Goodies to Go ™
May 3, 2004–Newsletter #283
This newsletter is part of the internet.com network.
http://www.internet.com
Featured this week:
* Goodies Thoughts – Automatic
Updates
* Q & A Goodies
* News Goodies
* Goodies Peer Reviews
* Feedback Goodies
* Windows Tech Goodies
* And Remember This…
Goodies Announcement
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 – Automatic Updates
We all have to work constantly to have a hope of keeping our
systems secure. The moment you think you have a secure system, you haven’t. The
process of securing a system includes a constant monitoring for discovered
security holes and vulnerabilities. The objective, of course, is to find out
about the newly unearthed flaw, obtain a patch and implement it before any
maliciously minded individual discovers your unpatched system.
Those who are in the best position to discover flaws and holes in an operating
system are those who know it best; namely, its authors. There are mechanisms for
security conscious system administrators to notify each other of holes,
including NTBugTraq. Details of NTBugTraq can be found at
www.ntbugtraq.com. As the
author of the Windows family of operating systems, Microsoft, among other
things, keeps a close eye on NTBugtraq. It is only the team at Microsoft who are
in the position to create patches for these holes, since only they have all the
operating system source code. It is therefore they who are in the best position
to notify you when both a vulnerability is identified and its patch is
available. To this end, Microsoft came up with Windows Automatic Updates.
Automatic Updates can be found in the control panel in Windows 2000 and as a tab
of System Properties in XP and 2003. There are four options available. It can be
turned off, which is probably only really a reasonable option on a machine that
is never connected to the Internet. When on, it can be set to notify you before
downloading updates, to notify after downloading updates or to simply download
updates and install them on a specified schedule.
The use of Windows Automatic Update to notify you of security patches is an
excellent mechanism. My personal preference is to have automatic updates turned
on and have them downloaded ready for me to apply. I also like to monitor for
updates by subscribing to Microsoft’s Product Security Notification Service (see
http://register.microsoft.com/regsys/pic.asp). I believe that the best time
to apply a patch is now or sooner — later is just not a good idea.
As the number of threats increases all the time, it is becoming more and more
critical that hotfixes be applied in a timely manner. The same holds true for
service packs. It can be a risky business to allow time to go by before patching
your system. Remember that the maliciously intended also subscribe to the
NTBugTraq and MS Notification services. To them, these services provide a list
of new things to look for and try. If your system is already patched when they
come looking, they’ll just have to move on to the next one.
Keep vigilant and stay safe (at least, safer!!)
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 making a web page and for the menu I’m using a (menu.js) file to
be included into the page through javascript. However, this is not
working. I don’t know why because I’ve got it to work before. I’ve tested it on
geocities.com and also offline on my web browser.
(Another question, could the include file be in the form menu.txt or must it be
.js?)
Here’s the code:———-
menu.js
————
document.write("<ol>
<li><a href="i.intro.html">Introduction</a></li>
<li>Functions of the Nervous System</li>
<li>Components of the Nervous System</li>
<li>Comparison Between Humans and Other Organisms</li>
<li>Diseases that Affect the Nervous System</li>
<li>Interaction of the Nervous System with Other Body Systems</li>
<li>Conclusion</li>
<li>Bibliography</li>
<li>Glossary</li></ol>
<h2>Links According to Component</h2>
<ol><li>Neurons</li>
<li>Central Nervous System</li>
<li>Peripheral NervousSystem</li>
<li>Senses</li>
<ul><li>Sight</li><li>Hearing</li>
<li>Smell</li><li>Taste</li>
<li>Touch</li></ul></ol>");
————
i.intro.html
————
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta name="author" content="Jeffrey Bridgman">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;
charset=shift_jis"<meta http-equiv="content-style-type"
content="text/css"<meta name="robots" content="none"<link
href="bio.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"<title>The Nervous
System</title</head>
<body>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"
src="include/menu.js"></script>
<p class="bnav">< Home | Next ></p>
</body>
</html>
A. I believe the problem is with the link you have in the document.write()
statement. You cannot have double quotes within double quotes. Change those to
single quotes and see if that works. Like this:
<a href=’i.intro.html’>
Q. I was curious about shopping carts and wondering what type programming
was need to created these.
A. Shopping carts are written in different languages and use different
technologies. You server type will determine what you can use and cannot use. I
use Active Server Pages(ASP) and for that I need to host on a Windows server. A
UNIX server will support PERL and PHP. There are JavaScript carts but I have
never used them. The shopping cart features will tell you if it updates the
product amount.
Q. I found a script that disallows the right clicking to "view source"
which is great.. however is there another code that disallows the ability to
click on the "Source" option under the View Toolbar?
A. There is no way to stop them from viewing the source using the "view
source" option.
Q. My site uses 3 frames, heading, links and the third is the body, which
is the only thing that changes as you move through different parts of the site.
I’m using css for fonts, colors and background images on the site. I would like
to use a watermark logo, but I do not want to show it in the heading or links
frames, only the body. Is there some way to override the background image in the
css file in my heading and links frame so it remains as just a white background?
A. Put a class="withbg" in the body tag of your BODY.
Put the background declaration in body.withbg {background-image….}
Q. When clicking on a selection, it opens the new page in a new window.
How do I get the script to open the page in the same window?
A. If you remove the target="_blank" in each link it will open the
document in the same page.
News Goodies
Sasser Worm Reined But Variants Sprout
[May 3, 2004] Experts continue to stress the importance of
applying Microsoft’s MS04-011 patch.
Click
here to read the article
Universal Biz Language Ready for Web Services
[May 3, 2004] Designed to facilitate e-commerce worldwide, the Universal
Business Language draft is unveiled to the public.
Click here to read the article
PayPal, The Fifth Credit Card?
[May 3, 2004] Not quite. But the popular online payment company’s new Web
services platform adds more detail to credit card purchases online.
Click
here to read the article
Hardware Players Get First Shot at Longhorn
[April 30, 2004] Service Pack 2, Web services, Avalon graphics
drivers, WSDAPI and Windows Media DRM are all expected to star
at a Microsoft conference next week.
Click here to read the article
Big Blue Aiming ‘Stinger’ at Oracle, Microsoft
[May 3, 2004] IBM touts its latest DB2 database as an
improvement over capabilities in Oracle 10g and Microsoft
SQL Server.
Click here to read the article
Ready For VoIP? Think and Think Again
[May 3, 2004] FEATURE: Sure, switching to lower-cost voice over IP sounds
good. But there are pitfalls to look out for as you expand your IP network.
Click here to read the article
California Crackdown on RFID
[April 30, 2004] A bill setting privacy standards for the tiny transponders
has cleared the Senate.
Click here to read the article
Lawmakers Vow Tough Spyware Laws
[April 30, 2004] Commerce chairman says consumers are ‘outraged’ and
promises legislative action by end of year.
Click here to read the article
Wal-Mart RFID Tests Underway
[April 30, 2004] The retail world is taking notes on the retail giant’s
first foray into ‘case and pallet’ level wireless tagging.
Click here to read the article
Barnes & Noble.com Fined for Customer Data Leak
[April 30, 2004] The online bookseller settles with the New York AG’s office
and plans to establish an IT security program to protect sensitive customer
information.
Click here to read the article
Every week a site is selected for review. Each week,
reviews of the previous week’s selected site are chosen for
publication on the HTML Goodies website.
The current week’s selected site is published in Goodies To
Go and in the Peer Reviews section of the website.
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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 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.
Please don’t send your questions to this address.
They should be sent to our mentors: see
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/
For those who are missing Peer reviews: we are once again
revising the Peer review program in the hopes of creating a
workable solution. The current plan is to move the new Peer
Review pages into place in the new year. All those who have
been selected for reviews in the past will be featured in
the new pages. The new method will make it much easier for
your peers to provide feedback and much easier for us to
handle the publication side of things. "Watch this space!"
It’s coming soon!!
In last week’s newsletter’s "On This Day In…" I wrote
about the Chernobyl disaster. Nanette Jones wrote to me to
let me know of a site written by a lady who rides her
motorbike into the nuclear "Dead Zone". The link you sent me
was expired, Nanette, but I thank you for sending it — it
inspired me to do some research & I found the link to her
new site. I am including it here because it is a truly
fascinating look at the disaster. I highly recommend that
you all check it out!
http://www.kiddofspeed.com/
Thanks again for all your feedback!
Top
Windows Tech Goodie of the Week:
Paged Database Search ASP.NET Sample Code
http://www.asp101.com/samples/db_paged_search_aspx.asp
Here’s a version of our paged database search script
implemented in ASP.NET. It takes some text input from a
user, queries a database for records that match the entered
text, and displays the results in a datagrid that the user
can page through.
Top
And Remember This . . .
On this day in…
1952 Fletcher Lands On North Pole
Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher and Lieutenant Colonel William
P. Benedict landed their US Air Force C-47 ski-equipped plane on the
North Pole on this date in 1952. Fletcher walked to the exact
geographic North Pole, becoming the first person ever to stand
there. Earlier attempts by Robert Peary and Dr. Frederick Cook had
missed the mark, with Peary coming the closest and missing by a mere
30 miles. Peary Cook each claimed to have reached the mark, and each
disputed the other’s claim. Later studies indicated that both
actually missed. Accompanying Fletcher was Dr. Albert P. Cary who
later stood on the South Pole, becoming the first person to have
stood on both.
Today was also the day that in: 1494 Christopher Columbus
discovered Jamaica and named it "St. Lago"; 1802 Washington
DC was incorporated as a city; 1851 San Francisco was mostly
destroyed by fire; 1901 Fire destroyed 1,700 buildings in
Jacksonville Florida; 1936 New York Yankee baseball player
Joe DiMaggio made his major-league debut; 1947 Japan formed a
constitutional democracy; 1963 Martin Luther King Jr.
delivered his "I have a dream" speech; 1971 Nation Public
Radio began broadcasting (in the US); 1971 the Nixon
administration arrested 13,000 anti-war protesters in 3 days;
1973 the (then) tallest building in the world, the Sear’s Tower
in Chicago (443 meters), was completed; 1982 President Reagan
began his 5 minute weekly radio broadcasts; 1987 the Miami
Herald reported that a woman spent Friday & Saturday with senator
Gary Hart; 1988 4,200Kilograms of Columbian cocaine was
seized in Tarpon Springs, Florida; 1997 Garry Kasparov began
his chess match with the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue;
Born today were: in 1844 English opera impresario Richard
D’Oyly Carte; 1874 Corsican perfume maker Francois Coty;
1898 4th Israeli Prime Minister (1969-74) Golda Meir; 1903
singer/actor Bing Crosby; 1906 actress Mary Astor; 1919
folk singer Pete Seeger; 1920 champion boxer Sugar Ray
Robinson (Walter Smith); 1922 ballet dancer Marina Svetlova;
1936 singer Englebert Humperdinck (Arnold George Dorsey);
1937 singer Frankie Valli; 1939 English actress Samantha
Eggar; 1950 Welsh singer Mary Hopkins; 1955 English
musician Steve Jones (Sex Pistols);
Thanks for reading Goodies to Go!