Weblog for Web & Internet Technologies http://www.sguy.ca/blg/ A distinct advantage that tables have over division tags and CSS is the use of the height attribute. Table data cells are linked, and because of this, they work inline with the nextand previous cell. Though division tags can inherit parent tag attributes, their nature is relative by default and are completely independant of other surrounding divisions.There are instances .... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=27 ASP.NET has outstanding server control functions.. with horrifying parsing outputs to HTML.

The Microsoft runtime engine (3.5) renders lists for Data / tree views / Menu Controls etc. inside a multitude of tables embeded inside of tables. This rendering makes CSS formatting very difficult, and your HTML source a web standards nightmare. A convenient measure for sol.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=23 Security researchers are warning of the newest Facebook threat, something they're labeling "likejacking," a Facebook-enabled clickjacking attack that tricks users into clicking links that mark the clicked site as one of your Facebook "likes." These likes then show up on your profile and, of course, in your Facebook News Feed where your friends can see the link and click i.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=24 Websafe or "safe for the web" fonts are supposedly common among all systems, such as Windows, Mac, Linux. Nowadays, more and more fonts are becoming pre-installed, offering added options for web developers beyond the arial, verdana days. Without a specific font preinstalled on a visitors' system, the primary font will slip to it's secondary and thrid choice in t.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=26 For one reason or another my web host had no umbrella for server debugging. Miscoding a line would only lead to a no descriptive 500 page error. A pretty unhelpful option for reverse engineering a program or debugging a website. One measure for tracking errors through windows is in the 'GetLastError' method. This method returns an active server Object describing error con.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=22 People make strong cases about Internet Explorer 8 being noticeably inferior to the growth minority browsers like 'Mozilla' and 'Safari'. However you slice the argument, Microsoft's latest version of IE is noticeably better than IE.6. Despite improvements for user experience, security and development tools -- the usage for IE6 has not wavered more than a percentage point .... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=15 The Conficker or Downadup virus has spent the past 6 months propagating -- passing 3 previous "payload" dates with very little happening other than the code of the actual virus being updated or modified. This payload date is only different for the fact that it is mainstream news now, and more users are aware of it. The added press may only cloud the virus' April intention.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=20 I find the function 'getimagesize' pretty useful with PHP. It allows more complex programming operations like image cropping, mapping and X/Y axis tracking to be preformed through less manual coding. A simple use is in creating a pop-up window. By establishing the 'getimagesize' function, we can pharse the binary image attributes using the APP13 marker, pull width / heig.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=21 Templating a site is a decision based on size, platform, and ease of editability. For years I used DWTs (Dreamweaver template) to segregate editable regions with what would later be templated. Library items are useful DW assests for regions that have no relation to the template, but require a one-update-fixes all option for selected pages. DWTs work as an intuitive guide .... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=19 XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a tool that offers developers a method of defining content and formatting separately. Making XML data simple to reuse, format and port to other device platforms. Most notably is how XML can provide basic syntaxes, of which can share information between different computers, networks, and applications without the drudgery of organizing la.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=18 I still find myself using GIFs. The GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is hardly the most perfect of formats to choose from, but it's nothing if not reliable across all browsers. I know what I'll end up with, with a GIF. Much of that reliability is found within the simplicity of the file itself. Designed by CompuServe in 1987 for device portability, the GIF offered animati.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=17 NiceForms (NF) is a open source tool designed by ''emblematiq'', which improves the esthetics of your web forms. With what imitations exist on input styling, NF makes up for. The mechanics behind the program is the JavaScript. The JavaScript parses the DOM tree of the page, locates input fields labeled under the "niceforms" CLASS, hides them and replaces on top a glossy s.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=14 "Dear Sir/Madam.,

We received a formal application from a company who is called Meiao Co.,Ltd (www.meiaoinv.cn) are applying to register “XXXXXX” as their domain name and Internet keyword in China and also in Asia on Oct 27, 2008. During our auditing procedure we find out that the alleged Meiao Co.,Ltd has no trade mark, brand nor patent even similar to that word. .... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=13 Creating dynamic drop downs on the basis of what's housed inside the database, can help your program remain independent of both the user and the developer. If a value is inserted inside a SET or ENUM type, the dropdown should reflect the database, without the need for manual updates. In the function below we call a specified field inside a specified table. That result set.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=12 Part of necessary procedure in development is browser testing. With no two browsers being developed the same way, subtleties in code interpretation exist. Combine this fact with the use of CSS, older browsers, surrounding code; achieving design consistency can be a challenge. To keep from endlessly battling browsers, developers have utilized a method through CSS, that res.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=4 Found on the root of every server platform are directory-level configuration files - these files offer easy configuration abilities for folders, files and even users interacting with them. Apache offers a widely used file format known as 'hypertext access', or for short 'htaccess'. htaccess behaves like global directive files (httpd.conf), but offers ability only within t.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=3 One of the more useful methods of controlling movie symbols in FLASH, is through the PAUSE function. The pause object is not built into the actionscript library, but you can create a function that does this, which eliminates hundreds of unnecessary key frames. What makes this function tick, is it's knowing the moment a movie instance first interacts with a key frame. This.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=8 For some developers, Mozilla has been misinterpretation the onFocus pseudo class - in that it presents visitors with a dotted line around each button and text link. Depending on the fashion used to skin the design, this onFocus issue can present a greater design flaw. Interestingly, Firefox 1.5 when viewed on a MAC, displays the links without. JavaScript has a solution wh.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=9 In 1999 the standard screen resolution for usability was 800 x 600 - which commanded 56% percent of the market. The same percentage of users displayed color depth in the 65k (16bit) range. A small box to design from, for some. But typically design challenges come less from the standard user, and more from the minority user; the user sitting on the fence of what`s consider.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=7 Despite some complexities, competition for keywords, and continual algorithms changes; climbing to the top of search engines CAN be achieved, even through more rudimentary steps. The first half of the SEO equation is content. The relevance to the content, based on what the user searches for, will have a great deal to do with where your site ends up. Popular search engines.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=6 ActiveX is technology developed by Microsoft to accommodate computer hardware conflicting with object oriented software. Though known as ActiveX, the given name is OLE automation (Linking and Embedding). "Automation" refers to the overall technology, with "ActiveX" referring to the objects creating and controlling automation. Used often with Internet Explorer, ActiveX con.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=5 With the growing emergence of the internet in the mid to late nineties, web developers had a troublesome time displaying content consistently with IE and Netscape in layers. A quick and easy solution was found in tables. Though originally developed for data, tables offered not only a consistent appearance among all major browsers, but it offered an easy way to manipulate .... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=2 Fighting SPAM is an endless cat and mouse game. Though the available tools to combat SPAM have grown in sophistication over the years, the programs which worm their way around the tools are equally clever in design. It's become an expensive and alarming problem for businesses - US business alone, suffer billions in loses every year (10 billion in 2003). Many detractors ar.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=1 Programming works in a pretty direct manner. Weather it's the break down of a base-2 number system (binary number system), JAVA, BREW, ASPX, PHP, RUBY - the execution of code is met with one of two inputs - it works or it doesn't. On or off. HTML doesn't follow this concept. HTML (hypertext markup language) has the ability to display websites correctly despite there being.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=10 An XHTML document is considered valid, if recommended guidelines set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are met. valid XHTML (Extensible Markup Language) leads to compact code and improved processing time. This does not include rendering. Browsers render code differently - testing browsers during development is an obvious necessity. XHTML(v.1.0) is a buttoned down pre.... http://www.sguy.ca/blg/blg_d.aspx?id=11