Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Goodies to Go ™
November 10, 2003– Newsletter #258


Goodies to Go ™
November 10, 2003–Newsletter #258

This newsletter is part of the internet.com network.
http://www.internet.com
 


Featured this week:

* Goodies Thoughts – Color My World
* 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 – Color My World


It’s back to basics time again this week! I have been asked my
opinion more than once recently concerning color on websites. It’s a good
question to ask me if you really want an answer because my opinions in this
regard are quite strongly held! I am not a visual artist and am therefore not in
the best position to advise on the subtler nuances of color mixes, but I do know
what I like and more especially, I know what I do not like!

Just as a quick aside, I have found in the past that when I need some graphics
to put on a website and I pull up one of my graphics programs and dig in to make
them, the result, on a scale of one to a hundred, is about a five when compared
to the result (about a ninety-five) that I get if I hand the task to an artist
and ask them to create graphics for me. The wisdom of age has taught me not to
have a dog and bark myself. When it comes to graphic art, a graphic artist is my
best friend!

First, there’s the background. The clue here is the word itself. A nice bright
red is not the background of anything! Bright colors are right in your face.
Whatever you put on top of them is going to have to compete for attention and
will frequently lose. If you actually want it to be seen, put it on a
"background", such as white or a very pale pastel. White is good. It is
unobtrusive and allows everything you put on the page to be itself. Very pale
pastels can create a mood without overpowering your content. Use them
judiciously though, because they can interfere with some pictures or graphics.
Tiled images, textured backgrounds and the like are generally considered out of
fashion, which is a pretty good thing. Such things seldom enhance a web page and
usually only serve to distract.

There’s a use of color that I call "fill" coloring. This is where a page is
arranged such that the content is provided in an area with a white background
and areas surrounding the content space are colored. Businesses frequently use a
color associated with their logo for this purpose. Check out the "Microsoft
blue" on http://www.microsoft.com or the pastel yellow on
http://www.linuxplanet.com
for examples. This mechanism provides some color to brighten up the page without
taking away from the content. Remember to use only relatively subdued colors.

Colored text can be a real problem. If you’re going to set a color for text,
make it an "almost black" color. Luminous green is an absurd color for text!
Somebody actually sent me an email with that as their text color. I can’t tell
you who it was, or what they were saying. I didn’t have time to read any of the
words before the email was deleted — my eyes ordered my finger to click delete
without engaging my brain in the process.

Color belongs in pictures and graphics. If you don’t have an artist around,
there’s always http://www.clipart.com  The trick once again, is not to overdo it.
An image here or there can go a long way to enhance the message — a picture is
worth a thousand words, after all. Too many graphics and the message is lost
again. Who wants to listen to ten thousand words about anything!

When it comes to color, a little is great; more is not always better. Everybody
likes to look at things in the sunshine, but nobody wants to stare at the sun.

 


Thanks for Reading!
 



– Vince Barnes


 

Top

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 am trying to set up a clock that will count down from 72 hours
: minutes : seconds over and over again. Can you tell me how I might do that?

A. Joe Burns’ book "Javascript Goodies" referred to a count down script
on the web site. Its still on the server here:

http://htmlgoodies.earthweb.com/JSBook/countdn.html

It only counts minutes and seconds, but with a little tweaking it could be set
to do what it appears you want it to do.

Q. How do I lose the blue line that appears round an image when I make it
a link?

A. In the IMG SRC tag add this:
border="0"

Q. Is there any way to place text on top of pictures?

A. Here is the link to see how that’s done:

https://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/textonimages.html

Q. I am constantly creating files (pdf or word) files that I need to show
to many co-workers. Instead of having to email everyone everytime I finish a
file, I would like to upload the file to my server and have them view the list
of files online and download the ones they want. These files need to be password
protected as different people in different departments should only see files
pertaining to them. Here was my idea, create a bunch of password protected
folders on a server – one for each department, and I will upload the file to any
folder that should be allowed to view these files. Two questions: 1) I put the
files in a folder, but when I try to view the folder in a browser it tells me I
don’t have permission to access this folder (I assume because I never created an
index file). How can I set it up that I should be able to view a list of files
that are in the folder? 2) how can I create a page that will allow me to upload
files to folders using a browser?

A. I believe you are correct in that you do not have an INDEX file for
the server to show when you try to access the folder. You could create an INDEX
file with the links to the documents for downloading. I am assuming that you
have already password protected the folder? An even easier way would be to use a
password log in feature for your pages. The application would allow users to
sign up themselves and you would control which group the user should be in and
only the documents or files you allow each group or person to view. There is a
nice web application called ASPLogin. It has to run on a server that supports
ASP. For example, to make a document available to all users in a group called
‘management’, members of a group called ‘administrators’ and a user called ‘fred’
(who may or may not be in either of the groups), you would add the following
code to the top of the document:
<%@ LANGUAGE=VBScript %>
<%
Set asplObj=Server.CreateObject("ASPL.Login")
asplObj.Group("management")
asplObj.Group("administrators")
asplObj.User("Fred")
asplObj.Protect
Set asplObj=Nothing
%>
Any other group or person trying to see that document will not be allowed to see
it. It is a pretty slick application You can take a look here: http://www.asplogin.com
To create a page to allow you to upload documents would call for some scripting.
This all depends on what type of server you site is hosted on. If it is a
Windows server then it will support Active Server Pages (ASP).

Q. Is there was a way to position a background image in the center of a
page regardless of screen resolution?

A. This code will position the image in the center:
body {
background-image : url(image.jpg);
background-position : center center;
background-repeat : no-repeat;
}

To position in the center of a table, try using this (be sure to replace __ with
the height and width of the image):
<body>
<table height="100%" width="100%">
<tr><td valign="center" align="center">
<table height="__" width="__" background="image.jpg">
Any text on the background
</table>
</td></tr>
</table>
</body>

 

 

Top

News Goodies


IBM Embraces Itanium 2 With xSeries 455 Server
[November 10, 2003] In a move designed to address the market
for enterprises running transaction-intensive applications, IBM
today announced, some say reluctantly, the eServer xSeries 455.

Click
here to read the article


 

 

Motorola Makes Ultra-Wideband Play
[November 10, 2003] Company acquiring UWB pioneer XtremeSpectrum in hopes of
embedding technology in consumer products by end of year.

Click here to read the article

 



 

Virtualization Comes to the Fore… Again
[November 10, 2003] UPDATE: VMware delivers new virtualization software for
Intel servers that is tailored for on-demand environs; Microsoft releases
its virtual PC technology to manufacturing.

Click here to read the article

 

 

Microsoft Floors the Pedal For Sales Force
[November 10, 2003] With its new Office Accelerator for Proposals, the
Redmond, Wash., company hopes Microsoft Word-based solutions will score with
customers and translate into winning sales pitches.

Click here to read the article

 

 

Open-Source Portlet Site Opens For Business
[November 10, 2003] A consortium of four companies — Sun, BEA, Documentum
and Plumtree — is sponsoring a community at SourceForge to take advantage
of the new Java and OASIS portlet standards.

Click here to read the article

 

 

Actuate Boosts Business Intelligence Software
[November 10, 2003] Actuate looks to help companies become
more intuitive about their affairs adding centralized
business intelligence awareness and a new service.

Click here to read the article

 

 



The Push For Aspect-Oriented Programming
[November 7, 2003] FEATURE: Eight years in the making, the left/right
programming technology still has a ways to go before it’s ready for prime
time with top/down programmers.

Click here to read the article

 

Intel Purchases Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Developer
[November 7, 2003] The chip making giant acquires Oregon-based Mobilian,
which was working on a convergence chipset dubbed ‘TrueRadio’.

Click
here to read the article

 

 



Penn State Gets ‘Napsterized’
[November 7, 2003] New arrangement will allow students to stream,
download tunes.

Click here to read the article

 

 

High Rollers Converging On cdXpo
[November 7, 2003] Jupitermedia preps for its Vegas bash with keynotes from
IBM, HP, Cisco, PeopleSoft and SCO Group CEO Darl McBride.

Click here to read the article

 

 

 

 

Top


Goodies Peer Reviews


 

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. 
Current contact email addresses for submitting your site and
for submitting reviews are published in Goodies To Go.

If you would like to have your site reviewed, sign up for
the Goodies To Go newsletter in the Navigation Bar on the
left side of this page. 

For full details about this program, see

https://www.htmlgoodies.com/peerreviews

 

 

 

Top

Feedback
Goodies


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/

I expect to get some feedback when I touch on a topic like
last week’s copyright discussion but I didn’t think I’d get
quite as much agreement as I did. Thanks for that! There
were some concerns, however. Most were about free music. All
I can say there is that an artist has the option to provide
their stuff for free if they wish, but when they have made
arrangements with production companies and others to make
their living through its sale, it’s not right for us to try
to steal it away. As far as software piracy is concerned,
there seems to have been some confusion as to what I was
saying is copyrighted material. There is an abundance of
software that is available with or without payment. In
layman’s terms, it is copyrighted if the author has claimed
the copyright. It is public domain if they have made it so.
A legal expert could give a more exact definition for you. A
little piece of JavaScript that somebody writes may or may
not be copyrighted and you may or may not open yourself up
to liability if you copy it. When in doubt, consult your
legal counsel, not me! Piracy, in this context, is the act
of deliberately circumventing an author’s licensing and/or
remuneration mechanisms in order to use their copyrighted
and/or patented material without their consent. I wouldn’t
want other people stealing my stuff, so I don’t think I
should steal theirs.

(This message is repeated from last week — just in case you
missed it!) For those who are missing Peer reviews: we are
once again revising the Peer review program in the hopes of
creating a workable solution. 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!!
 

Thanks again for all your feedback!
 

Top


 


Windows Tech Goodie of the Week:

Color Chooser ASP.NET Sample


http://www.asp101.com/samples/color_chooser_aspx.asp

Sometimes it’s useful to be able to see the choices when you
need to make a color selection. Here’s an ASP.NET version of
our simple script that displays the 216-color web-safe
palette and lets you pick one with the click of a button.
 

 

*** And ***
 


From the Trenches at PDC


http://www.15seconds.com/issue/031028.htm

.NET development expert Scott Bellware stares Longhorn right
in the eyes and gains insight into the future of
Windows-based applications. From the UI layer to the file
system, Longhorn is a whole new, and potentially
friendlier, beast.

 

 

 

Top
And Remember This . . .

On this day in…

1975 Edmund Fitzgerald Sank in Lake Superior

It’s a lake, but it’s big and can be treacherous. Lake Superior, the
largest of the Great Lakes, took the SS Edmund Fitzgerald on this
day in 1975. Built in 1958 the Emdund Fitzgerald was at the time the
largest ship on the Great Lakes. It was 729 feet long and now lies
in two pieces below 530 feet of water. Loaded down with more than
26,000 tons of iron ore, the ship was caught in a storm with 60mph
winds. Trying to head North for Whitefish Bay, the ship was blinded
when its radar system failed and the storm cut off the power to the
Whitefish Bay radio beacon. Captain Ernest McSorley kept radio
contact with the SS Anderson, reporting that his ship was taking on
water in dangerous quantities. A little after 7pm on that day, the
radio fell silent. All 29 crew members were lost. Superior is larger
than all the other Great Lakes combined, stretching approximately
350 miles from west to east, and 160 miles north to south, and is
1,332 feet deep at its deepest point.

Today was also the day that: in 1674 the Dutch formally ceded
New Netherlands (New York) to the English; 1770 Voltaire said
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.";
1775
US Congress establishes the Marine Corps; 1801
Dueling was outlawed in Kentucky; On finally locating the Scottish
Missionary in Ujiji, Central Africa, New York Herald foreign
correspondent Henry M. Stanley said, "Dr. Livingston, I presume.";
1918
Josef Pilsudski proclaimed Poland’s Independence; 1928
Hirohito became Emperor of Japan; 1951 the first long
distance phone call wothout operator assistance was made; 1960
US Senate passed the Civil Rights Bill; 1969 "Sesame Street
premiered on PBS TV; 1989 Germans begin to make holes in the
Berlin Wall;

Born today were: in 1483 Protestantism founder Martin Luther;
1683 King George II of England; 1759 German poet
Fredrich von Schiller (Ode to Joy); 1880 sculptor Sir Jacob
Epstein; 1895 aircraft designer John Knudsen Northrop;
1916
orchestra leader Billy May; 1925 Welsh actor Richard
Burton; 1935 actor Roy Scheider; 1948 guitarist Greg
Lake; 1956 comedian Sinbad;
 

 




Thanks for reading Goodies to Go!


 



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