Little Asterisk

Not exactly sure if this was what you were looking for, but audio streaming is also a part of some great on line sites, like Grooveshark (listen.grooveshark.com) and Jango (jango.com), which let you tune into various "radio-stations" created by other users and even create your own stations. It's great if you just want to listen to various music, since nothing is required of you and you can't be interrupted while listening to your favourite songs. If you, however, want to listen to a "real" (as real as a PC can make it ) radio, web_designer and puneye gave you some great programs. P.S. Someone would think I'm getting money from these kind words, but... Unfortunately, no. P.P.S. Oh, yeah... The two radio-stations I mentioned don't require any download and can only be used over the internet, so they probably aren't a good choice if you don't have a "flat-rate" internet connection

Hi, Just wanted to say that an on line article I read a couple of months ago had an interesting way of approximately calculating bandwidth, but I can't seem to find it right now. So... If anyone has it bookmarked and knows where I could find it, I'm sure it would help out a lot of people on these forums (including myself ).Until then, I guess Google will be my friend. :)Thanks for the patience of reading my post

As web designer and deadmad said, four months is more than enough time to both learn PHP and build a social network. In programming, basically, you only need to learn the logic behind a language and everything after that will be easy for you. For instance, an if...then statement in C++: if (something) { do something; do something else;} And the same statement in Flash Actionscript: if (something) { do something; do something else;} As you can see, it was practically identical (OK, maybe not every language is THAT similar, but I think you get the general idea...). So, go to W3C schools (http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp for PHP tutorials) and start learning... Rome wasn't built in a day.

I'm not going to pretend I read the entire topic, because I haven't. However, after reading the first couple of posts I realised this is a rather interesting idea (possibility, innovation, theory) to work with. For one, I must say I don't think a God (let's face it, no one really knows for sure - just believes) has made our entire planet. The simple idea of one creature that could've made us all simply sounds silly to me. I somehow remember that the ancient Romans were the first to introduce that idea of a "higher being" to their people - simply because they wanted them to obey their orders and not act greedy and "immoral" (the word had a slightly different meaning back then, I believe). That's why God seems like a great concept. You know, people not getting depressed about the ending of life and that type of stuff. I also think we need something to believe in, and that's why religion ("Opium for the masses") is so "popular", so to speak. Again, when things are ruff and heavy you can't just feel sad all the time. Just the psychological feeling everything's going to be all right makes us feel better - the power of mind, right? The next interesting thing we probably would like to investigate is outer-space life. And, one thing bothers me a lot about that - why the hell does everyone always think aliens look like TV showed them?! Hell, if no one saw them - how can we know how do they look like? Why can't they look like us, with two hands and legs, with "real" problems and a normal language? I don't necessarily say they speak English - that's a huge long-shot. But, if they exist, chances are they have some sort of language and communication. Maybe they're a couple of (thousand?) years behind us, maybe they're ahead... Who knows? Although sometimes these "conspiracy theories" concerning aliens (i.e. the government doesn't tell us about them) really sound silly to me, there is a truth lying somewhere in there. Because, looking back at my ideas about God - well, outer life practically shuts down our hopes, huh? And the leading people of the world don't want that. If we were raised like we were "special", an outer world will practically tell us the opposite. There might be another God, or there might be no God. Again, nobody knows and nobody probably will for another couple of (hundred?) years. Finally, the ancient Egyptians weren't stupid, you know? The pyramids actually are build pretty logically, because of their triangle shape which, obviously, makes them harder to crash. I don't know that much about history that goes as far as that, but in my opinion we (people) are just too egocentric to accept the fact that the Egyptians could've known more than us. How else to explain our wandering when we think about them building the pyramids without our technology, and with their "primitive" tools? I guess that where I'm going with this entire text is that the theories for our past (and future, for that matter) are countless. And, as many other things, we can't explain, accept nor deny them. We can only believe in them. I know many won't agree with my thoughts (and that some of them might have already been said in this topic), but that's simply my opinion. Maybe you don't disagree with my opinion, but I disagree with yours, right?

It's nice the forum here is upgraded and everything, but some things are just too 'heavy' to let them slide; my problem is this:When the 'quick reply' under a post looses focus, all the text inside disappears! I don't know if anyone has had that problem before since I didn't read the entire topic, but It's kinda annoying when an entire post goes to waste just because I wanted to copy some link from another site (yes, an entire post just went 'poof' for me!). Again, the forum as such seems improved, but these little (okay, maybe a bit bigger) mistakes really get on my nerves...

I didn't want to change my avatar, but just to find out where it was coming from. I didn't connect with any service, so my first suspect was Gravatar (from Wordpress), but since I've changed it yesterday and it stayed the same I guessed they don't pull images from Gravatar. However, it seems that my avatar was updated today - guess it just needed some time to process. Oh, and if anyone wants to know why I asked - it was because I didn't like the 'old' avatar and I wanted to delete it (duh ). P.S. Did you notice how many times did I mention "avatar" in this post?

Hi,I've got only one question and would appreciate if anyone could answer: Where are these avatars being pulled from? Because I haven't set anything as my forum avatar and, as you can see, there is a small image on the left. I suspected Gravatar was the source, but after changing my Gravatar image nothing seems to have changed. Since I might have set this image on some other sites, as well, I'd like to know where is it so I can change the image.Shout if you know the answer or if you don't understand the question. :)Thanks.

While talking about Kontera, I'd just like to ask one question which I don't remember the answer to:Does Kontera only pay through PayPal/Wire/Check or is the money automatically added to my Xisto/Xisto account? I ask because I was under the impression it's automatically added, but I'm not so sure anymore...Appreciate the answer.

For one, I must stop you at the beginning and say I know how to work with Flash. I'm definitely not a leech of any kind and NOT trying to work off of someone else's talent. This post was meant to see if there are any people out there who have interest in building Flash games through on line collaboration. The Microsoft thing was a joke, obviously. Someone of your eloquence should be aware of that. Sorry if anyone else misunderstood it as "serious", because I can't and refuse to try and predict the future. Obviously, if I were to try and make a big company I wouldn't look for collaborators(employees/call it what ever you want) through a forum, but at least try to look through some freelance websites. Another thing; this is a forum of people of various interests. If I was looking for dedicated professionals, tech-forums or similar would be appropriate. I wanted to find out if 'ordinary' Flash developers (like me, I'm no Adobe evangelist) have interest in any kind of collaboration. I'm no dreamer and am aware of the fact that there are millions of other Flash games that are just as good as "our" potential work would be. That's an issue I have with your post; do you really think I would screw over a couple of "Joes" for a hundred bucks that game would possibly make me? People, who were prepared to work with me on line? And also, that they wouldn't realise I wasn't doing any work?! I know my post was no professional job offer, but I think I'd try harder if it was one. Sorry you misjudged this topic.

Yes, I think that way, too... I only don't like it that I didn't put any pictures up here, it makes it look ugly and maybe uncomprehending at times.However, I might post a similar tutorial on my website once I transfer to Wordpress, only a bit more descriptive and containing more images.P.S. I noticed you have nice tutorials on your site, I started learning some Wordpress functions recently and I really understood "the loop" finally when I read it on Me interest.

Thank you all for your answers guys, you helped a lot (especially anwii, that "Page links to" is a life saver). If anyone didn't understand what I wanted to say (I guess not, huh? ), I'm going to try to explain a little better this time (but I must mention I resolved my problem - more on that after repeating my question ). So, what I wanted to do: A sample Wordpress theme (not important which one) contains a menu, which contains links to pages inside of my Wordpress site. Let's say I had three pages, named "Home", "About us", and "Contact" (permalink: home, about-us, contact). The menu would show these pages properly, and have links to them like supposed to (<a href="http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ us</a> etcetera). However, these pages are static. Unlike any page, a category is dynamic (i.e., it can show recent posts published under the category). In this example, I have 3 equally named categories ("Home", "About us", "Contact") that have the same permalink structure (home, about-us, contact). The problem - although I set a custom post structure under 'permalinks' ( /%category%/%postname%/ ), categories would always show up under /category/%category% (where %category% is the category name, and %postname% the post name). That's why pages couldn't show dynamic content. How I fixed that? After installing the "Top level categories" plugin (which would allow categories to be shown up under /%category%, without the category/ part), it fixed my second problem. My first problem was - pages need to show dynamic content (no bold underlines this time ) from the categories. Here's where anwii's plugin comes in action. After reading his post, something clicked in my head - now I can use the previous plugin, change the page permalink and redirect it to the category! That's exactly what I did. Now, my page permalinks are something like "home-page", "about-page", "contact-page" and categorie permalinks are like "home", "about", "contact". Using the "Page links to" plugin I just redirect page links to "http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/; etcetera. Wow! I thought I couldn't make it more complicated than before, but looks like I just did. @kosmik I know it can be done using HTML, but it's too complicated: if I add another page, I need to adjust the menu, links, check if everything is OK and it just becomes too much work and too complicated. @k_nitin_r Again, I know there are sites that display categories, but... I want exactly the one I installed - and it doesn't have that feature! As for Joomla, it seems to me that it's even more difficult that Wordpress (actually, Wordpress is quite simple ). But I don't know, that might be just my opinion...

Thanks everyone for their answers, I have just downloaded the trial of Adobe Master Collection CS5 and I'm trying to see how it works. It's interesting that Flash has an iPhone template, when Apple just announced there'll be no support for Flash on any of its mobile products. While talking about Flash, it has an interesting new snippets panel where you can simply add commonly used functions right into your Actionscript document. That alone made me happy. :PAlso, Adobe After Effects CS5 and Premiere Pro CS5 don't work on 32 bit versions of Windows, which means everyone with that version of Microsoft's OS should either buy the CS4 version of After Effects and Premiere or upgrade both your PC and Windows version to a newer one. On an unrelated note, it's interesting watching all the fighting between Adobe and Apple, who knows how it's going to end? I currently hate Apple since I was very interested in making Flash iPhone apps and make a fortune on the marketplace selling them. ;)Well, what to say... You win some, you lose some.

@Soviet RatleThese all are good, but CCleaner is only meant for some simple registry and system clean-up (in other words, has nothing to do with disk fragmentation and viruses). :PHowever, I agree that there are some other paid alternatives which do the job better than CCleaner.@ValerianDo that, and see if IE works at that point.P.S. Why, you must be a cool (grand?)mother, interested in computers and technology so much.

Maybe a daughter never listens to her mother, but her father, on the other hand... (ah, another blink of my brilliant humour - thank you for noticing ) But, let's try to fix your problem now, shall we? I see that Windows XP 32-bit (SP 2 and above) is supported by the Yahoo! IE8. That means, probably the problem is in your (daughter's) PC. You might want to try cleaning her computer and registry with some free tool (like Piriform's CCleaner) or download the trial version of TuneUp utilities (CCleaner, however, is much easier to use). Try that and post if anything changed, then we'll continue from there. P.S. It's nice to hear a busy mother experimenting with software, when most mothers these days do the same with both new and old Windows - they clean them.

Blast, I have been proven wrong... ;)Maybe it's my slow connection, but the Flash site needs some time to load. Well, if the majority (as it seems for now) agrees against me, then I suppose the site isn't so bad.

OK then, if she wants IE8 because you have it - well, then she should get it, right? Let's try fixing IE...Maybe you are running a 64-bit version of Windows XP? (although I don't think you are, a good idea to check)I see you said you downloaded the optimised Yahoo! version, and it doesn't work on 64-bit XP (although, I'm not really sure if it would redirect you to an update named KB932828-v3x86-ENU.exe). Which Operating System do you run - is it the same as your daughter's? Have you tried downloading and installing the "normal" IE8?Also, it's very weird that I googled for KB932828-v3x86-ENU and only this forum gave me some results... Maybe you could use Firefox (or Chrome) more often on your computer, show that to your daughter and then show her the pink flowers persona. Perhaps that'll work.

One thing people tend to forget is that if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. If it was that simple to earn money online, don't you think we'd have thousands of millionaires in one city (not talking about Bel Air )?There are ways to make money with small investments, but none of them are sure. You can, for one, invest in stocks. Would you like to? I don't think so, since there is a jungle out there (we might deny it, but the market isn't quite stable just yet) right now. You could click commercials all day long and earn a few bucks that way, but do you really want to spend time on that?The third way is the most complicated, because it involves your time and brains in one. Do you have an interest you'd like to write about? Something you know? That is appreciated. You could sign up for some affiliate programs, AdSense, bunch of other advertising sites that give you money per click (so-called PPC or Pay Per Click) and earn your money working. Again, if it were easy - everyone would be doing it. You must learn that nobody gives things away just for free - if they don't see an advantage in doing so, they wouldn't do it.

I would suggest not installing IE 8 (since it's the slowest and ugliest SOB between the most popular browsers), but choosing something in lines of Google Chrome (which is, by most tests (if not all) the fastest one) or Mozilla Firefox (which is the most customisable one). If it's really inevitable installing Internet Explorer, I'm not really sure you should remove SP 3. KB932828-v3x86-ENU.exe really sounds like a virus to me, but it might not be... I have no idea what to do in this case. Is your PC new? Any other problems on it? Have you tried IE 7? Maybe the answer to these questions will help. Anyway, the solid solution would be not using IE at all because it hasn't got that much add-ons, it's slow and unoptimised - everything a web-browser shouldn't be.

When you're programming for Wordpress (coding a Wordpress theme), the tiny disadvantages of PHP can be seen in their full form. Why? Because, to code for Wordpress, you need a server. Why? Because PHP is a server-side programming language. That means that it's not possible to try running a PHP script on your own PC without any additional programs. And that's a problem, because...? You either have to use a free online hosting service (there are many out there) or buy one (again, there are many out there). However, experience shows that it's much easier to just test files locally - because there's no connection or testing problems, and everything goes much easier. How to "fix" that? XAMPP is a great solution (for Windows, there is also MAMPP for Mac and Linux). I recommend choosing the "Basic" package since you won't need more for installing Wordpress. After downloading the program (EXE), run the file and install XAMPP. They recommend installing directly in the C:\ path, but I haven't seen any differences with another (C:\Program Files\...) choice (however, that doesn't mean that the same will be OK for you!). Wait until the application installs, and then run it by double-clicking on "xampp-control" in your installation folder. You should now click on the "start" button next to "Apache" and "MySQL". If the PC asks you something about safety of XAMPP and blocking the application, choose "unblock" or something similar. The application itself should now look like this (image from an 4-year old interview): Go to LOCALHOST and, if everything is correct, your screen should have a nice, big logo of XAMP in the center of your browser (if not, something went wrong - check again if you did everything correct). Now, the way I installed Wordpress on XAMPP follows: Firstly, navigate to LOCALHOST/phpmyadmin/ and create a database under the "My SQL localhost" screen (you should notice a "Create new database" label). Under the label, choose a name for your database and click on "Create". Go back home by clicking on the house button in the upper left part of the screen. Next, click on the "Privileges" tab and choose "Add new user". Choose "use text field" from the drop-down menu for your name and password, but "local" for Host (and enter a name of "localhost" in the appropriate text box). Check all privileges, since not much people (if anyone) will be visiting and/or trying to hack your site (even if they do, there's not much they could do with it - no purpose...). Click on "Go" to create the new user. In the "Add privileges on the following database" choose your Wordpress database's name. Now, download the latest version of Wordpress and navigate to your xampp\htdocs folder. Extract the Wordpress folder there, and then configure your wp-config-sample.php file by opening it in any text editor. After doing that, you can delete the old "wp-config-sample.php" file and go to LOCALHOST/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php. Click on install. That's it! (Were you expecting more steps? ) Simply go to LOCALHOST/wordpress/wp-admin to log in to your Wordpress local installation. (Sorry for lack of images here, I simply didn't have the time... If you don't understand something, just make a post and I'll try to explain)

Yes, Adobe is much better than Microsoft in the multimedia part for now. However, Microsoft has an advantage in his Visual Studio where you can code in Visual Basic, C++, C#,...(but that's not what we were talking about. ) Gedit is pretty much similar, you should go to Edit --> Preferences to use its more important programming features (Choose the programming language, Display line numbers, Highlight current line, Highlight matching bracket, enable some Add-ons that are useful). I don't personally use Gedit that much, but I have a friend who does, so I think these are all of the options. Also, a good idea is to check your work in all browsers - I don't know if the most popular ones are available on Linux, but you can use Browser shots to test it online. OK, good luck then!

Hey, everyone has the right to their own opinion. I don't personally use WYSIWYG for the "see" part, but just because of the things web_designer said. @Simpleton Frontpage is crap, Dreamweaver better. If you have used Frontpage, it's possible you didn't like what you saw. But hey, if you'd like to make your own website (which I see you will) go to http://www.w3schools.com/ and download a program like Notepad ++ and GIMP to make your sites. Also, I don't know if anyone recommended this to you, but Blogger or Wordpress.com could be the solution you're looking for because they are a simple CMS, there are some pre-made templates for them, Blogger has a simple website builder and you can change your template's HTML,... Maybe you could think about that.

Years and years of experience. :POnly kidding, but in every joke there is at least a little truth . I think two of them were listed in an article or book about web design I was reading some time ago, and my friends showed me the others. Yup, can you believe that? My friends. :PI don't know if they were trying to collapse or hypnotize me, maybe...

Though in one part that is true, WYSIWYG aren't that bad when people who don't know and don't want to learn HTML would like to make just a simple website. Because, they might be building out of "lego", but their house isn't meant to be used by "real people" (if we use the lego analogy ).So, in Simpleton's case, he can just write some text, eventually add links or some simple tables and that's it. He doesn't need more than that yet. And he can download Dreamweaver's trial to make the site since there isn't much logic in learning HTML for only one simple page viewed by people just to read the content.Notepad is the first step when trying to build a career/part-time/freelance job around website coding. :PP.S. Dreamweaver also has some useful options, you know? Why bother in notepad with remembering exactly the name of a property in CSS when Dreamweaver has the help menu which appears when coding. And I'm not saying you shouldn't learn their meaning and purpose, just that it's not important to memorise "Margin, padding, background color, I'm a make a dollor" (okay, a stupid song, but important message )

Hi, Karen.Now that I have figured everything out on this site I feel like I should officially "enter" this community by welcoming a new member, and you just happen to be the lucky one. :PAs web_designer said, there are a lot of forums here where you can talk about anything you want and you'll probably soon realise that this is a rather nice and welcoming community (I know I have ). Good luck!

To revive this topic from the dead... The (5) most annoying sites (I found accidentally surfing - some were intentionally put up as an example of bad design, some not) you wish you never visited: http://www.arngren.net/ - God! Do you have the will to even click anywhere?! http://www.frnz.de/ - It's interesting that Franz is paying for a .de hosting... http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/ - I think this one is just made to show what your website shouldn't look like, but anyway... http://www.spaceistheplace.ca/ - Many words, not one good for this particular website (but then again, not one of these will be good, so...). I mean, the blue for the background?! I won't spend anymore words. http://www.bw-hilchenbach.de/body_kriegsmarine.html - I didn't see the sound coming. Not for a single second. And that's the list I keep in my bookmarks in case anyone ever would say I don't know how to code in any programming language! P.S. I didn't read the whole topic, but did you notice we make free advertising for these sites?