Goodies to Go ™
March 11, 2002–Newsletter #171
This newsletter is part of the internet.com network.
http://www.internet.com
Announcement Goodies
I just wanted to let you
know that last week’s article about ASP.NET and the subsequent email regarding
the ASP.NET conference was purely coincidental. Contrary to what some of you
might have surmised, Internet.com has not been purchased by Microsoft and you
will not see Microsoft logos popping up on every site. <g>
I just happened to have been designing a site with ASP.NET over the past several
weeks and I wanted to share some of my experiences.
As you know, you will
receive email announcements from time to time by paid advertisers. The
advertisers allow this newsletter and HTMLGoodies.com to be a free service.
Thanks for reading!
Goodies Thoughts – Got Broadband?
You hear a lot of talk
about the benefits of broadband and how it will revolutionize how we use the
web. So, what exactly is broadband and how is it going to impact how we live?
Broadband services offer
download speeds that are between 10 and 50 times faster that a 56k dial-up
connection. Broadband is a sort of catch-all phrase used to describe high speed
access which would include cable and DSL service.
Faster download times
open up a wide range of possibilities to the consumer like renting streaming DVD
quality movies via the internet, viewing live video feeds from around the world
or playing high quality interactive games with your friends. It also opens up a
number of possibilities to business making it easier for business to offer
information and software that doesn’t take all day to download plus streaming
video of products and/or services.
So, why aren’t there
more services like that available? Even though broadband access grew at a rate
of almost 70% last year, the fact remains that about 80% of all U.S. subscribers
still access using a dial-up service. Until the percentage of broadband users
climbs up closer to 50%, don’t expect a lot of companies start catering to
broadband subscribers.
Right now the computer
gaming industry is the only industry truly taking advantage of broadband’s
capabilities. It can cost a nice little chunk of change to upgrade software and
produce broadband content. Companies in other industries are simply waiting
until the number of users climbs to a level they feel would provide them with a
good return on their investment.
So why aren’t more
people getting broadband service? There are a few reasons.
Broadband service can be
much more expensive. Typically dial-up ISP’s charge anywhere from $10 to $25 per
month but DSL and cable subscribers can typically expect to pay $40 to $60 per
month. There are benefits to the extra cost besides the time saving issue of
faster downloads. You don’t need to have an extra telephone line or tie up a
line when you are accessing the internet because DSL and cable are always on. It
also makes it easier and more efficient to share a connection between multiple
computers in a home or small business.
Availability is the
second and probably the most important issue. Right now, service is simply not
available to many smaller towns, cities and rural areas.
So, if I get broadband
service does that mean I will be able to host my own web server? Well, actually,
for anything beyond a personal website, probably not. Most broadband service
providers discourage individuals from running their own web servers. Some
require that you obtain you IP address automatically which makes it impossible
to assign your domain name to an IP address. Also, most providers limit your
upload to about 128k which means while files download to your machine at 50
times faster than a dial-up, files originating from your computer go back out at
about 2 times the speed of a dial-up connection. This limitation alone would
make it impossible to host more than a very lightly trafficked site.
Well, then what good is
it? Personally, I don’t think I could live without it now that I have it. To me,
the download time savings is worth it alone. If you are a web designer or
developer working from home, broadband is a must. Even if you are a casual
surfer, you will probably appreciate the lightning fast download rates
especially if you are used to waiting 2 hours to download a piece of software
only to find out the transmission failed half-way through. Eventually, when DSL
service becomes available in my area I will probably switch from cable to DSL
with a static IP. This will allow me to host my own personal website.
There is no doubt that
broadband service subscriptions will increase over the next several years at a
rapid rate. The only question is when will companies start investing the capital
to take advantage of all of the opportunities that broadband service creates.
Thanks for reading!
Quiz Goodies
In ASP (and ASP.NET for
that matter) how do you pass and receive information from one page to another
using the URL?
For example, you have a
page that has 3 links for different format choices of a report. You want all 3
links to go to the same page to display the report. The report page then
determines how it will format the report based on the code it receives in the
URL, i.e pageformat=f1, pageformat=f2, etc.
Q & A Goodies
Q.
I am trying to implement 2 styles of links on one page and I am getting lost. I
can see how to use classes with other tags but the links have multiple
attributes such as active link, visited link, hover, etc.
One style is teal links that turn to
green and underline on hover. The other is black, no change on hover of visited,
but I want the cursor to switch to the "?" (help)
A.
As you stated, your answer lies in classes. Say you have teal as one style and
stat as the other. Needless to say you must have the appropriate (<A HREF="…"
class="teal">) class attributes in the appropriate <a> tags.
You can use a.class_name:hover syntax
to access their attributes. Here’s an example that suits your needs.
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<STYLE TYPE="TEXT/CSS">
<!– a.teal:hover {color: green;
text-decoration: underline; cursor: question;} a.stat:hover {cursor: question;}
a.stat {color: black;} a.teal {text-decoration: none; color: red;} –>
</STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">
<A HREF="#" CLASS="teal">Teal
Link</A><BR><BR>
<A HREF="#" CLASS="stat">Static
Link</A>
</BODY>
</HTML>
*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community. The answer was provided
by Igal Nassi, one of our CSS Mentors.
Q.
I’m trying to construct a way for the owner of the site to remotely update the
cart prices & etc and add products. I’m using an Access 2000 database and would
like a "log-in" page with a username and password. I’m wondering what the best
secure way of doing this is? Is there an encryption I can use to store the
passwords?
A.
Create a table in your access database that stores the username/password
combination for each user. Verify the login info against that table. If
verified, set a session variable for the user that can be checked from all of
the secure pages. This prevents someone from getting the URL of a secure page
and accessing it. You HAVE to login to do your work.
Furthermore, if you want the username and/or password to be encrypted (above
and beyond SSL), write an encryption script to be used when entering the data,
and write the corresponding decryption script to be run whenever the data is
accessed.
*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community. The answer was provided
by Alex Newport, one of our ASP Mentors.
Q. What I want to
be able to do is to have 2 frames and to allow the user to hide and show the
left frame at will. Is there an easy way to do this?
A. I accomplish
this on my personal site by making the frame border resizable by the visitors.
They can drag it to the edge of the window if they want. There’s a "noresize"
attribute added to frames to make them non-resizable. Just don’t include it. You
could also provide a link to frames and non-frames versions of the site.
*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community. The answer was provided
by Eric Ferguson, one of our HTML Mentors.
News Goodies
Sun and Microsoft are at it again.
This time Sun is asking for a cool one billion in damages.
Click here to read the article
So, what’s ahead for the software
industry? Will the big guys just keep getting bigger or does the little guy
still have a chance?
Click here to read the article
And just when you thought spammers
couldn’t get much lower, here’s a site the FTC shut down after bilking people
out of over one million dollars in a 9-11 scam.
Click here to read the article
Quiz Answer
To send information via
the URL you just need to use the "?" in your URL to separate the information you
are passing along from the actual URL address. Here is an example of a
hyperlink:
<a href="http://www.test.com/report.asp?pageformat=f2">
Click here to view the
report in a centered table format.</a>
To retrieve the
information from your ASP page you will need to use Request.QueryString. Here’s
an example of how to put the page format type into a variable named Page_Format:
<% Dim Page_Format
Page_Format = Request.QueryString("pageformat") %>
Now the variable
Page_Format will hold the type of report we want printed which in the example
above is "f2".
And Remember This . . .
Did you know that in the
early 1940’s an engineer by the name of James Wright was trying to invent a
rubber substitute that would help in the war effort. What he ended up with was a
moldable blob that was slightly sticky and bounced when you dropped it.
Several years later
Peter Hodgson thought the little rubber-like blob might be fun to play with. So,
in 1949 he featured his new product named "Silly Putty" in a toy catalog. It
quickly became one of the most popular toys in history and is still sold today.
Thanks for reading Goodies to Go!