abinidi

Ok, first, cool login form. I LOVE the white border in the top right and bottom left corners. Way cool. (This is really why I'm posting: to tell you that I love the login form.) Second, I'm not an expert here, but I think you really only have a couple of choices: (1) accept that there will be differences in broswers, and you can't make the experience identical in all browsers using conventional tools, (2) use JavaScript to detect the browser and then use "if" statements for different browser types, (3) use a browser-independent method for displaying your site (e.g. Flash). I'm sure there are other options as well. Those are just the first three that come to mind for me. As far as your example page goes, I'd be willing to live with the subtle differences you point out. But if you can't, then I guess you do have some options... Best wishes,

A friend sent me these ads by e-mail; I found them on the fair website, and thought that some of you might enjoy. http://lacountyfair.com/2005/video/index.asp

money

That will be helpful, but not only do you have to run your searches through the Opera UI, but you also have to click on the advertising links that are displayed.

If you are considering SMF, you might want to be aware of what I consider to be a critical problem, and it is the only reason that I haven't implemented SMF for my forums. Here it is: SMF puts the member's email address in clear HTML text in the code of every post. So a spider that crawls a SMF forum can easily harvest the email addresses of every member of your forum. Other forums keep the email address in the database, and use a webform to allow members to send messages to other members via email. This is a much more secure way, and I won't feel good about implementing a SMF installation until they fix this major problem. There are some mods that try to obfuscate the email address, but as we have discussed here in these forums, simply obfuscating the email address using ASCII code doesn't necessarily make it unreadable to all spiders. Just a word of warning!!

Hi VisualCreative, welcome to the forums. What you are looking for is a feature called "domain parking" so that when you go to either web site URL, you get the same content. This feature is free. You have to do a couple of things. First: you have to log in to your domain registrar (Wild West Domains, GoDaddy, Verisign, etc.) and change your nameservers to be the same nameservers you have set up for your primary domain--the one already hosted with TCH. These nameservers were sent to you in your welcome e-mail, and usually go something like this: NSX.TOTALCHOICEHOSTING.COM, NSX.TOTALCHOICEHOSTING.COM, where the X is replaced with a number. There are at least two of them, and for example, mine are NS1.TOTALCHOICEHOSTING.COM and NS2.TOTALCHOICEHOSTING.COM. But yours will depend on what server you are on, so you will want to verify that information with the help desk, so that it works properly. It takes up to 72 hours for this change to "propogate" -- or to spread through all the different computers on the internet. During that time, there isn't anything anybody can do to help; we just all have to wait for the "domain propogation" to take place. This is a good time to go out to dinner and relax. Once you have made that change, and it has propogated, you need to open a help desk ticket with the names of both domains, requesting that they park the new domain on the old domain. You can open a help desk ticket by clicking on the link at the top of the page. If you opened a help desk ticket to verify your nameservers, they will have closed the ticket while everyone waits for the domain name to propogate. You can just re-open the same ticket, and they will be able to park the domain name on your account. If you have any further questions, please let us know. We're glad you are part of the family, and glad you found the family forums. Be sure to keep checking in here. We love to help!!

Just found this 40 minute video where one of the MS employees demos Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. The video did increase my desire to see a working version of the product, when I can open my own documents, and do my own normal, basic tasks. But here is the link, if you are interested: http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=114720

I understand what you are saying, in that if Microsoft (MS) can make it easier for newbies to use their program, then the newbies will be happy with it. However, here we encounter one of the fundamental problems of software design: when you add more features, you inherently make the program more complex. It is much easier to design a simple interface for low-complexity software than it is do design a simple interface for high-complexity software. This new version of MS Office looks like they have "dumbed-down" the interface. This is risky, because I would guess that the people who buy MS Office most frequently are organizations who employ people who use MS Office frequently. Many of these users are advanced users who have come to rely on the advanced features that Office 97-2003 (or whatever) have provided. Now, I recognize that these features will continue to exist in some form in the newest Office, but if the end users perceive that the features have gone AWOL, they aren't going to want to upgrade. So if you want a simple interface for new users, then you provide that. But advanced users expect an advanced interface, and these days expect that there will be more than one way to accomplish a specific task. (Take a current version of Word, for example. Offhand I can think of five different ways to make text appear in bold. And I'm sure there are other ways, and other combinations even in my five examples (show below). (1. Type the word. Highlight it. Right click on the highlighted area. Select "Font". Select bold. Click Ok. 2. Type the word. Highlight it. Press Ctrl + B on the keyboard. 3. Type the word. Highlight it. Click the bold button on the tool bar 4. Press Ctrl + B on the keyboard to enable bold. Type the word. Press Ctrl + B on the keyboard to disable bold. 5. Click the bold button on the toolbar to enable bold. Type the word. Click the bold button on the toolbar to disable bold.) The point of this exercise is just to illustrate that Word is a complex piece of software, and you will have different users who will use each of the different methods outlined above. So when you dumb-down the interface, you may cut out three of the five listed methods. Then how does the user who used one of those methods feel about the new program? As an advanced Office user, I would feel betrayed by a newer version of Word that dumbs down the interface to the point that I no longer want to use it. Then again, I reached that point when I was introduced to OpenOffice.org a year ago.

I also did this. How you go about it will depend on the theme you are using, so maybe if you still need help, you can give us the theme you are using, and we can tell you where in your theme files you will need to add the code that will show the author's name. I did this on my WP blog, and it works great. http://blog.paulpehrson.com

Welcome to the forum, dj2000! After two weeks of using Google Talk, I'll have to say I'm disappointed. I ended up having to re-install my Gmail notifier, and I had to disable the email notifier in Google Talk. Why? Because for whatever reason, my Google Talk Gmail notifier unregistered gmail as my primary email, but it didn't re-register gmail as my primary email. So whenever I would click on ANY mailto link, nothing happened. When I got notified of a new message, I couldn't click on the message icon to open Gmail. Also, I never got the Account Settings button in the General area to do anything. I uninstalled Google Talk, and reinstalled it, but none of the above mentioned problems were fixed. So, now I'm using a hybrid of Google Talk and Gmail notifier. I submitted a bug report to Google, but I haven't heard back from them. I am still a fan of the clean UI, and Google Talk has some nifty features that I do like. We'll see if they can fix some of the problems that I've encountered before I give it two thumbs up.

Well, interestingly enough, the reason Microsoft is switching to a different UI is because their basic user interface (UI) hasn't changed since Office 97. For almost 10 years now, the MS Office Suite has looked basically the same. Each new version has added maybe a fancier skin to the core application, but this is the first time in a decade that MS is considering a fundamental shift in the UI of Office. As a technical writer, I'll tell you that MS Word isn't my choice for long documents or documents that contain a lot of images. At work we use Adobe Framemaker for our book files and I personally use OpenOffie (I use the beta 2 version) for my other documents. I would use WordPerfect (I was a WordPerfect fan since version 4 (yes, on DOS)), but when I went to college, I was forced to use Word. For basic documents, I've leared that if Word is what you've got, then it will be fine. (Although to this day I wonder why you set page margins in the File | Page Setup menu. In WordPerfect, it is on the Format | Page menu, where page margins SHOULD be!) If you've been given a choice, though, I'd consider OpenOffice, or WordPerfect -- both of which are much more standards-compliant than Word, and both of which are willing to play with the other kids on the block. Word is the stuck-up bratty kid that thinks it is so much better than everybody else that it doesn't have to play well with the other children. Oh, back to Word 12. I think that such a dramatic change to the UI is risky. And I agree with the author of the linked article in that if it is successful, then it could influence the way that all Windows UIs are designed for the next decade. But if it is a flop, then it will be a big flop, and MS will take a big hit in their cash cow line. But one thing is certain; when Office 12 goes live, OpenOffice and WordPerfect will be sporting the "old" look. Depending on whether or not people like Office 12, this could be a good or a bad thing. And looking at the pictures provided in that article, I wonder how you do some very basic tasks... like Printing, or sending the file as an email, or (gasp!) changing the margins. If the program isn't intuitive for computer-savvy folk, it will be a REALLY hard sell to the non-computer-savy folk.

Looks interseting. I think it will confuse semi-novice users who have finally become acustomed to the interface. I mean, what if you just want to print the dumb thing? Wonder what button you click on? It isn't obvious from the main interface. I think, as mentioned in the article, it will be very interesting to see what other office suites (like WordPerfect, and OpenOffice.org) do in reaction. I don't think I love the new layout. But maybe it will just take some getting used to.

impleri, No specific answer to your question, but I bet that a number of our users will be curious to know what LDAP is. Here is a website that gives a pretty good explanation of what LDAP is: h**p://www.gracion.com/server/whatldap.html

family

Have you tried opening a help desk ticket, and pointing them at this thread? I wonder if the admins are aware thatthere is a problem, and that server 60 seems to be the one affected.... EDIT: I realize that you opened a help desk ticket before, but they might think that the problem you opened the ticket about is already resolved. It seems that there might be a larger issue here, and pointing them to this thread might be helpful. Just my 2cents worth!!

I don't mind giving people the option to only be contacted via PM, but I'm afraid that I'd have too many users who wouldn't hide their email addresses, and then they would be setting themselves up for SPAM harvesters. And I don't want to have to go modify this setting for all users individually. It just seems odd to me that SMF hasn't realized that putting email addresses in a simple mailto: format on the webpages isn't a good idea anymore. 10 years ago it was fine. Today it isn't a good practice if you care about the people using your software.

The thing that I had the hardest time remembering was that you had to put your login name, then the plus sign, then your domain name and extension. So if I were jon@example.com, and I was entering my username for my mail, I had to enter jon+example.com. Maybe that will help...

pretend

Yes, you can HIDE your address using that option, but then nobody can CONTACT you via e-mail. Their only route to contacting you is sending a PM. I really like phpBB and IPBs form that still sends the message to your email account, while keeping your email address secure (so no other non-moderators can see what your email address is).

John, Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunatley, I did try to unplug the router... actually I unplugged the router AND the cable modem. Then I turned back on the cable modem, waited for it to reset, and then plugged back in the router. Still having the same troubles. But thanks, all for your suggestions.

Raul, I learned Portuguese while living in São Paulo, Brazil. I lived there from 97 to 99. Some might argue, then, that I didn't really learn 'real Português' but I guess that is a matter of opinion! (For those of you who don't know, the dialectal differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese are as different as European Spanish is from Mexican Spanish, or as European French is from Canadian French.)

For what it's worth: I've been testing SMF now for a couple of days, as I consider releasing it on my site, and I have to say I think it has one MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR drawback, and it is a drawback that makes me think I probably won't use it on my own site: Each member's email address is shown in clear-text form on every web page that they post on. SPAM harvesters must love SM forums, because you can harvest addresses galore. Invision boards and phpBB forums (the other two that I am familiar with) keep the address secure in the database, and provide a web form to use to send an email to forum members. But while SMF uses mailto: links, I'm not sure that I can, in good conscience, use SMF as my main forum software. (That is unless somebody here knows of a mod or something that would get aroud this problem...)

cake (I used party but then I re-read, and it was the word like 3 words ago. So I switched to cake

Good question. I don't rembember. But if I replace the router (which it looks like I may have to do), I'll be sure to change it next time. Thanks for your help.

I think carbonize is right -- it depends on the application that receives the email. But it does add an entry into the email header, I'm sure its for tracking purposes, called "Sender: MyGmailAddress@gmail.com" That must be what your application is picking up and using. The test apps I used didn't pay attention to this entry unless you asked for full headers.