tightens Embedded OS Market
[September 6, 2005] The company hopes to wrest a piece of the embedded OS market from the likes of Microsoft and Wind River.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3532206

 

HP in All-In-One Storage Sprint
[September 6, 2005] Systems vendor, hungry for information lifecycle management share, rolls out more integrated storage packages.. 
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3532156

 

Real-Time Coding, The P2P Way
[September 6, 2005] Borland’s JBuilder 2006 lets developers around the globe collaborate in real-time on the same piece of code.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3532071

 

Xactly Enters On Demand Arena With Incent
[September 6, 2005] The new company focuses on adding intelligence to sales commissions. 
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3532176

 

LeftHand Picks Up a Bundle
[September 6, 2005] LeftHand Networks says its $25 million funding round will be enough to carry it to profitability in the competitive IP SAN market.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/storage/article.php/3532316

 

IMlogic Tackles Zero-Day Chat Threats
[September 6, 2005] RTTPS attempts to block fledgling worms and viruses before they become a problem for network administrators.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3532256

 

RSS Feeds, Secured For Enterprise
[September 5, 2005] Reactivity, the XML appliance maker, explains how it will support Really Simple Syndication feeds.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3532051

 

Suckers For Spam
[September 2, 2005] Despite more awareness of the problem, people are still getting lured into Internet fraud.
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3532001

 

ntel Bullish on Itanium’s Growth Prospects
[September 5, 2005] Touts customer gains, but Sun says big discounts boost sales. 
Read the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3532046

 

 

 

 
 
 
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 https://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/

 

 

 

Thanks for all your feedback!

 

 

 

 

 

Windows Tech Goodie of the Week 
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Creating Tamper-Proof URLs

 

In this article we’ll look at how to use one-way hashes to create tamper-proof URLs. As we’ll see,
only a few short lines of code are needed to both generate the signature on the page generating the hyperlink and validating the signature on the “receiving” page. Read on to learn more!

 

 

*** AND ***

 

Paged Database Search with Limited Navigation Links

 

After trying out our paged database search script, one of our visitors decided to send in an alternate version that doesn’t display a link to every result page, but instead creates a limited set of links so that the display doesn’t become unwieldy if your database contains a large number of records.

 

 

*** AND ***

 

The X-Factor in SOA

 

In this article, Joseph Poozhikunnel examines the importance of the three X’s — namely XML, XML Schema, and XSLT — in a service oriented architecture (SOA). He then defines the design considerations that need to be adopted when designing a system based on SOA and examines the pitfalls that can arise if they’re not followed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And Remember This …
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1522 Magellan’s Ship Circumnavigated the Globe

 

One of Ferdinand Magellan’s five ships, the Vittoria, arrived at Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain on this day in 1522, thereby completing the first circumnavigation of the world. The Vittoria was commanded by Basque navigator Juan Sebastián de Elcano, who took charge of the vessel after the murder of Magellan in the Philippines in April 1521. During a long, hard journey home, the people on the ship suffered from starvation, scurvy, and harassment by Portuguese ships. Only Elcano, 17 other Europeans, and four Indians survived to reach Spain in September 1522.

 

Today was also the day that in: Honolulu, Hawaii became a city; 1941 the Nazi’s Siege of Leningrad began; 1945 Hong Kong was liberated from Japan; 1961 JB Parsons was confirmed as the first African American US District Court Judge; 1963 the White House – Kremlin hotline went into service; 1967 Thurgood Mashall was confirmed as the first African American US Supreme Court Justice; 1979 President Jimmy Carter was attacked by a rabbit while on a canoe trip in Plains, Georgia (US);  1989 Roman Polanski and actress Emanuelle Seigner were married;

 

Born today were: in 1797 English author, creator of Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; 1871 English physicist, discoverer of the nucleus of atoms, Ernest Lord Rutherford; 1907 actor Fred MacMurray; 1909 actress Joan Blondell; 1917 actress Julie Bishop; 1919 country singer Kitty Wells; 1927 clothing designer Geoffrey Beene; 1928 actor Bill Daily; 1935 singer John Phillips; 1939 actress Elizabeth Ashley; 1950 actor John Landis; 1974 musician (cousin to Jon Bon Jovi) Matt Bongiovi;