Goodies to Go ™
August 4, 2003–Newsletter #244
This newsletter is part of the internet.com network.
http://www.internet.com
Featured this week:
* Goodies Thoughts – Sound Advice
* Q & A Goodies
* News Goodies
* Goodies Peer Reviews
* Feedback Goodies
* And Remember This…
Goodies Announcement
Just in case you missed
it before, the new Beyond HTML Goodies book is now available!
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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 – Sound Advice
If I step out of my back door I am greeted with the sounds of birds singing in
the woods behind my house. During the day, that is; at night I am provided the
songs of cicadas, crickets, and frogs interspersed with the occasional owl’s
hoot and the chatter of a variety of other night life. Listening to these sounds
I notice how harmonious they all are. They belong together and they sound good.
They inspire music.
A car will pull up next to mine at a traffic light, however, with some sound
playing at an ear damaging level (probably mine, as well as their own!) and
rattle my car windows with a deep bass boom. It hurts me and I have no idea how
much it must be hurting the occupants of the car itself. This unwanted intrusion
is disharmonious and belongs elsewhere, such as in a canoe in the middle of the
Atlantic. Not matter what genre of music it may be, it does not sound good by
the time it reaches me. Neither is music what it inspires!
As I ponder these two situations, I give consideration to websites that include
sound. I am quite frequently asked for advice on how to include sound in a web
site, and there are two types of answer that I can provide. The first is the
technical. "Visit https://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/embed.html and read the
tutorial on embedding a sound that you’ll find there," I’ll say, and then I’ll
give them my other answer, which I call my sound advice.
Sound on a website can be as pleasing to your visitor as the car I described in
the second paragraph above is to me. A short while ago, I was on my phone and on
my computer at the same time. This is a frequent thing for me. I find my
speakerphone particularly useful on such occasions. Unfortunately, as I was
politely listening to the person at the other end of the phone line, I clicked
on a link that took me to a site with embedded sound. My computer chirped up
with this bright and jolly and LOUD music and drowned out my phone. The phone,
of course, duly carried the sound to the other person, who immediately started
to wonder why I would prefer listening to this cartoon style music rather than
the gems of information they had to impart. Most embarrassing! Needless to say I
memorized the site address and added it to my list of "never visit" sites. If
the site’s author is trying to entice people to visit, their strategy isn’t
working!
My sound advice puts web page sounds on a scale that I call my "vowel sound
scale". Here it is:
Ahhh! There’s no sound on the page.
Eh? There’s sound that I’m invited to turn on.
EEEEE! There’s sound that I’m invited to turn off.
Ohh! There’s sound only when expected, like in a movie or presentation.
Ugh! There’s sound and no way to stop it except to move off the site.
The State in which I live passed a law that says that car driver is in violation
if the sounds they’re listening to can be heard fifty feet away from the car (in
a residential area – it’s a hundred feet in the countryside or in an industrial
zone.) There’s no such law on the internet and there never will be. There are,
however, the laws of usability. One of the top usability laws says that the
closer you are to the top of my Vowel Sound Scale, the better off you are!
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’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.)
[See also
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/articles/emailforms1.html – Ed.]
Q. When I run the following script it returns the correct day, year, and
time. However, the month returns as the previous month, e.g. this month,
December (12), is shown as November (11) (my computer does have the correct
date.)
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
RightNow = new Date();
document.write("Today’s date is " + RightNow.getMonth()+ "-")
document.write(" "+ RightNow.getDate() + "-" + RightNow.getFullYear() + ".")
document.write("You entered this Web Page at exactly: " + RightNow.getHours() +
" hours")
document.write(" "+ RightNow.getMinutes() + " minutes and " +
RightNow.getSeconds() + " seconds")
</SCRIPT>
A. I have run into this before. The solution is to:
1. Add the following code immediately after RightNow = new Date(); in your
function:
newMonth = RightNow.getMonth() + 1;
2. Next change the line that returns the month to:
document.write("Today’s date is " +newMonth+ "-")
[See also
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/letters/214.html – Ed.]
Q. How do I make three tables all on the same line with a space between
them?
A. You make one large table at 100 percent width and a border of zero,
with one row then add your three tables in the large tables <td> tags. Play
around with the <td> widths to get the size you need. You can add a couple <td>
tags with the code which is just a blank space to make some space between
the 3 tables. Here is a example of the code:
<table summary="large table" align="center" width="100%" border="0"
cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="30%">
<table summary="Menu Table" width="100%" border="1" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="0">
<tr align="center"><td>Menu</td></tr>
</table>
</td>
<td width="5%"> </td>
<td width="30%">
<table summary="Main Table" width="100%" border="1" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="0">
<tr align="center"><td>Main</td></tr>
</table>
</td>
<td width="5%"> </td>
<td width="30%">
<table summary="New Menu Table" width="100%" border="1"
cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr align="center"><td>New Menu</td></tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
[See also
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/tbl_in_tbl.html – Ed.]
Q. I am new to Javascript. I have been researching a way to unselect a
number of checkboxes once a specific checkbox is clicked and vise-a-versa.
A. Here is a example that I put together for someone else (you could
replace the radio buttons with form buttons and it would work the same.)
<html>
<head>
<title>Check All</title>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
function checkall(formid,obj)
{
len=formid.ckb.length
for(i=0;i<len;i++)
{
if(obj.value=="Check All")
{formid.ckb[i].checked=true}
if(obj.value=="Uncheck All")
{formid.ckb[i].checked=false}
}
}
function onlyone(fldobj)
{
alert(fldobj.name)
}
</SCRIPT>
</head>
<body>
<CENTER>
<FORM NAME="myform">
<INPUT TYPE="checkbox" NAME="ckb" onClick="onlyone(this)"> Checkbox One
<BR>
<INPUT TYPE="checkbox" NAME="ckb" onClick="onlyone(this)"> Checkbox Two
<BR>
<INPUT TYPE="checkbox" NAME="ckb" onClick="onlyone(this)"> Checkbox Three
<BR>
Check All<INPUT TYPE="radio" NAME="chka" VALUE="Check All"
onClick="checkall(this.form,this)">
Uncheck All<INPUT TYPE="radio" NAME="chka" VALUE="Uncheck All"
onClick="checkall(this.form,this)">
</FORM>
</CENTER>
</body>
</html>
{See also
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/letters/199.html – Ed.]
News Goodies
Red Hat Goes on the Offensive Against SCO
[August 4, 2003] UPDATE: CEO Matthew Szulik tells SCO Group to prove
what he calls ‘unsubstantiated’ claims and pledges $1 million in
a new fund to aid non-profits fight.
Click
here to read the article
Intel Offers Mobile Phone, PDA Kits
[August 4, 2003] The chipmaker looks to score a coup for its XScale PXA255
processor starting with its VTune analyzer and its C++ Compiler for
Microsoft.
Click
here to read the article
Nvidia Goes Mobile with MediaQ Acquisition
[August 4, 2003] The graphics chip specialist speeds up its entry into the
wireless expansion with a $70 million all-cash transaction.
Click here to read the article
AOL Dumps Monster for Careerbuilder.com
[August 4, 2003] Four-year deal to be AOL’s principle provider of employment
content valued at up to $115 million. AOL cuts separate deal with EA for
access to game site.
Click here to read the article
Mimail Worm Hits Companies Already on High Alert
[August 4, 2003] As U.S. workers opened their email Monday morning, they
unleashed a new mass-mailing worm. Mimail, which temporarily shut down
several government agencies last Friday, has raised concerns in an industry
already on high alert for a coming large-scale hacker attack.
Click here to read the article
Gateway Broadens Product Line
[August 4, 2003] The company unleashes its Gateway 995 server (nicknamed the
‘4 x 4’) aimed at enterprise-class customers needing lots of performance in
a minimal space.
Click here to read the article
IT Departments Deal with SEC Code of Conduct Requirements
[August 4, 2003] Shortly after Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of
2002, mandating companies hold senior financial officers to a code of
conduct, the SEC revised its listing standards to require public companies
to create and distribute a code of conduct to all employees.
Click here to read the article
Next PC Cycle Helping Boost Chip Sales
[August 4, 2003] The Semiconductor Industry Association’s latest figures
show a ‘broad-based’ upswing especially in the computation, global consumer
and communications sectors.
Click here to read the article
Attorneys: SCO v. IBM Remains Murky
[August 1, 2003] As Linux aficionados descend upon San
Francisco, legal experts are divided over whether enterprise
Linux users are protected from copyright lawsuits by SCO;
and only one thing remains clear: IBM’s original Unix
licensing terms with AT&T are complicated at best.
Click here to read the article
Is VeriSign Liable for Loss of Sex?
[August 1, 2003] An appeals court has ruled that domain names confer
the same sort of property rights as more tangible property, giving the
original owner of the Sex.com domain name the power to sue VeriSign for
improperly turning his domain name over to a convicted felon.
Click here to read the article
Every week a site selected each week for review. Each week,
reviews of the previous week’s selected site are chosen for
publication on the HTML Goodies website.
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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 will help us sort out
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Please don’t send your questions to this address.
They should be sent to our mentors: see
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/
Many thanks to all who are sending in their calendar
implementations. (See last week’s newsletter — it can be
found at https://www.htmlgoodies.com/letters/243.html — just
in case you missed it.) I am still taking submissions, so if
you haven’t sent in yours yet, there’s still time! I will be
publishing a few in the near future.
Thanks again for all your feedback!
Windows Tech Goodie of the Week:
Presenting Hierarchical Data in ASP.NET
http://www.asp101.com/articles/jayram/hierarchical/default.asp
ASP.NET comes with very powerful, template-based, iterative
web server controls. There are cases where data needs to
be presented in more complex/hierarchical format than the
simple tabular format these controls provide. This article
focuses on simple techniques/tricks to present the data in
this type of hierarchical format using existing controls.
.
Top
And Remember This . . .
On this day in…
1753
Washington becomes Master Mason
A twenty-one year old George Washington, then a planter in
Virginia, was made a Master Mason on this day in 1753 at the
Masonic Lodge No. 4 in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Freemasonry
is "a system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated
with symbols." Frequently called a secret society, it
actually keeps no secrets other than the means by which
Freemasons can identify each other and recognize a fellow
mason apart from a non-mason. Freemasonry traces its roots
back to the construction of King Solomon’s Temple in
biblical times. The original masons were the stone masons
involved in that construction. The society opened its doors
to those who were not actual stone masons following the
decline of the cathedral building era in the middle ages.
The first American Mason lodge was established in
Philadelphia in 1730, and future revolutionary leader
Benjamin Franklin was a founding member.
By the way – my Grand Mother is eighty — Ed.
Today was also the day that: in 1693, Dom Perrignon
invents Champagne; 1790, the US Coast Guard was
founded (as the Revenue Cutter Service); 1830 the
plans were laid out for the City of Chicago; 1916 US
agrees to buy the Virgin Islands (some of them) from Denmark
for $25 Million; 1944 Ann Frank was arrested by the
Nazis; 1967 British pirate radio station 355 goes off
the air; 1970 Jim Morrisson was arrested for
drunkenness; 1990 European Community proposes a
boycott of Iraq;
Born today were: in 1755, inventor of the pencil,
Nicolas-Jaque Conte; 1792, poet Percy Shelley;
1901, jazz misician Louis Armstrong; 1900
Elizabeth, UK’s Queen Mother; 1955, actor Billy Bob
Thornton; 1965, actress Crystal Chappell (Days of Our
Lives)
Thanks for reading Goodies to Go!