Goodies to Go ™
June 30, 2003–Newsletter #239
This newsletter is part of the internet.com network.
http://www.internet.com
Featured this week:
* Goodies Thoughts – Do You Want To "Do
It Ebay"?
* Q & A Goodies
* News Goodies
* Goodies Peer Reviews
* Feedback Goodies
* And Remember This…
Goodies Announcement
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or working with cookies behind the scenes. Throughout the book, readers enjoy
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Goodies Thoughts – Do You Want To "Do It
Ebay"?
Thousands of people turned up in Orlando, Florida this past week. Of course
there were those who went there for Disney World or Universal Studios or some
combination of these and the many other theme parks in the Orlando area, but
they weren’t the ones that caught the attention of Web hounds such as ourselves.
The people we noticed were those who turned up for Ebay Live at the Orange
County Convention Center in Orlando.
One of the first things I noticed about the throngs arriving was the demographic
of the crowd. For the most part, they were aged between ten and a hundred, they
came in every size, shape and color that humans do, they spoke a whole bunch of
different languages, with one in common – they all spoke "web" and they all
could say "Ebay!"
I have bought things off Ebay myself, including almost as diverse a collection
of items as the crowd represented. I have bought software, an air conditioner
vacuum pump, an antique (?) coffee pot, tools, books, seeds and of course,
electronics. If I add up the money I have spent and multiply it by the 80
million or so subscribers Ebay boasts, then I start to see why the sellers are
such a happy bunch! Not to mention the joy of the folks at Ebay themselves!
This is a truly remarkable phenomenon. All these people have in one way or
another found a true home on the World Wide Web. Some are there to sell a few
things in the Grand-Daddy of all Garage Sales; others are there to make a
living. Some are buyers, like me, who are sell-curious. Speaking with a few of
the "PowerSeller" types – those who achieve and maintain minimum monthly sales
and positive feedback requirements – shows that there are plenty of those who
run substantial businesses through their "Ebay Stores", requiring a staff to
keep things flowing! This kind of selling power, homed on the Web, should not be
ignored. In truth, I have been little more than a casual visitor and occasional
buyer in the past, so I decided to investigate a little further and see what it
takes to open up a store.
I had envisioned writing a step by step instruction piece and comparing it to
the task of building your own storefront on a website. What I found was that the
Ebay Store was so simple to set up, with the instructions I envisioned already
available, even in a video presentation (on the Web, of course) that there was
nothing left for me to write. You could build your Ebay store from scratch to
live in a couple of hours. I doubt that could be accomplished with traditional
coding techniques! I found the instructions at http://pages.ebay.com/sell/guide.html
— there’s a huge amount of information centered on that page, and it makes
pretty interesting reading.
Don’t get me wrong though — I still think there are excellent reasons for
building comprehensive, custom websites for the purpose of selling things. Not
the least of these is that there are plenty of products that require a lot of
background and supplemental information to assist the buyer in making a decision
about both the product and the seller. Ebay does, however, offer a simple and
effective solution for those who have a "well known" product to sell, or who
perhaps use another site to promote themselves and their product and then refer
the buyer to their Ebay store to close the deal on the Web. On the other hand,
some of those PowerSellers say that their Ebay store is all they need — and
they have the business to prove it!
If you’re one of those who would like to start selling things on the web right
now, but whose HTML skills are still in their developmental stages, Ebay might
be an excellent option for you to consider. From my perspective, the more
business and people’s income becomes Web based, the more I like it! I do believe
I will try my hand with an Ebay store.
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 would like to make a template that I could use all the time and just
modify colors and stuff. Can you help me out? Is there a site I can visit to
learn how to do it?
A. It sounds like you need to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS
allows you to format your entire page/website using a "template" page. You make
changes to this one page and it affects the entire site. This is where you want
to start:
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/design/css-html-text-color/
Q. I am setting up a training sub web for our company Intranet and want
to include an interactive calendar that staff can select a date from to include
on a course booking form. Ideally I am looking for a drop down version of
calendar similar to what you get in MS Outlook. I am sure that I have seen
similar calendars on web sites before but can’t for the life of me remember
which ones
A. I use Outlook Express and it does not have a calendar so I am not 100%
sure what you are looking for. But if it is a calendar you want to include in a
form that allows the user to click instead of type a date into the form field
take a look at the following links:
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex6/popcalendar.htm
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex6/popcalendar2.htm
Q. I’d like to make an intro index.htm page that fades out and into the
next index1.htm to open the site. I tried the meta refresh, but it’s too cold
and sterile, so I thought a page that would fade out gently and let the next
page ease in, would give it the dramatic look I want. How do I go about
constructing such a page?
A. Maybe something like this script will do the job.
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex3/wipesplash.htm
News Goodies
Intel Debuts New Itanium, Xeon Chips
[June 30, 2003] The chip giant gets back to the tick, tick, tick of its
development, production and sales cycle with its next-generation
releases code-named Madison and Gallatin respectively.
Click
here to read the article
HP Greets Madison Chips with Revamped Integrity Line
[June 30, 2003] The leader in selling Itanium-based servers, HP embeds the
chips across its Integrity line to meet customer demand.
Click
here to read the article
Linux Vendors Leap Onto Madison Bandwagon
[June 30, 2003] SGI, Dell, and Red Hat join the fray with Itanium 2
customer and product announcements now that the 64-bit Madison processor has
been officially released today.
Click here to read the article
Unisys Bows Madison-ized "Dylan" Family
[June 30, 2003] Blue Bell, Pa.-based computer company follows up on the
ES7000 500 Dylan series with a new 400 series based on the new Itanium 2
processor.
Click here to read the article
Curtains for Windows NT 4.0 Support
[June 30, 2003] The venerable operating system reaches the end of its
support life-cycle, though Windows NT 4.0 Server still has some borrowed
time.
Click here to read the article
Feinstein Seeks Hacker Notification Law
[June 30, 2003] New bill would require consumers be notified when a
database breach occurs and personal data has been compromised.
Click here to read the article
AMD Unveils New Opterons in White Boxes
[June 30, 2003] The chipmaker launches a ‘Validated Server Program’ with
Toronto-based Celestica as the launching pad for its 800 and 100 series
server chips.
Click here to read the article
McDATA Looms Large in Storage Switch Space
[June 30, 2003] McDATA may be giving competitors Brocade and Cisco fits in
the storage switch space, according to recent analyst reports.
Click here to read the article
Google Toolbar ‘BlogThis’ Rankles Rivals
[June 27, 2003] The search technology darling releases a beta of Google
Toolbar 2.0 with a ‘BlogThis’ button for Blogger users only. But, competing
blog software vendors want inclusion.
Click here to read the article
FTC Forces Rebate Site to Pay Up
[June 26, 2003] Court settlement orders net retailer to pay
$600,000 to make good on charges of fraudulent rebates.
Click here to read the article
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And Remember This . . .
On this day in…
1971 Cosmonauts Die in Reentry Disaster
On this day in 1971 Soviet cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolsky,
Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev lost their lives as
they started the reentry procedures in their spacecraft
Soyuz 11. They had launched on June 6 and docked with the
spacestation Salyut 1, which was sent to orbit up the
preceding April. After spending 23 days aboard the space
station, they were on their way back when a valve opened as
they blew explosive bolts to seperate the reentry capsule
from the remainder of the craft. The capsule started to
rapidly depressurize. Patseyev tried unsuccesfully to close
the valve by hand. The three died within minutes. The
Soviets sent nobody into space for the next two years, and
never sent anybody back to Salyut 1.
Born today were: in 1917, singer Lena Horne; 1919,
actress Susan Hayward; 1927, tennis champion Shirley
Fry; 1943, singer Florence Ballard (The Supremes);
1966, boxer Mike Tyson;
Thanks for reading Goodies to Go!