A Google Browser on the horizon?
Posted by jerothe in 
Came across an article today about Google possibly making their own browser. It wouldn’t be a venture to profit per say, they probably wouldn’t start from scratch in making a browser, instead it would most likely be based off the open source Mozilla project using the Gecko rendering engine. Google has had strong support for the Mozilla project and browsers awareness in the past few months.
The speculation is a result of a registered domain space called Gbrowser. Want to learn more? Check out this link to ZDNet..
Another browser alternative option to Microsoft Internet Explorer known at K-Meleon.
Another browser based off the open source Mozilla project, K-Meleon is a fast browser, but isn’t much for looks. But, I always like to find out about different browsers. Check out more about it at the K-Meleon homepage and try it out.
How to write Interchange comments
This should have been obvious to me, but wasn’t until this point. Today I picked up that in order to comment something out in ITL (Interchange Tag Language) you need to surround the comment in [comment] tags.
For example;
[comment] This is a comment. [/comment]
Question: Does anyone out there know if there is a character limit for the URL Link?
I have this encoded URL link that I am using to get a specific address entered when someone clicks a link to Mapquest. However, it seems to truncate the link after a certain amount of characters, and I am having a hard time finding answers on the internet and in Flash forums. If anyone knows they can email me here jrothe {at} rothecreations(.)com.
HTML comments do not work in Interchange
You know now how to trouble shoot having incorrect line breaks in the theme file, which is part of the base which around Interchange works. But you still need to learn about the nuances of troubleshooting problems in Interchange.
Interchange’s parsing engine will parse through every bit of code, including HTML, ignoring it if it doesn’t understand.
However, this means that if you comment out a piece of Interchange ITL code with HTML comments, it will still parse it. So, make sure that if you are testing, and you want to not permanently remove something, just delete it really quick, publish it and check the changes. Then do a redo if it doesn’t work. This seems strange at the moment, but as of now I do not claim to be an Interchange expert and I may find out how to truly comment out Interchange code.
I think that Interchange comments are used with a # sign, but I will have to write back about that.
My Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer keep giving me an error message that says "Fatal Error"
I recently learned that Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer for Windows use the same technology to run. So, if you are getting an error message for either one, it is actually the same error because they are just different versions of one another.
If you want to try to fix the problems you are having, locate your Windows install CD, no matter whether you are running 98, ME, XP, whatever.
Go to your start menu
Choose “Run”, or hit on your keyboard the Windows Key + R, which is the same thing.
Type in sfc /scannow. This should scan for problems with Windows Explorer and try to fix them.
If this doesn’t solve your problems, try downloading Spyboy: Search and Destroy Version 1.3 and do a scan disk for any spyware that could be messing up your system. For more information do a search on the internet on either of these topics.
Document Type Declaration doesn't work when I use an echo statement in PHP.
This is actually mostly a PHP thing, but since I don’t have a section for PHP and it uses HTML tags.
The problem is that you cannot have anything print out to screen before the Document Type Declaration (DTD) at the top of your HTML document. It can cause funny things to happen. If you are using it just for testing purposes, don’t worry about the errors continuing when you post your site pages live.
The particular problem we were having was with a center aligned using CSS content section. By the DTD not being declared first, the CSS was not reading correctly and hence did not look right.
Which should I use, relative or absolute positioning?
My biggest problem from when I first used layers back in the year I graduated in 2002, Dreamweaver would define the layers markup in the HTML page, all with absolute positioning. The problem with this was, as we all know, that each browser would read that differently, and it wouldn’t allow for any sort of a liquid layout with objects sizing to different browser windows.
As I have been building my CSS webpage, I have found that relative positioning in extremely useful, and here’s how.
If you haven’t figured out yet, the base of most CSS sites is what is usually termed a “wrapper”. Basically, this is a layer that contains every single piece of your content and subsequent layers.
Here is an example of code for a “wrapper”. (I am using an ID since it won’t be repeated more than once on a page;
div#wrapper{
margin:0 auto;
width:720px;
height:500px;
}
This is just an example, and you would probably use a combination of styles in the Body selector and more in the wrapper ID to set up the base for your site. Note:Take a look at the shorthand for the margin declaration. It is set to 0 and auto. The first measurement is for the margin of top and bottom, the second is for the left and right margin.
I don’t fully understand how “auto” works, but basically in this instance, it will center your wrapper in the middle of your browser window no matter what size.
Getting back to the original point, now you can set in each of your following containing block elements, or layers, the position:relative and set the margin in relationship to the position of the “wrapper”.
For example;
div#header{
margin-left:20px;
position:relative;
width:680px;
}
Another note, just like tables will render top to bottom in the manner that they are stacked in the code, so will layers. Each layer will render on top of each other in relation to how they are written in the code. (Unless you have a z-index set, but that is a whole other entry.)
This snippet of code will set a contain that is positioned in relation to the wrapper, 20 pixels from the left, in the very top because you don’t specify margin-top, and will be centered actually if you take a look at the wrapper width and this “header” container width.
This is really useful to get pixel perfect alignment, and along with using the float property can be very powerful.
How do I use the Float property?
“Float” is a property that I was not familiar with until I started working with CSS extensively. It is most commonly used as the equivalent of word or text wraps in the print world. Try this as an example;
IMG#example{
float:left;
}
This will set an ID for the IMG selector with a name of example. Then, open Dreamweaver, make a webpage with a table and a table cell and paste some copy into the cell. Then, insert an image and give the IMG tag the id name and the text should wrap around the image.
img src=”example.jpg” id=”example”…
To stylize the image further, so the text isn’t pressed right up against the sides, add a little padding to that style, shorthand for every side, and the image will move away from the text.
IMG#example{
float:left;
padding:10px;
}
While Float is the main building block for the three column CSS layout, it can also be used with two tables.
Make a new .html webpage and have two tables stacked on top of one another. Then, like we set for the IMG, set an ID using the Table selector specific to each table.
Table#left{
float:left;
}
Table#right{
float:right;
}
Apply the ID’s and watch what happens. There are some interesting applications where this can be used.
Setting the Table Selector Padding and Margin to 0 will left justify a webpage.
I was having some weird problems in Mozilla with my webpage, which was set to align=”center”, actually aligning to the left. Earlier on, I had set my “Table” selector margin and padding to 0px because I was getting weird spaces between tables when I was stacking them inside of a table cell.
But, after I removed that declaration of the table selector from my stylesheet, the webpage aligned to center again. I don’t really have more of an explanation, instead chalk that up to a browser quirk.
How do I make my website code XHTML and CSS compliant?
As I have been looking at CSS based websites, I have noticed that the cool thing to do, is at the bottom of the site list the words XHTML and CSS. Upon closer inspection, I found these were links to site validators, and as I clicked them, they validated just fine. I figured, cool, one more way to show my expertise on the subject. (Forgetting that I was still learning.)
I decided to put the links at the bottom of my site. As it has grown exponentially in the last couple of weeks, I haven’t even bothered to click on those links. But during testing the other day, I did. I remembered reading about XHTML specs a year or so ago, and didn’t see that much difference from HTML 4.01. However, when I clicked the links for validation, I was in for a surprise.
Basically, here is what I learned as I had to go back and fix a million errors. Thank God for the find and replace in Dreamweaver, otherwise I wouldn’t be typing this entry from the light at the other side of the tunnel.
As a little sidebar, the X in HTML is taken from XML. In XML you cannot have an open tag, all tags must be closed in order for the file to work.
First:
Make sure that any HTML tags that don’t have a closing set, now have a closing tag.
E.G. Your Link, Meta, IMG, and BR tags
This is how you should correctly write one of these tags, using the IMG selector as our example. “src=”something.jpg” alt=”One cool Image” />”
Which brings us to the next point, all images must have alt tags filled in. This is to make your site accessible to more devices that have access to the internet mostly.
All of your HTML tags must be lowercase. Gone are the days of tags that look like this.
TABLE CELLSPACING=”0″>
In order to be XHTML compliant, this same line of code will look like this;
table cellspacing=”0″>
Make sure you define your measurements in your stylesheets. This is not as common, but you can no longer write;
.style{
margin-left:0;
}
The correct way to write this is;
.style{
margin-left:0px;
}
Finally, this was one I didn’t know, as opposed to the other ones I kind of remembered reading about, but just was lazy about implementing.
When writing your semantic style sheet, use ID’s sparingly. ID’s are meant for one instance only, per one webpage. Also, when defined ID’s will always take precedence over a selector specific class. But let me back up.
This is an example ID, notice the pound sign. This style will be applied only to tables with an ID of “hotWheels”.
table#hotWheels{
font-weight:bold;
}
Now if you try to use that same table with the ID “hotWheels” and set a class where the font-weight is not bold you will run into a problem. The ID takes precedence, and sets the font weight for the whole table to bold. You would have to set another ID for one particular section of text to set the font-weight back to normal.
A better way to have written this was a Selector specific class like such;
table.hotWheels{
font-weight:bold;
}
Now you can set all sorts of classes in the table with font-weight’s and not have to worry about them being bold.
Why doesn't my new window open using Javascript.
This is not generally my area of expertise. However, the senior programmer I work with, Chris Antoine, came across this when working the other day.
He was simply trying to open a new window using javascript, but it wasn’t working. What he found was that when there was a space in the name of the window, the script wouldn’t work in Internet Explorer.
So, if you are having problems opening a new Javascript window, you may try that first.
Where are the product pages for an Interchange located?
All product pages are created on the fly using the “flypage.html”. This file is located in the pages directory with all of the other .html files.
What does [area example] mean when setting up global links in the navigation?
[area example] is the format for setting up the links throughout your site. Usually defined in the _TOPLEFT_ template, “area” will look in the pages directory for the name of the file listed, minus the .html.
In this example, it will look for a page called example.html.
My theme.cfg is not updating on my Interchange site.
This has been the bane of my existence since I started working on my first Interchange website.
I have already mentioned one way previously about changing the line break types in Dreamweaver, and here are some other methods to prevent any non Unix breaks from getting in that file.
Make sure that you .cfg files are being uploaded in ASCII and not the default ftp of Dreamweaver which is Binary. In order to set this you need to edit the FTP Extension Map file.
On your local hard drive, navigate to the directory where your Dreamweaver is installed.
Macromedia > Dreamweaver MX 2004 > Configuration > FTPExtensionMap.txt.
Open this file in Notepad and you will see different file types listed and the type of ftp method for each. Add your extension in a similar format and specify the type of ftp method you want. As a rule of thumb, most web files are ASCII except for Image and Media files which are Binary.
Save and Exit the file and restart Dreamweaver for those changes to take effect.
The second way you can make sure to rid your file of CR Windows breaks is to make sure you are saving the correct type of file in Homesite (If you are using it).
Open Homesite
Options > File Settings
In this section you should see three different types of method to save the files, PC, Unix and Macintosh. Set the type to Unix.
What happens if I get the file on the server and it isn’t working, can I get rid of the CR breaks?
Open up SSH and navigate to the folder where your theme.cfg file is located.
At the prompt type this command. (It’s an Octal Dump with a Grep to find any CR line breaks in the code.)
od -a catalog.cfg | grep cr
Hopefully, this won’t spit anything out, but if it does, then you should be able to clean up the file. Either save it again with the changes made in Homesite and upload it again. Or, you can run this command at the prompt line.
perl -pi -e ‘s/\r\n/\n/g’ < old_file.cfg > new_file.cfg
These are three great ways to fix your theme.cfg file for your interchange site.
How can I create HTML email templates using Entourage in OS X.
We were trying to set up an HTML email template in OS X Entourage(A combination of Microsoft Outlook and some additional features) and realized that it is not a default feature.
Since Apple Mail only supports rich text, which allows for some html formatted links and that is it, Entourage is the best mail program for sending and receiving HTML emails. However, in order to do so, an additional script needs to be downloaded.
This program is called “Send Complex HTML 2.0.1″. You can download it all over the internet. It is an .sit file, which I also learned is the equivalent to a Windows .zip file. To expand the .sit file, you need stuffit expander.
Place this file in your scripts folder for Entourage and you are ready to go. You get some new Entourage menu options as a result.
To find more detailed instructions, search the internet for “installation” and “Send Complex HTML 2.0.1″ and this will explain installation and how to set up an HTML email in Entourage.