Posts by MidiMagic

How do we know you aren't trying to break into someone else's computer?

I had that problem too, and it had nothing to do with a virus. One company is using a file extension for its music files that is the same extension name used for a Microsoft installation file. The bad part is that the music program came out before MS grabbed the extension.

I had to turn on "display system files and folders" in the My Computer options to see my files. I also had to switch the file extension to the music program in Options. It requires an extra step when Microsoft wants certain upgrades, but it works.

Another possibility is that your folder has an illegal folder name, or contains an illegal nonprinting character in it. Try making a new foilder and moving the files there.

There is a Trojan Horse appearing on some websites that claims that it "needs an updated driver" to display a video or similar file. It won't let you back out from installing the "upgrade," opening the same window again and again. But it is no upgrade; it is a Trojan Horse designed to take over your computer.

I encountered several sites proffering Woodstock footage that set the trap, but there are others too. Once you enter the page, the trap is already sprung. The install window opens immediately.

Once you see the install window that won't let you refuse installation, the ONLY way to keep it from installing the malware is to Ctrl-Alt-Del and close your browser through the task manager. You will have to tell it you want to close it anyway when it says the browser is waiting for your input.

If you accidentally installed it, the Symantec antivirus program can remove it.

See my post in viruses forum.

The scoping rules are slightly different for objects.

With a variable, the scoping is as you would expect it. But with an object (an array or some other kind of construct), the scoping is quite different.

When you pass an object, or part of an object as a function parameter, you are actually sending a pointer that tells where the object is. This usually works as expected, but the function can not return a changed object back through a parameter.

A few tips:

1. FF usually follows the W3C standards better than IE does. So designing for IE is usually the troublemaker.

2. The defaults for text positioning (text-align and vertical-align) are different for the two browsers. Define them in styles, and the browsers will act alike.

3. Don't put size styles (width, height) and surrounding styles (margin, border, padding) in the same tag or style. IE and FF nest them in the opposite order.

Store pictures in an OLE type field.

Do you want to display the formula, or execute it?

You have a scoping problem.

Your values created in foo are local to that function. They don't exist outside the bounds of that function.

Declare some global variables at the top of your .js file. Then assign the values created inside foo to those variables.

Two questions:

1. Are all of the icons somehow selected?

2. What kind of file is the wallpaper?

I have the latest FF browser.

I think the page never loads because the ad times out. About 3/4 of the time, the post works when this happens.

Is the screen set to a low resolution? Some video games do that.

There used to be settings for tab stop spacing in the browsers. They seem to have been removed.

80 characters per line would fit if there were not a stripe down the side for ads.

> But your site makes the tip appear almost immediately. The standard tip takes 2 seconds on FF.

2 seconds? Do you have proof of this? The default time for Windows tooltips is 400 ms and is a setting in the registry. It affects all Windows-based apps including the Start Menu, Explorer, Internet Explorer, etc. For FireFox to have a different setting, I guess they don't use the Windows-based tooltips but instead their own application-specific ones? Our tooltips used to be 250 ms and we just upped it to 500 ms, to make it on par with the Windows default.

I don't really know how to prove it, but I put a digital clock next to the screen. But human reaction time is .35 to .85 seconds, so I can't get it any closer. I am seeing three different times on automatic displays on these pages:

- A period too short to measure on the dropdown menus.
- about half a second on the DaniWeb tooltips.
- About 1.5 seconds on the Windows screen tips (e.g. on the DaniWeb link in the upper left corner).

Another difference is that the Daniweb tooltip takes time (about 1/2 second) to completely appear.

I want you to imagine the following:

A website loads a full screen if information. Then a tooltip appears, and immediately the rest of the screen clears. Then the information loads again. And every time a tooltip appears or disappears, this same thing happens …

Opened links from pages are governed by settings in the browser. They do not remember the previous settings like direct openings can.

Okay... you say that you want it to take on the same style as outside the list.
Please tell me you have styling for Paragraphs...????

No, because they were taking different styles from parent tags at various places in the document. If they weren't, it would have been easier.

Several facts:

- The viewport height is not normally something the page rendering engine takes into account. It is expected to place things against the top, and then add them on downward until it runs out of material. The emphasis is in fitting things to the page horizontally. If it won't fit, the page expands downward.

- Vertical centering is not generally provided, because of the above, and because different computers have different screen resolutions.

- It is almost impossible to make something exactly fit a page in all browsers, screen resolutions, font size settings, opened window sizes, and browser defaults.

- You can define styles for the td and th tags setting the text-align and vertical-align styles to what you want. This overrides the browser defaults.

- To keep stuff from rendering different between IE and FF, do not put size styles (height and width) and nonzero surrounding styles (margin, border, and padding) in the same tags or styles. IE and FF render them in the opposite nesting order. Use two nested tag pairs to specify the order they will be applied.

I suggest that you center things horizontally, and let the vertical parts end up where they do. Busting your buttons over trying to center stuff on the page vertically in all browsers and window sizes is a waste of time.

Thanks.

The problem was that I had:

- a master list of several hundred elements
- an h2 title at the top of each list item
- several different kinds of html elements in the different list items (after the h2 titles)
- adding a class to each element other than the li and h2 tags would have been time-prohibitive.

The normal-sized li numbers looked funny beside the large h2 text in the headers. I wanted the li numbers to take the font and size from the h2 tag.

I was converting an old "tag soup" HTML file where someone actually got it to work on most browsers in quirks mode. But the trouble is that it had tangled tags:

<ol>
   <h2><li>heading 1</h2>
     <p>body of list item</p>
   <h2><li>heading 2</h2>
     <p>body of list item</p>
</ol>

Every attempt to validate this and make it render like the old page failed.

I solved it by using these selectors:

body>ol>li {styles}
body>ol>li>* {styles}
body>ol>li>h2 {styles}

The thing that you don't see is that the object is created globally. The thing passed around in the function calls is a pointer to the object, not the object itself.

That's because the right click is part of windows, not your web page.

You don't have the right to prevent it. It belongs to the owner of the computer.

What could possibly be in the XML content of a file that you want to hide?

If you are afraid that someone will steal a programming technique you devised, then put a notice in that programming.

If the user is viewing the rendered file, the file is on the user's computer disk already. He can get it with My Computer using the start button, and you can't do anything to prevent that.

You do not have the RIGHT to mess with someone else's computer. That includes the clipboard. It does not belong to you.

That person may have multiple windows open, where he is actively using the clipboard to move content between documents. He might even be doing this automatically under a script. If he pauses to check his email, and someone links him to your page, he is going to be really mad when his clipboard contents from the other process are disrupted. And if he gets someone's porn pictures in a customer's file (instead of his engine parts diagram), because you were messing with the clipboard, you might get slapped with a charge of computer invasion.

If your precious pictures are so valuable, then DON'T put them on a website. Suggestions on legal ways of doing what you want without breaking laws:

- If you are selling the photos, put low resolution versions on the site. Make sure you actually reduce the file size, not just the dimensions. Last week, I downloaded a thumbnail, and found the entire picture in the file - at 1200 px/in - I just had to enlarge it with a photo editor, reducing the resolution to 200 px/in in the process.

- If the user is paying for a download, I should think he should have the right to save a copy.

- If the person saved a copy for private use for research purposes, it is legal. The copyright …

How about just asking if the end time is less than or equal to 2 hours past the start time. If it is so, add 24 hours.

Several questions:

1. How are you starting the scripts? If you don't specify how they start (i.e. onclick, etc.), only the last one defined in the body tag will start.

2. Are the scripts in the header? Scripts in the header will not run until told to by a command in a tag in the body.

3. Did you think of calling one script from the other?

4. Do the scripts have some variable names in common? Make sure they do not share variable names. All global variables will keep their values from one script to the other.

It is somehow activating the security alert system - or doing a good job of faking it.

I had thought of that, but I was hoping to allow the rest of the text in the list to inherit the style outside the list.

I went ahead and increased the delay from a quarter of a second to a half second for the tooltips. Five seconds is silly - no one hovers over a link for 5 seconds before clicking on it.

Because of my low-level dyslexia, I use the mouse pointer to follow my reading, so I don't lose my place or repeat lines. The tips prevent that, by covering the text I'm trying to read. That share box does the same thing in the original post of each topic.

The delay is about a quarter of a second - too short. 5 seconds is more appropriate. Two minutes is my preferred choice.

> 95% of DaniWeb users don't spend two minutes browsing DaniWeb per day, nevermind two minutes to wait for a hover! :) The hover time is the same as the amount of time the browser takes by default to show it's built-in tooltips feature. The only difference is ours are styled.

I was being sarcastic on the 2 minutes. But your site makes the tip appear almost immediately. The standard tip takes 2 seconds on FF.

I am now seeing some of the same problems I saw last summer again, now that you removed the ability to defeat the JS parts of the site:

- The scroll arrows don't auto-repeat when you hold the mouse button down. You have to click the mouse repeatedly to scroll.

> I have absolutely NO idea why this would be caused by the JS?

- The insertion point disappears from the quick reply box again.
> Huh?

I reported this last year. But see below.

- The ads are using 100 percent of the CPU time again.

> Our feature that disabled JavaScript did not disable anything advertising related. This might just be a coincidence that a new ad campaign launched and it's a hog.

I have since determined that the scroll problem, the disappearing cursor, and the 100% CPU are the same thing - the ad-hog stealing …

No, don't do that. It will leave JavaScript errors all over the page. Instead, edit your hosts file to block www.daniweb.com/scripts/style.php. That will block all JavaScript-enhanced style elements on DaniWeb - the dropdown navigation menu, the tooltips, etc.

Where is this hosts file? I have Firefox.

How do you make a style that affects the font attributes of only the numbers in ordered lists (ol) without affecting the contents of the list items?

No kludges please, and the solution must validate as XHTML 1.0 strict.

Realize that if you put size styles (width, height) and border styles (margin, border, padding) in the same tag or style, it will always mess up on either IE or FF. They display these styles in the opposite nesting order (FF follows the W3C standard).

The trick is to nest two tags, one with size styles, and the other with surround styles. Then YOU get to select the nesting order, and the page works on all browsers.

If you want the page to exactly fill the screen for all browsers, you can't do that.

Selected is not an attribute. Focus is a pseudoclass.

Never put size styles (width, height) in the same tag or style as surrounding styles (margin, border, padding). IE nests them in the wrong order (surrounds inside sizes). Other browsers obey the standard, and nest sizes inside surrounds.

To use both, nest two divs, with sizes in one, and surrounds in the other. Now you set the order for all browsers.

I can't see all of it if it doesn't scroll.

That would make me click my back button and never return. Websites should be predictable.

This is a case where computer rules overrule the federal government.

Javascript might be useful here. But they are asking for things that are generally not supplied.

The <!-- --> comments are not valid inside the style tags. You can't use them to comment styles. Stylesheet comments are enclosed with /* */ delimeters.

IE is actually the noncompliant browser. It violates more web standards than the others.

The biggest problems between FF and IE are:

1. IE has nonstandard extensions that don't work on other browsers. Avoid them.

2. IE displays surrounding styles in a nonstandard way. The standard says that surrounding styles (margin, border, padding) should display OUTSIDE any size style (height, width) in the same tag. IE puts the surrounding styles INSIDE the sizes instead. This causes problems in how objects fit on the page.

The trick to this is to never put surrounding styles and size styles in the same tag or style. If you need both, nest tags containing them in the desired order.

3. IE and FF have different defaults for many styles, especially in tables (e.g. vertical-align). To get the pages to display alike, define the styles that appear different.

4. IE displays fonts one pixel wider than FF does.

Both are required to make the page validate with the W3C. Validation is a very good way to troubleshoot a malfunctioning page. It also makes the employers happy if you can make valid pages.

That meta tag is not used to guide search engines, but to tell the browser what character set to use. It is required for validation.

Look for the tutorials on the W3C site.

Get a book. I have the Wiley Press "HTML, XHTML, and CSS Bible"

Play with it.

Datasheet view shows the data in the database. It also allows you to enter and edit the data. It does not let you change the format of the database, other than minor changes (such as displayed column widths).

Design view allows you to create or change the table, form, or other database object, and configure the fields. You can also set keys and restrict the values entered here. But you can't change the database data in design view.

You don't use one or the other exclusively. You constantly switch back and forth between them while designing your database. Use the View button to do this.

When any database object is open and has focus, the leftmost button on the standard toolbar is the view button. Use it to toggle between datasheet view and design view.

In design view, clicking the View button switches you to datasheet view.

In datasheet view, clicking the View button switches you to design view.

You can select other views with its dropdown arrow.

It is probably the most used button on the toolbar.

I usually use Create Table in Design View to makle the database table, then enter the data with either the datasheet view or a form.

Export the data using Access, then use the application to open that.

Go to Design View on the form, and insert the header as needed.

Stop trying to take over the user's computer.

It belongs to that user, NOT TO YOU!

If you want to protect your pages from things the user can do, then DON'T PUBLISH THEM ON THE INTERNET!

I am totally sick of website developers trying to take control of the user's computer.

That computer and its controls belongs to the owner of the computer, NOT TO YOU.

You could be charged with computer crimes if you succeed in locking part of a user's computer.

If you have files so sensitive that you don't want the user doing something with his computer, then DON'T PUBLISH THEM ON THE INTERNET.

I am totally sick of website creators trying to control the user's computer.

Such functions belong to the owner of the computer, NOT TO YOU!

If you don't want people printing your precious little pictures, don't publish them on the Internet.

We have LanSchool, which lets the teacher's station set the student stations to allow or disallow using web browsers at the teacher's command.

RED X causes:

1. Not enough RAM to display the pictures. Upgrade is the only cure.

2. Not enough Internet Cache space reserved to hold the pictures. Reset the size so the entire page fits in the cache.

3. The files are not present on the website server. The webmaster has to deal with this. If it's your site, you must upload the files.

4. No public permission set on the photos. The webmaster must set the permission levels on the photo files to allow public access to download them.

5. Security settings on your browser. If the security is too strict, photos won't download.

6. File contents don't match the extension. If the file is a .gif file, but has a .jpg extension, the browser fails when trying to display the image. The file type might also be one the browser doesn't know how to handle. Stick with .gif and .jpg, unless you are sure that all of your users can use the file type you have.

7. No permission to download photos through your ISP.

8. Firewall blocking photo download. This is especially prevalent in some business networks, to keep employees from downloading porn.

9. Strange monitor configuration, where the browser can't send images to your monitor.

10. Browser set to text-only mode.

Your DVD player for TV won't play any computer files. You have to convert it to video to do it on your TV.