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kaseytraeger

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  1. kaseytraeger
    Glenn, I just sent you a PM requesting a password...
  2. kaseytraeger
    Nat, Thanks for asking this question! I've been meaning to do so myself, but keep forgetting
  3. kaseytraeger
    Snipe, Yes, I did get a copy of it. Bruce (TCH-Bruce) emailed me a copy. I printed it for future reference (most times, if I leave something on my hard disk, I forget its there, but if it's in a paper file, I always find it!). It looks like you and Jakob Nielsen are on the same page. Much of what you require is very good at increasing usability. I found it interesting that what you were touting in 2000 (as based on the date of the style manual) is now being sold in book form three and four years later! I guess you were just ahead of your time!!! Seriously, I like that you placed a lot of important web sites in there, such as the HTML Validator and the link for the Lynx Emulator. I particularly like that you require the titles of each page to be standardized in the form <title>[site name] - [section name] - [page title]</title>. I try to strive for this type of standardization in my own pages, but the sites I've done are so small that they really only need two qualifiers -- [site name] and [page title]. My page titles will typically look like this: Web Site Name >> Page Title (e.g., "The Village Pantry >> Contact Us") Since you asked, however, I do have a question for ya ... why do you suggest the use of embedded tables rather than colspan and rowspan? In all, I really found your document to be a concise summary of good coding techniques. Although I am a one-person operation, I think a summary guide such as yours would be a very beneficial checklist against which I can evaluate each web site I create. In the event my little fledgling firm grows, it'll be handy dandy to give to freelancers doing work for me!
  4. kaseytraeger
    Thomas, Not sure if you're interested in this, but as an interesting side note, here's what NTFS and FAT stand for -- NTFS = NT File System (of Windows NT fame) FAT = File Access Table FAT32 = 32-bit File Access Table (only used on operating systems from Win98 through the present, but not in NT file systems ... e.g., WinNT or Win2K)
  5. kaseytraeger
    Tony, This is a strange problem, and one that I've never heard of before. However, took a quick look at your souce code, and here's what I see: ><html> <head> <title>Render Blender, LLC</title> <meta name="generator" content="Namo WebEditor v5.0"> </head> Compare this to my standard code: ><!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <title>The Village Pantry :: Home</title> <meta http-equiv="content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252" /> <meta http-equiv="content-Language" content="en-us" /> <meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no" /> </head> Honestly, I don't really see anything in here that would cause your router to reject your page. However, in the interests of science, perhaps you can try swapping your <html> line with my <!doctype> and <html xlmns ...> line. Also, try adding the line <meta http-equiv="content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252" />
  6. kaseytraeger
    Welcome to Michelle and Sam. We're happy to have you on board and part of the TCH family.
  7. kaseytraeger
    Thanks for the links, folks! I'm gonna check them out
  8. kaseytraeger
    Thanks for the link, Jim!
  9. kaseytraeger
    Hi Nat, You can put the CSS code for input.text anywhere you like. Just make sure that it will be accessible by the page your form sits on. On the site I'm currently developing, there is only one form, so I've placed the CSS for styling that particular form between <head> and </head> only on the page that uses the form. If you'll have multiple little forms scattered throughout your site, you can certainly put the declaration within your sitewide text stylesheet. In fact, I would actually recommend this method because then it (the CSS for your forms) will be available to you on every page you create. Since Dreamweaver doesn't give you any CSS options for things like forms, you'll probably end up hand-coding them unless you find a web page building application that will do it for you. I code all my pages in a plain text editor, so I'm not sure what's available out there except for FrontPage (ick) and DreamWeaver MX. I think you'll find, however, that once you begin coding them by hand, you'll have a much better understanding of how the stylesheets work and it will become almost intuitive and faster for you to create them by opening your favorite text editor rather than opening DreamWeaver and dealing with the point/choose/click style interface. Once you get good, creating stylesheets will be faster simply by typing them out by hand. Actually, I don't live in Los Altos, but I work very near there at SLAC. Ever heard of it? My husband and I would love to live in Los Altos, but it's far too pricey for our modest incomes. As a matter of fact, the sister of one of my ex-boyfriends lives in Los Altos. She and her husband bought their house in 1992 for about $275K. It now appraises at just under $1M!! With house prices like that in Los Altos, hubby and I have opted to live in the much more affordable area of San Jose (not that a city with average home price of $500K is "affordable," but it's certainly much more affordable than a $1M home in Los Altos). I commute about 25 minutes to work, but I get to enjoy the nice scenery of 280 heading up the mid-peninsula. It's quite beautiful, especially in the spring when the daffodils sprout on the highway just North of Page Mill Road. How long since you've been in the Bay Area? Are you still in California? Sorry to hear that you're not in the area any more. We could have gotten together for coffee and chatted about how great it is here at TCH!!!
  10. kaseytraeger
    I don't know if this topic belongs in this forum, so for the forum moderator, if you need to move it, please feel free to do so. Does anyone out there have any good reference material (probably a collection of internet bookmarks) or know of a good book that deals with .htaccess? I'm starting to see that there's much more you can do with .htaccess than call up user authentication dialog boxes. I'd like to learn more about it!
  11. kaseytraeger
    What is Arles? When I create thumbnails, I've always just taken the full size picture, resized it to either 50% or 25%, then done a crop on the most interesting part of the picture to create an image that's whatever size I want for my thumbnails. Some of these software packages that create thumbnails for you sound quite interesting. I'm curious to hear about the various packages available and the pros/cons of each.
  12. kaseytraeger
    I'm not sure the extent to which you want to use this fancier font, but if it's for something along the lines of a page header or subtitle, I would think you could create your own custom headers in the font of your choice using your favorite graphics editing software. If, however, you want the text of the entire web page in that special font, then you can't use this option unless you want to make your entire page one big graphic ... yikes!!!! Can you say "long download times"? If you are interested in using special "fonticized" graphics as headers or titles, you can do a search in your favorite search engine for the Fahrner Image Replacement technique (a.k.a., FIR). A good web site for learning about this technique is Stop Design. Be aware, however, that there are some objections to this method because people with disabilities (I'm thinking specifically of blind people who use web page readers) won't even know that the header exists. You'll have to make that decision for yourself. If your web site is just for friends and family, and you know none of them are blind, then accessibility issues such as this may not be pertinent to your web site. If, however, you're operating a small business or a web site that is of interest to people outside your immediate friend/family base, then this may be an important consideration for you.
  13. kaseytraeger
    Unless the person that wrote the popup uses the same target name. Then the image will load into the already open popup. Or you can do like I do and just bypass JavaScript pop-up windows and use the old standby <a href="..." target="_blank">. I've done that in a photo album I created. The main page has a bunch of thumbnails. When you click on each thumbnail, the larger image is presented in a standard browser window. Each thumbnail opens a new window and doesn't overwrite anything in a prior window. There's also no worrying about whether the user has disabled JavaScript. I use pop-up window blockers when I web surf, and I've found that these windows were not blocked when I tested the page. I'd say that if there's a down-side to this method, it's that the "pop-up" window doesn't look as cool as it could when created by a JavaScript program. For example, I can't create a chromeless window or a window without certain toolbars or the status bar. Basically, they get a brand new browser window with all the bells and whistles. I still make sure to warn users that clicking on a thumbnail photo will open a full-size image in another pop-up style window.
  14. kaseytraeger
    Wayne, It looks like no one's gotten back to you on this. I tried scoping out your problem, but for the life of me I couldn't find it. I wonder if it's because I don't use PHPBB. There might be some embedded styling at work as part of PHPBB. I didn't see anything wrong with your style sheets. However, you might want to check the "root" of your problem. Find the highest level container that your "problem child" is part of. Check to make sure there aren't any borders specified that would conflict with a 1 px border. In fact, just to make sure, I'd set all borders to 1px until I could locate the problem. Then you can slowly work your way down the family tree until you reach the part of your layout that's showing 2 pixel borders instead of one pixel borders. You mentioned you've tried some CSS properties. Would you mind sharing what you've done. I can give a few suggestions, but I don't want to repeat what you've already tried. Anyone else willing to tackle this irksome issue?
  15. kaseytraeger
    Since I made this original post, I have tried something new. I heard many good things about FileZilla, so I gave it a shot. I must say I'm incredibly impressed! For very minor things (e.g., checking to see what's in my directories or to look up the name of a file) I still use the command line interface available through "run --> ftp ****" in Windows XP. However, when I'm actually transferring files, I've switched to using FileZilla. I think I learn something new about it each time I use it. Last time, I learned that you could rename files just like using Windows File Explorer. I also learned that double clicking on a file will automatically transfer it! I must say, I'm really liking this FTP client!
  16. kaseytraeger
    Hi Nat, Great question! In addition to using CSS the way Bruce has described, you can also use a custom graphic (say, for example, a gradient that flows from grey to white or one shade of blue to another shade of blue) as the background for any text input boxes or textareas. All you have to do is specify them specially in your CSS file. For example, >input.text1{ background-image: url('/path/to/your/image/graphic.gif'); background-repeat: no-repeat; /* you can also choose 'repeat' */ color: #fcf; /* setting the color of the text as the user types in this field */ border: 1px dashed #cfc; /* setting the border of the text input area to 1 pixel dashed */ } Then, you just add the class name "text1" to each <input> in your form For example: ><input type="text" class="text1" id="field1" name="field1" length="15" maxlength="30" value="Sample text for the first field" /> <textarea name="textarea1" class="text1" cols="10" rows="5">Users can enter messages and/or comments here</textarea> You can also create background colors for <select> boxes and checkboxes, as in ... ><select size="1"> <option style="background:#abc;">Option #1 in a dropdown menu</option> <option style="background:#cba;">Option #2 in a dropdown menu</option> <option style="background:#111;">Option #3 in a dropdown menu</option> </select> <input type="checkbox" style="background:#1f1;" name="box1" id="box1" value="Box1_checked" /> <!-- or you could declare the checkbox to be of class "text1" --> <input type="checkbox" class="text1" name="box2" id="box2" value="Box2_checked" /> I haven't yet figured out a way to put a background color inside a radio button, but you can put a border around them! Did you know that you can also create your own custom graphics and use them for buttons? You aren't limited to CSS. If you want to make a "submit" button with a green unicorn, you can. Just create the image in your favorite graphics program and save it. Then code the submit button as follows: ><input type="image" src="/path/to/your/graphic/greenunicorn.gif" value="Only enter something here if you want to overlay text on top of your graphic" /> A reset button can be similarly created. ><input type="image" src="/path/to/your/graphic/greenunicornreset.gif" value="Enter text here if you want to create overlay text on top of your reset button" /> There are so many things you can do with forms. Just play around. CSS will let you use your own custom graphics, create borders, change colors, text sizes, colors and fonts, just about anything visual to go along with the graphic. I also suggest using a javascript to preliminarily check the form while it's still on the user's computer before sending the form data to the server for processing. There are many form validation scripts available all over the web. Two of my favorite JavaScript web sites are Dynamic Drive and JavaScript Kit. To use them, just do as Jim suggested ... ><input type="submit" ... onclick="fireForm()" ... /> Don't forget that HTML and XHTML have many features available for creating forms, such as <legend>s, <fieldset>s, <border>s (multiple pixels and multiple effects such as "double" -- you can see an example of "double" at http://kaseyscreations.com/villagepantry/test-contactus.htm ), <label>s and <optgroup>s. Hopefully these are a few ideas to get you going on your way. Forms are actually fun to create once you know that you're not limited to the default settings provided by your browser of choice. Have fun!
  17. kaseytraeger
    OK ... another glitch... If I include the CSS styling within <head> and </head> of the page, it works fine. But as soon as I include it in my css file called test-base_style.css using a call to the file of: ><link rel="stylesheet" href="test-base_style.css" type="text/css" /> It no longer works. Instead, it lines them all up as a bulleted vertical navigation list instead of a non-bulleted horizontal navigation list. But ... it's still centered! Weird. Any thoughts? Since this piece of code will be included on all pages of the web site, I'd like to have it in a global CSS file instead of individually coded on each page.
  18. kaseytraeger
    !!blue, I finally got it to work. It turns out that I needed to not only specify that the left padding was -20px (to accomodate for the padding in the container div), but I also needed to modify the styling of the very last link from padding-right:0px to padding-right:15px. Your suggested code for ul#footerlinks li{...} got me to thinking about the padding on each <li>, and I decided to try making the padding on each <li> the same. Now it works like a charm! Thanks!
  19. kaseytraeger
    I've had problems with Yahoo hanging on me this whole week, no matter which of the three computers I use (all using different Internet access lines) or which browser I use (IE6, Firefox0.8 or Netscape7). Typically, I try to log it, retrieve email, or just look at my MyYahoo page, but it hangs on me. Sometimes hitting refresh works, but other times, it keeps hanging.
  20. kaseytraeger
    pompous/arrogant
  21. kaseytraeger
    Aha!! Holy slipped disk, Bat-Bruce!! It worked! By the way, "Holy slipped disk" was an actual phrase uttered by Robin on the original Batman & Robin show. You can see more of them here: http://www.mmedia.is/~bjossi/holy.html
  22. kaseytraeger
    How can we subscribe to the Security forum?
  23. kaseytraeger
    Although I've driven nothing but GM rec vehicles my entire life (save the year between ages 17 and 18 when I had no choice but to drive my stepfather's 1973 VW Bug), my favorite "muscle" car is far from GM. 1969 De Tomaso Mangusta http://www.allsportauto.com/photoautre2/de...ngusta_01_m.jpg Ain't she purdy?
  24. kaseytraeger
    Cotton
  25. kaseytraeger
    Hi section31, I haven't done a lot of MySQL programming, but I've been programming object oriented languages such as C++ and Java for several years. In those languages, when I came upon a dilemma such as this, I would simply cast the resultant value into whatever data type form I wanted. For instance, consider the following line of code: >int x; int y =10; int z = 3; // If left uncast, the following line would give some sort of error because y/z is not an integer. The actual value is a never-ending decimal 3.333...... x = y/z; // However, if I cast the result as an integer (to match the data type of "x"), the line will execute smoothly, and give the result of x=3 x = (int)y/z; // Casts 10/3 as an integer before assigning the value to variable x. I don't know if casting is an option in MySQL, but it was worth a mention! Good luck!
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