Boojum

Well, let's say one problem down and one to go. The broken images seem corrected, but there is still a disparity of width between the upper portion of the page containing the menu and the lower portion containing the text. It appears that the border around the former is just a bit narrower than that around the rest, and this applies to both 832 x 624 and 800 x 600. Still ... definite progress.

Natalie, Unfortunately, the slices still don't quite mesh. I'm using Internet Exploiter 5.16 on a Macintosh Power Mac 6500/250 running OS 9.1 at a resolution of 832 x 624 and 32-bit color. Brian

A Wind in the Door (by Madeline L'Engel)

Love. (As in Eros and Thanatos.)

Life. (Bios is Greek for "life.")

I don't know, Rob. I hope you'll learn from this who wields the real power in any marriage: she who can assign you to the couch. And She Who Can Assign You to the Couch had best not be disrespected. (My wife would have laughed and said "Better a smartass than a dumbass," but that's my wife. Yours is obviously equipped with a different sense of humor.)

My crack legal team, immediately upon completion of its rehab program, examined this issue in all due depth and has determined that nothing: 1) cannot be patented because it doesn't exist, and 2) even if it did exist, it is incorporated into Everything Else, on which of course I hold the patent. The team thereupon returned to its rehab program for an additional 30 days on the grounds that the preceding opinion constitutes prima facie evidence of continued mental disturbance.

AHA! I'm a conservative so there! I make liberal use of nothing. Like Robert said, Nyah! (You really do have too much time on your hands don't you? ) 1) If you're going to take that attitude, I will be forced to retract the amnesty offer. You therefore now owe me $8.31 x 10^664, payable six billion years ago. At five trillion percent interest, compounded hourly, you therefore owe a total that cannot be displayed without exceeding the server capacity. 2) Since you will never be able to pay that amount, I will accept payment in kind. To be precise, you owe so much that you'll be a liberal if I say you will ... and be glad I haven't reassigned you as a Peruvian Shining Path Maoist—yet. 3) As for time on my hands, I would like you to compare the number of posts I've added to this forum with the number contributed by the late, lamented Robert. 4) Be glad you're useful enough not to have shared Robert's fate—again, yet. 5) 6) So there.

I hereby revoke your existence license, retroactive to the moment of conception. Please hand in your body, mind and soul to the Head Guru, who is my agent in this matter and authorized to draw 10 percent of all profits. The good news is, TCH is now worth $7.61 x 10^32 and appreciating at a rate of 65 billion percent per day. Therefore, Rock Sign and rolls!

Wallbanger. (A Harvey Wallbanger is a kind of cocktail.) Speaking of Harvey Mudd, though, I can't help wondering if he's any relation to Star Trek's Harcourt Fenton Mudd.

Penelope.

Please note that the application of the rules cited varies with context. Most of these rules are in accordance with the Associated Press and other style guides written for newspapers and other periodicals, but in literary usage you will find, for example, eight grams, three feet and six o'clock (although not with a.m.). You will also find numbers greater than 10 written out. In general, e-mail is in something of a gray area. It is neither literary nor journalistic, so it is not possible to apply cut-and-dried formulas. Some e-mailers will spell out "ninety-seven," others will write "97," others will vacillate and use both at different times, and still others can't count to 97. In answer to Jikrantz's question, however, to the extent that English does formulate a general distinction, it is as quoted: Numbers one through nine are almost always written out, and those 10 and above more frequently appear as numerals.

Not if you patent said something 15 billion years or so before the existence of the patent office. By the way, itemizing the royalties you owe me for the patented components of the preceding question, I find: Matter (gray; used for thinking; approx. 4 lb @ $.98/lb) + (fleshware; used to support gray matter; approx. 200 lb @ $.98/lb) + (food; used to support fleshware; approx. 1825 lb/yr x approx. 45 yr @ [avg] $4.27/lb) + (air; used to support respiration; approx. 2.7 x 10^29 l @ $0.000312/l) + (water; used to maintain hydration; approx. 1.3 x 10^5 l @ $0.0173/l) + Energy (1.39 x 10^229 kEv @ $0.000276/kEv) + (1.62 x 10^18 joules @ $0.0000724/joule) + Evolution (3.2 billion years @ $1.27/yr) ______________________________________ More money than you or anyone else will ever have. (Please note: I am allowing you a temporary amnesty on your royalty debts for Antimatter, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Time, Space, Gravity, Creation, Destruction, Thought, Imagination, Language and All Components thereof, Mathematics and All Components thereof, the Laws of Physics and Everything Else, in spite of your liberal use of all of them. This is partly an act of kindness, and partly a result of the fact that all the universe's accountants are now in bankruptcy for overusing Mathematics and All Components thereof. As soon as they emerge from bankruptcy, of course, I will have to charge them for using bankruptcy itself, since it is clearly a subset of Everything Else.)

Jim is, of course, quite right: Alt is an attribute of an <img ...> tag, and title most commonly an attribute of <a href ...>.

Natalie, It looks great, except that some graphic slices don't quite line up. Brian

Mired.

Nicole. (My daughter's middle name—it is from the Greek for "victory of the people.")

[Pant! Pant! Whew!] Okay, everyone: I just returned from a trip back to the ultimate past—the exact moment of the Big Bang—where I have patented the following: Matter Antimatter Energy Dark Matter Dark Energy Time Space Gravity Creation Evolution Destruction Thought Imagination Language and all components thereof Mathematics and all components thereof The laws of physics Everything else I also took the precaution of retroactively patenting anything that may be imagined or invented by anyone using any of the above, with or without licensure. By my calculations, you now jointly and severally owe me the combined GNP of this and every other universe past, present or to come. I'll thank you to pay me now, before you get any further into debt. (Please note that I have foreclosed the patent office for patent infringement. If you wish to patent anything [after paying your share of the debt mentioned above, of course], contact me. I will not grant you a patent, but I can virtually promise you a good belly-laugh at your expense.)

Use "alt" (as I understand it, this is now actually required) for images. This is to allow nongraphical browsers, spiders and other visitors that can't see images to see a text placeholder. It will generally remain invisible, however, as long as your browser is set to display images. It is not designed for text links. "Title," on the other hand, is designed to provide purely elective additional information on either images or text. This will generally appear as a hover effect (depending on your browser) whether images can be seen or not; it is not a substitute for images, and it will therefore not satisfy the HTML alt requirement. As !!blue says, images can be assigned both alt and title tags—but, again, the former is required and the latter is not. Using alt for text, however, is not logical in that the text will appear no matter the visitor's settings, so there is nothing to substitute the tag for and no one will ever see it.

As long as you don't put them before the horse. (After all, that would be a hysteron-proteron fallacy.)

Natalie, I just visited the new_site version you linked to under UPDATE. Examining it at 832x624, I find it apparently functional but not centered. This is increasingly apparent as I stretch the window horizontally, and will probably also appear at higher resolutions. Try tossing in <div align=center> between your <body> tag and the beginning of your page content (and don't forget the closing </div>) and see if that doesn't correct the page's appearance at the higher resolutions. (And you are right: It is quite difficult and frustrating to try to make one's site accessible at all commonly encountered resolutions. Having just spent a fair amount of time recoding 44 pages to do exactly what I just described, I now find the site looks strange at 640 x 480. However, I've decided for my own purposes to do what you mentioned above and sacrifice the few folks who still use that resolution—or, for that matter, 256 colors—on the theory that they are a vanishing breed in any case.)

Natalie, Regarding this issue with images not appearing: It is possible but not, I think, likely that this is the result of your machine dying. I would first suspect a browser-cache problem, RAM limitations arising in response to the accumulation of images viewed over time, or even a browser installation error. You may also have a remote server problem with your ISP. My inclination would be to thoroughly clear the browser cache first, and if this doesn't work, check your RAM with the browser in operation and see if you have a sufficient margin for error. If neither of these suffices, you could try contacting your ISP to find out how often its cache is updated. The last resort is to reinstall your browser. (Well, maybe the second to last: The very last resort is reinstalling Windows completely. This even though most computer forums are filled with helpful folks who will tell you to do a clean system reinstall in response to any and all issues that may arise.)

Weakened (or "weekend") is the state you're in at the end of a long week at work.

It could also be posited that Don's weekend is not at all belated; that, in fact, ours was "be-earlied."

I think I've fixed the centering problem. May I ask those of you who use high resolutions (above 800 x 600) to examine the site and let me know if it looks all right?