kaseytraeger

Robert, I just realized that the movie and the link to the movie are not on the same domain. From what I understand of the script you wrote, it's expecting that the file is sitting on the same domain as the link. Should I just modify the code to explicitly state the location of the movie, as in: >readfile("http://www.domain.com/movie.wmv"); Instead of >readfile("XXXb"); Thanks for your help!!!

Are you kidding?!? I've been on the Sims2 newsletter/mailing list for many months now! I particularly like the scene in one of the little videos where the Sim character gets electrocuted in the spa. You can even see the skeleton!!!

TCH-Robert and bellringr, I am a Sims junkie (when I have the time to play!!!). I have ALL the expansion packs and am thinking about pre-ordering the new Sims2 (due out sometime this spring). And yes, the extra expansion packs add A LOT to the game experience. If you're interested in getting the other expansion packs, you can get them for a song now that everyone else is gearing up and getting ready for The Sims2. In fact, I was at Fry's Electronics just after the New Year and saw The Sims Deluxe, for which I paid $40, now priced at $19.99. Other expansion packs, except for "Makin' Magic" were similarly reduced, often at prices near $9.99 to $14.99 per expansion pack. Glad to see there are other "Simmers" here at TCH. I was beginning to think I was the only person that played a pc game that's not sci-fi, fantasy, military, or shoot-em-up! But I completely understand TCH-Raul's distaste for the extraordinarily long amount of time it can take to do something as simple as brushing your teeth!! (Like the fact that it takes one of my Sims 15 minutes to walk from the curb to the front door!)

That would be great, Robert! I'd like to use it on the movie I currently have on my web site! Please ... post away!!!

I just thought of something else you could do. Instead of offering a download of the movie straight away, why not save a few bytes of bandwidth and Zip the file? Then code your link like this: ><a href="www.****/movie.zip">The Movie</a> I think links to Zip files always cause the "open/save" pop-up window to appear.

The only way I know of to do this is to encode it in a plain anchor link (which you're probably already doing). In fact, I have a movie on one of my web pages right now. There is a link on another web page (on another web site, too) that directs the user to the movie. That link is coded like this: ><a href="http://www.****/movie.wmv">Movie</a> But I just tested this link, and the movie opens straight away and doesn't offer the option to "open" or "save." I imagine this is because I've already got my computer's preferences set up to open Windows Media Player when it encounters various multimedia files. You could offer a small piece of advice to your users by telling them that they can save the movie (or music file, whatever) by right-clicking on the link and selecting "Save Target As." Other than that, I'm not sure what else to do. This is the first time I've paid any attention this behavior and even cared whether someone had the option to save or open a movie file directly from my web site. I hope something I've mentioned has been helpful!

I just updated the link I gave, but now that I've done it, I see that !!blue had posted the correct URL before I had a chance to update mine. Thanks !!blue

Thanks for the info, Rob! I appreciate it.

car seat (as in the vinyl bench seat in my mom's old 1973 Buick station wagon -- Yuck! )

I've had this one in my bookmarks for quite some time; it's an excellent web site, especially if you're trying to be conscientious and design with colorblind people in mind. Here's another one for you that might be helpful in the pre-development stages. I have it saved in my bookmarks as "Color Schemes". It will allow you to choose a color scheme for your web site then click one of the links and see how it looks to people with different types of colorblindness. Check it out!

Hi all, I'm trying to clean up my directory space a bit. My tmp directory has some items in it that I'm not familiar with. Will someone please clarify for me what items must stay and what items I can chuck? Yes, I know that tmp means "temporary," and logic would dictate that if something is temporary, it can be deleted. But I'd rather err on the side of caution and get the low down before I start "cleaning house" and deleting things left and right. There are four folders within "tmp" (folders are in boldface and their embedded files are listed directly beneath them): analog - 10.html - cache awstats - awstats.****.conf - awstats012004.****.txt - awstats022004.****.txt - awstats032004.****.txt - awstats052003.****.txt - awstats062003.****.txt - awstats072003.****.txt - awstats082003.****.txt - awstats092003.****.txt - awstats102003.****.txt - awstats112003.****.txt - awstats122003.****.txt - dnscachelastupdate.****.txt webalizer - ctry_usage_200305.png - ctry_usage_200306.png - ctry_usage_200307.png - ctry_usage_200308.png - ctry_usage_200309.png - daily_usage_200305.png - daily_usage_200306.png - daily_usage_200307.png - daily_usage_200308.png - daily_usage_200309.png - dns_cache.db - hourly_usage_200305.png - hourly_usage_200306.png - hourly_usage_200307.png - hourly_usage_200308.png - hourly_usage_200309.png - index.html - usage.png - usage_200305.html - usage_200306.html - usage_200307.html - usage_200308.html - usage_200309.html - webalizer.current - webalizer.hist webalizerftp - ctry_usage_200305.png - ctry_usage_200306.png - ctry_usage_200307.png - ctry_usage_200308.png - ctry_usage_200309.png - daily_usage_200305.png - daily_usage_200306.png - daily_usage_200307.png - daily_usage_200308.png - daily_usage_200309.png - dns_cache.db - hourly_usage_200305.png - hourly_usage_200306.png - hourly_usage_200307.png - hourly_usage_200308.png - hourly_usage_200309.png - index.html - usage.png - usage_200305.html - usage_200306.html - usage_200307.html - usage_200308.html - usage_200309.html - webalizer.current - webalizer.hist There are also two individual files within "tmp": - lastrun.bw - lastrun I'm hoping someone knows what all these files and folders are!! Thanks a bunch! Kasey

Thanks for the help, people! I sure appreciate it.... I've purchased the two additional domains and will contact help desk when I'm ready to have the switchover occur. Thanks again!

There is an excellent article at SitePoint.com that may be of some interest to you. It helps you determine what kind of hourly rate you should charge for web development work depending on what area of the country you are in. Two web sites you may want to visit before reading the article are Dice.com and Salary.com. By entering information about your skills, number of years of experience, area of country, etc., these two web sites will give you a rough salary range for the type of work you're interested in. Be sure to write these numbers down because you'll need them to complete the exercises in the SitePoint article. Unless you're working on a very small web site (<5 pages total), I would not charge by the page. If I were a customer needing a moderate-sized web site (say, 15-25 pages, or so), I'd be more interested in getting a package deal. The per-page method of charging would be a turn off. However, you can blend the two quite nicely and come up with a pricing structure that works for both you and the customer. For example, say a client wants you to build a web site. You sit down with him to decide what pages will be needed. During your meetings, it is determined that he needs 12 pages in his web site. After considering how much work you'll need to put into each page, you can come back to him in a few days with a custom quote for those 12 pages. You also tell him that any additional pages will be charged at a rate of $x/hour for simple XHTML programming and $y/hour for more complex back-end programming. You could also go the route of quoting a flat rate for additional pages of $w/hour for more simple pages to $z/hour for more complex pages. (But if you're a novice web developer and will be spending considerable time creating these pages, passing on the price of your "learning curve" is not a cool thing to do. In that case, I would charge a flat per-page price. If you're an experienced web developer and programmer, you could use either route. In my case, I can code just fine, but there are things that come up that I've not had the experience to anticipate, so it takes me much longer to get through them than an experienced developer/programmer. I would not dream of asking someone to pay me by the hour to "learn" web development. I am therefore giving my web sites away for free right now as I learn how to deal with issues that come up, such as browsers that don't interpret CSS the same way and how to deal with those problems. Rather than charge at all, I tell people that I'll do their web site for free. It takes longer for me to develop their web site than if they were to hire an experienced developer, but in the end, they get a free web site. Plus, I gain the experience. It's a win-win for both sides. But I digress...) Now, let's say that 75% of the way through the project, your client decides he needs additional pages. You have already laid out in the quote (and hopefully included it in the contract) the rate you will charge for additional pages. The beauty of this method is that the client gets a good rate on the package deal you gave him for the initial 12 pages, and the addition of more and more pages adds to your pocket book without encouraging "project creep" where the client keeps coming back and saying "But we need more. We need this, we need that, and you should include it in the package deal because of this reason and that reason." As long as you spell out very clearly that your package deal is only for the 12 pages negotiated in the original quote, the client will be less likely to continue to call on you to free-be him more and more pages. Hence, the discouragement of project creep. I think I've just about written a novel here. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not currently charging for my web work, so all you're getting here is one person's opinion. However, I've done a little bit of research in this area, so hopefully some of my ideas will strike a chord with you one way or another. Good luck with your web development business!

This is an excellent link. Thank you for posting it!

The only search engines I use consistently are Yahoo! and Google. I used to use AltaVista in the very early days of the internet, but I don't recall what happened to them. Also, is Lycos still around?

hungry

Someone may have to correct me on this, but from what I understand, search engine spiders crawl and index information contained in HTML comments. Also, I'm not sure, but you may be able to help your pages gain better search engine rank by adding selective keywords from your keywords meta tag to your comments, too. So if you are up for adding content to the bottom of your page, but don't want that content to be seen, you could opt for adding comments below the Flash content. This will help the spiders get their digs in and properly index your pages. For instance, ><body> ... Here is the Flash content. ... <!-- Add a description of your web site here. You can also add a description specific to this particular page of the web site. Keywords, etc. --> </body> </html> If anyone finds a mistake in what I've said, please correct me. I'm in the same boat as Noah and want to get my pages optimized for search engines before I actually submit them. Better to be embarrassed and have my misunderstandings straightened out than to save face but do things wrong! Thanks! (and Happy Friday! )

Well, I'm certainly a Sims addict, but I doubt there's any way I'd be good enough to win a professional competition. Damn my day job!!! If I didn't have to spend 10+ hours a day away from home, imagine how much practice I could get in! Naughty Oh well, knowing me, I'd be busy futzing with web pages all day if I had the opportunity to stay home, so it looks like I'm forever doomed to be a Sims amateur. At least I'm using my days somewhat productively!

Dave, Thanks for pointing out where this method came from (and for providing the URL). That URL is definitely where I learned the technique, but I couldn't remember where it had come from. But I most certainly remember the giraffe, so that's got to be it! Thanks again, and now I've actually bookmarked the RealWorldStyle.com web site! Thumbs Up

blue, This method uses two divs, but it works very well. You might give it a try if you haven't yet done it. The CSS code is: >#left { float: left; text-align: left; color: #fff; width: 49%;} #right { float: right; text-align: right; color: #fff; width: 49%;} #rowcontent{ width: 300px; background-color: #CCC; border: 1px solid #000; padding: 0px; margin: 0px auto;} .defloat { clear: both;} The HTML code is: ><div id="rowcontent"> <div id="left">Left-Aligned Text</div> <div id="right">Right-Aligned Text</div> <div class="defloat"> </div> <!-- use this to bring all of your floated elements back down to the page --> </div> Yes, it adds a few divs to your markup, but it's really quite similar to the original table example you gave. I've successfully used this method and was pleased with the results.

I don't know how many of you out there have had an opportunity to read this book, but I just finished it about 30 minutes ago, and I must say I was very, very impressed with the read. I learned a ton about web standards and CSS and was especially impressed with Zeldman's presentation of accessibility issues (and how easy it is to accomodate them). Anyone out there read this book? If so, what were your thoughts? Have you used it as reference material (or for any other purpose) after reading it for the first time? Just wondering if it is beneficial to have a copy on-hand. I borrowed it from the library but am seriously considering spending the $35 or so to buy it from Amazon.

I've only started into "freelance" web development (read "developing a web site for someone other than myself"), and generally, I don't use web safe colors. I just pick one that looks good in the layout. However, with the current site I'm working on, I'm doing my best to use web safe colors for the backgrounds. They're not the best, but at least it will look consistent (hopefully) across platforms. For my own personal site, I could care less whether the colors are web safe or not. I consider my personal site for my enjoyment only. Also, to add another question to the mix... Is a color generally considered "web-safe" if you can describe it with an RGB value of three digits versus a six digit RGB value (e.g., #123 versus #1a223c)? I don't know where I came up with this assumption, but I got it somewhere, and that's how I've been operating!

I know what you mean. My mother-in-law is forever telling me that she can't see the little web site I built for our family. But when I check it out on my computer (in both IE and NS browsers), it comes up just fine! Then it looks like I've done something wrong because she can't see it but I can. Anyway, wanted to let waynemac know his site comes up great in Netscape 7 and IE6 for Windows XP.

Good evening!!! I've already got an account with TCH, but I'm getting ready to purchase two new domain names. Here is the situation. The current domain name, website1.com, is already in use and has a hosting account with TCH. I plan on purchasing website2.com and website3.com within the next couple of days. What I would like to do is to "trade" or "phase out" the use of website1.com as the domain name associated with my TCH account and in its place have website2.com as the primary domain name associated with the TCH account. I plan on letting the website1.com domain name registration expire and not renew it. Can I do this without wrecking or deleting my existing TCH account? For instance, the username associated with the account is pre-assigned, and from what I can tell, is based on the first seven letters of the domain name. Is it possible to have the username for my TCH account changed to reflect the new URL while keeping the account open so that I don't lose any of the content currently stored in the account? As I mentioned earlier, I will also be purchasing website3.com. Eventually, I will have a separate TCH account to host this website. Until that time, is it possible to point website3.com to website2.com so that if users type "www.website3.com" into their address bar, they will be greeted by the website2.com web site? If so, is this set up through the domain name registrar or is it handled via a PHP or meta tag redirect from website3.com's index page? In the end, both website2.com and website3.com will have their own separate hosting accounts. Website1.com will die a slow and painful death by expiration. Thanks for looking into this for me!

I'm gonna go retro here and say "Awesome!!!!" Here again we have another reason why Rock Sign Thumbs Up Wooooo hooooo!!!