Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Goodies to Go ™
September 27, 2004– Newsletter #304


Goodies to Go ™
September 27, 2004–Newsletter #304

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


Featured this week:

* Goodies Thoughts Better Late
Than Never
* 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 – Better Late Than Never


… that’s what I say! I apologize for the late arrival of this
week’s newsletter – I have once again been in the turmoil produced by hurricanes
passing over my head — the third in six weeks! I know that’s not too
interesting for those of you who don’t have to live through these things, so I
have no intention of harping on the subject any further, except to say that my
family and I are still fine, and that events like this cause me to reflect on a
few things and come up with these few observations.

It’s great to have a generator to provide stand-by power to a data center — it
would be even greater if it provided enough power to keep the air conditioning
going so that expensive pieces of equipment wouldn’t overheat! It would also be
great if the generator itself didn’t rely on movable louvers for its own
ventilation — when the wind is strong enough to hold them closed, it too will
fail!

Electricity is the most under-appreciated of modern conveniences.

Gas (petrol) comes next, then ice, then drinkable water.

I wish people were as friendly all the time as they are after adversity has just
been beating the you-know-what out of them!

Possibly the most useful thing I ever wrote in this newsletter can be found
right here: https://www.htmlgoodies.com/letters/262.html

No matter how hard you work to eliminate that omnipresent "singe point of
failure", you won’t accomplish it because of Murphy’s law — the best you can
hope for is a relatively painless recovery.

Based on comparison of the diligence of technicians to the response of clients,
it’s clear that every good deed deserves criticism.

And as a final observation, no matter how hard one tries to set aside the
effects of events, and not bore people with the repetitive details, it just
seems to occupy so much of one’s time that it’s all that comes out. Sorry! To
make up for it, however, I am working on something for next week which I think
will be of great interest to you.
 

 


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 fairly new to website design and need to design a site in
FrontPage 2002 to sell a book. The book will be sent as an e-mail attachment
after customer has paid through our merchant account. The order form when the
website is set up will go through to our bank merchant account on a secure
server and the e-mail should be automatically attached. Could you direct me to a
tutorial somewhere that gives me information on how to do this?

A. The space codes in the problem area are not followed by a semicolon,
whereas the spaces in the areas that are working have the required semicolon —
" ". Add the missing semicolons and you’ll get spaces instead of code.

Q. II am just curious as to how some web pages get that small icon to the
left of the URL in the Address window when you visit their site. If someone know
how that’s done I sure would like to know.

A. That is called a Favicon and you can find out more about it here:
http://www.favicon.com

Q. How do you set up a forum?

A. Instead of creating one from scratch, you should look into the many
free forums available on the web. If your server supports Active Server Pages go
to http://www.aspin.com and
do a search for "forums". If your server supports PHP, go to
http://www.code4u.com and
choose a site to visit from there.

Q. I am looking for JavaScript help in order to pre-select a option in a
select field inside a form. I am using server-side scripting (PHP) in order to
provide the selected value.

A. You could use PHP to create your option tag and select the option you
want that way. I have a small Help Desk application written in PHP that I have
set up dropdowns to select the date. I have them default to the current date.
Here is an example of the dropdown for the
month:
<select name="beg_req_month">
<?php
for($i=1;$i<=12;$i++)
{
if($i==$prob_month)
{print "<option value=’" . $i . "’ selected>" . $i .
"</option>n";}
else
{print "<option value=’" . $i . "’>" . $i . "</option>n";}
}
?>
</select>
The variable $prob_month is set to the current month in some previous code. For
Javascript to set the selected option you would use a statement like this (which
sets the first option tag to selected):
document.form_name.select_name.options[0].selected=true
[Beware of the period following the less than symbol in the "for" statement
above — this is one of the periods inserted as a part of the technique
mentioned in the note at the beginning of this section & does not belong in the
code you execute — Ed.]

Q. 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.) Also, take a
look at:

https://www.htmlgoodies.com/articles/emailforms1.html
and

https://www.htmlgoodies.com/articles/emailformphp.html

Q. I have created on a development site thru "Dreamweaver/UltraDev",
information which our project team are copying to another application. The
challenge we face is to have the information on the development presented as a
hard copy, with page breaks and hopefully in the same format (colors and all).
So far all we have done is to copy and paste the information into a word
document, but we are losing most of the original format.

A. Using CSS you can set the where the page breaks are when printing your
web page. If you are doing this within a company in which everyone is using the
same browser you may get away with it with few problems. Not all web browsers
recognize this particular attribute. I believe IE 5 and above and Netscape 6 and
above will recognize it. The CSS attributes "page-break-before" and
"page-break-after". Both instruct the printer to begin printing a new page, with
the difference being before or following the element the attribute is applied
to. For instance if you apply the attribute within the H1 tag like this:
<style> h1{ page-break-before: always; } </style>
The printer will start a new page before every H1 tag.

Q. Hello, I have a link question. On my site I have the link color scheme
to be black, which works well on the left bordered side of my page, but not on
the right side which has a black background. Is there anyway to change the color
just one or two links without changing the color of all the links?

A. Using CSS and assigning a class to each link you can use different
colors and other attributes to whichever links you want. For instance if you
want one of your links to be black and another to be white you would set up a
style sheet like this:
<style type="text/css">
a.one:link {color: #000000}
a.two:link {color: #FF0000}
</style>
Place the style between the <HEAD> tags. Now apply the class to the actual links
in your HTML like this:
<a class="one" href="default.html">This link will be black.</a>
<a class="two" href="default.html">This link will be red.</a>

 

 

 

 

Top

News Goodies


Microsoft Prepared to Strip Media Player
[September 27, 2004] As a crucial European antitrust appeals
hearing draws near, Microsoft indicates it has a WMP-free
Windows ready to go — if needed.

Click
here to read the article

 

 

 


HP Dumps 64-bit Interests

[September 27, 2004] The computer maker said a lack of Windows
applications helped its decision to dump its investment in
64-bit workstations.

Click here to read the article

 

Chips, Networkers Lead Stocks Lower
[September 27, 2004] Semiconductor and communications equipment stocks led
the market lower on Monday, as investors remained jittery ahead of
third-quarter earnings reports in October.

Click
here to read the article

 

 

 


ITSM Deployment Is Conference Focus

[September 27, 2004] The itSMF USA Annual Conference highlights
the need for IT service management training.

Click here to read the article

 

 

 

Cingular Sells Off Biz Messaging Unit
[September 27, 2004] Cingular divests its messaging
technology unit. AT&T Wireless, which is being acquired by
Cingular, has launched a messaging-only handheld for teens.

Click here to read the article
 

 

 

Sun Persists with Single Programming Model
[September 27, 2004] UPDATED: The company’s engineers aim to bring the Java
community a little closer by creating one persistence model for JavaBeans
and Java Objects.

Click here to read the article

 

 

 

Topspin Bundles Utility Computing Package
[September 27, 2004] The InfiniBand specialist bundles its switches and
adapters together in one cost-effective, grid computing package.

Click here to read the article

 

 



IBM in Major RFID Expansion
[September 27, 2004] Big Blue will spend $250 million to solidify its
presence in a sector it sees as high-growth.

Click here to read the article

 

 

 

Report: Web Services Market to Explode
[September 27, 2004] A new research report from Radicati Group projects the
market for Web Services to hit $6.2 billion by 2008

Click here to read the article


 

 

Shaving Time From The Virus Race
[September 17, 2004] IronPort Systems has launched the latest version of its
IronPort C-Series E-mail Security Appliance, adding Virus Outbreak Filters
that the company said could respond to new virus outbreaks within minutes.

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/

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!!

Thanks again for all your feedback!
 

Top


 


Windows Tech Goodie of the Week:



VBScript String Concatenation
(And Why It Should Be Avoided Like The Plague)

A lot of ASP code makes extensive use of string
concatenation, and, although VB and VBScript handle it very
poorly, nothing is usually done about it because so many
developers are simply unaware of the performance problems.
This article not only explains the problem, it also
illustrates just how bad it can get and provides a few
alternatives. Of course… all the source code can be
downloaded and used in your own scripts.


http://www.asp101.com/articles/marcus/concatenation/default.asp


*** AND ***

Unit Test – Testing with NUnit Framework

Kamran Qamar introduces unit testing with NUnit and
offers some best practices, tips, and tricks.


http://www.15seconds.com/issue/040922.htm

*** AND ***

Creating a Tabbed Interface for Displaying Parent/Child Data

The end goal of this article is to create a custom
ASP.NET server control that will allow one to create a
tabbed interface by simply dropping a Web control from the
Toolbox in Visual Studio .NET onto the Designer.


http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/092204-1.aspx

 

Top
 
 

 

 
And Remember This . . .

On this day in…
 

1964 Warren Commission Report Confirms Lee Harvey Oswald
Killed JFK

The Warren Commission was given the task of investigating the
assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. The report, released
on this day in 1964, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three
shots from a rifle pointed out of a window on the sixth floor of the
Texas Book Depository. The report also concluded that Oswald had
acted alone, and the Jack Ruby, who fatally shot Oswald on live
national television, had had no previous contact with Oswald. Thus,
the report concluded that there had been no conspiracy in the
assassination. The report did not, however, silence the conspiracy
theories, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations
issued a report that indicated that Kennedy was "probably
assassinated as a result of a conspiracy". According to this report,
the killing may have involved multiple shooters and organized crime.
both conclusions are still disputed by many people today.

Today was also the day that in: 1540 the Society of Jesus
(the Jesuits) was founded by Ignatius de Loyola; 1779 John
Adams negotiated Revolutionary War peace terms with Britain; 1787
Constitution was submitted to the states for ratification; 1821
Revolutionary forces occupied Mexico City as Spanish withdraw and
the Mexican Empire declared its independence; 1938 Ocean
liner Queen Elizabeth was launched at Glasgow; 1988 Lab tests
reportedly prove that the Shroud of Turin was not Christs burial
cloth; 1989 Sony took over Columbia Pictures for $3.4 billion
cash; 1990 Senate Judiciary committee approved Justice
Souter’s Supreme Court nomination;

Born today were: in 1722 revolutionary rabble rouser and Lt.
Gov. of Massachusetts (1789-94) Samuel Adams; 1792
illustrator (for Charles Dickens) George Cruickshank; 1817 the first
black US Senator Hiram R. Revels; 1895 actor George Raft;
1920
actor William Conrad; 1933 actress Kathleen Nolan;
1934
actor Wilfred Brimley; 1947 model/actress Cheryl
Tiegs; 1947 actress Liz Torres; 1947 musician Marvin
Lee Aday (Meatloaf);
 

 




Thanks for reading Goodies to Go!


 



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