rkage

Firefox is like I.E. except it FF misses a few things like Pop ups and slow rendering. Not to mention Firefox has better security, Supports correct CSS standards, browsed tabbing, and optional extensions that allow you to hide unwanted adds, validate pages, edit css of pages etc etcThe difference between Firefox and I.E. is that FF is not trying to make loads of money and force their browser to people, they are simply giving people an alternative. And the basic layout is the same because people expect this type of layout, it is a browser. The best way to attract new people is to improve something, not confuse them with a hi-tech, interface with over the top graphics. I.E. Browsers were not the first browser but at one point they occupied about 90% of all computers, people became used to it...

I always like to have my page validate under XHTML, so I use the validation extension for FireFox which not only tells you the errors but generates a new script with the errors fixed! How cool is that.The only reason I like validating my pages is because if someone emails me saying that my website doesn't look right and it appears messy then 99% of the time it is their browser rendering it wrong, so I can shift the blame and sleep better at nights. I always aim to get it working in Netscape, I.E., Opera, Safari and of course the Mozilla browser.

What part of that layout do you want to reproduce? All of it or just the hover links or background image.I have to agree with you though on the wonders of CSS, there is just so many things achievable with CSS including the amazing drop down menus. Yet sadly I have to double my time finding ways to fix my layout for I.E. There are good articles around by Sons Of Suckerfish, that try to recreate CSS tags like Hover so that they function correctly in I.E. the problem is they do use some javascript but only a few lines.The reason I use them is because if someone is smart enough to turn off Javascript as they know about security holes, then they are smart enough to know to get a better browser than I.E. because it's security is very low. So accounting for Javascript hacks to those people who have I.E. will make the page work for more people, but I try to keep it to a minimum so mostly everyone can see some aspect of my page.I have seen many codes to fix things up in I.E. so i'll try my best to locate a 100% compatible way for doing what you'd like to be done.

Well I suppose Moonwitch's way is better if you know little about CSS since it would only confuse. I haven't used frames since I found out about the PHP Include function. I still don't like frames as I like my pages to validate but if it's easiest for you to use, then there is no problem

Normally I open up Crimson Editor (a very good Syntax Highlighting text editor with tabbed browsing, beneficial for jumping back and forth from HTML and CSS documents) and Firefox to view my website and PHP Expert Editor which has a list of all the functions so I can search through that for my PHP needs.In terms of speeding things up, I just create a lot of macros such as ones that add the DOCTYPE, html tags and what not, other ones to paste the input text box code etc... I spend most of my time fixing code to work in I.E. that it doesn't matter how much time I can save

Well it can be done using (X)HTML and CSS. Create three DIVs inside one major DIV would get the job done. Using a table can also be one for the layout but generally there isn't as much customisation with those. For the guestbook, Poll, or whatever else would go there, your best bet is to use PHP. There are free scripts all over the place so finding one to suit your needs shouldn't be that hard. I've been giving this link out a few times but PHP - Hudzilla is a very good online PHP book if you want to learn enough PHP to do it yourself. HTML Dog is a brill site for HTML and CSS, I can't remember if they teach how to do a 2 column layout but a Google search for "Two column layout using CSS" should bring up a few good results.

Yeh the book is great and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn some PHP. I would suggest that you try every example listed, then try editing the scripts so it does the same thing only with different variables, then try building the script from scratch and you'll be able to write advanced scripts in a month. Don't just skim read it or it won't sink in, take the time and it will pay off! There are some good message board and poll tutes in there as well but don't be skipping to them, or it will be a waste of time. However, if you learn a loop function for example and then see how it works in a real life example, such as a message board, then that is beneficial. Anyway, I'm glad I could be of assistance. If you've any problems with PHP, just PM me

You may call it a design flaw, I call it freedom. And if you read my post properly, you would see that I said that the same topic arised after 9/11, i'm not saying that the Tsunami was a terrorist attack and I thought that that was clear. God is loving but he is also intolerant of the world of sinners and those who refuse to believe in him. The flaw comes with our way of believing. Man generally wants to be able to understand everything yet we just can't. Our brains just can't cope with the size of the Universe, we can't find the meaning of love or life, we can't believe in something we can't see. Maybe God created the Universe as a statement of his power? When the Tsunami hit, assuming there was no god or afterlife, then why should we care about the deaths of those people? We should only care about our selves and the ones we love, so what if their little time on earth was cut short...as long as you get the most out of life, why should we worry about those that died, their soul ceases to exist so they won't mind. Now saying there is a God, we can know that He has given them a simple choice to believe in him or not....so if they do then they'd go to heaven living a better life than on earth, if not they'd be down in hell suffering 24 hours a day without anything to look forward to ever. An eternity of pain that once again our brains will try to ignore and refuse to believe what an eternity of pain feels like. Yet the answers are in a book. It may be difficult to understand, but faith will do it for you. And I know that as a christian, that if a Tsunami did occur, or an earthquake or a terrorist attack, that I'd be in heaven for the eternity, safe and relaxed. So you may still want to blame the natural disasters on God and in a way, He is responsible, but if you aren't prepared to try and understand why He would do it, then your post is just another post. I am not going to flame you or mock you because I am trying to see the angle you are coming from, and I agree with you that it is difficult to know why God would do it but sometimes other men can't give us the answer to everything, and even if they could, some of us wouldn't be prepared to listen.

I second HTML Dog. Unless you are one of those people who need a complete step by step walkthrough of how to put a document together, this site ia all you need to know. It teaches not only XHTML but how to encorporate it with CSS to display the XHTML presentation in different ways. For PHP, Hudzilla is a very good online book that will take you through PHP

The images don't line up correctly in FireFox (The Xisto one) so I dont know about IE...

My input on the situation, as a firm christian, is that we have created the natural disasters ourselves. It's a fair point. Look at the amount of deaths caused by murder including war, i.e. deaths we have inflicted upon ourselves....and then look at deaths caused by natural disasters. There is a huge difference. Scale factor of ten thousand if i remember the statistics correctly.Blaming God is just the easy way out when something bad happens. God is an all loving god and if you ask him for help to cope with coming to grips with someone's death he will indeed help you. But when you ignore God for all of your life and then when something bad happens, blame him for it, then ask the question why doesn't God stop bad events...you can't expect an answer.The same topic arrived with September the 11th. Why didn't God stop the terrorist attack. Will if he did stop it do you want him to stop every murder? Yeh? Every abortion? Maybe? Every time you go to hit someone? Maybe Not? Everytime you get a paper cut?Where do you want him to draw the line, where can he draw the line? God give man freedom to chose to believe in him, he gave man the freedom to live. He has power's that will only confuse the smartest of mankind if they try to make sense of it so he could easily make us all follow him. But he gave mankind the choice... just some people will continue to throw it back in his face. I on the other hand, want to listen.

So it's fine telling people how to write scripts but if they don't know what it means, it's pretty useless. Even if you give someone directions to your house, if you haven't taught them how to read directions, the directions are meaningless. With that in mind, I wanted to make a series of tutorials explaining how to write PHP, hoping it will encourage a few user's on the board to jump into the depths of PHP. How to define PHP code The Basics Creating a PHP page is just as simple as saving the page as filename.php as opposed to filename.html. So create a PHP file for practicing the areas covered in this tutorial so you can try the examples for yourself. As long as your host has PHP support then your page should function properly. The PHP code must begin with a "<?php" tag and end with "?>" so here is a short example; <?php //Code goes here?> CommentingWe comment in PHP by using the double slashes "//" Anything after those slashes on that line are commented. They don't do anything to the code, but if you go back to the code after a long time, or give the code to someone else, it will show what you were trying to achieve with that bit of code. It may seem boring to write a comment after everyline but it will help you in the long run. Not only is it a future reference, but by thinking through the problem in english words, you are more likely to understand how to solve it. also comment in PHP using a "/*" to mark the start of the commented text and "*/" to mark the end. I only tend to use this if i want to stop a block of code from operating temporarily. Rather than deleting it, I comment it and then uncomment it later. Using the "/* */" syntax to comment allows you to comment multiple lines as opposed to just one line using "//". <?php//This line is commentedThis line isn't./* TheseLinesAre Commented */?> Outputting TextThe most simple way of outputting text is using the echo function. <?phpecho "Hello World";?> If we save this code into a file and open that file in a Web Browser we would get the words "Hello World" in black writing. Notice we put double quotes around the text we want to echo. You can use single quotes as well, it doesn't make a difference (although there is some arguments that single quotes are slightly faster when processing but it is insignificant, so nothing to worry about.)If you are trying to output the text "It was Maggie's" then we need to use double quotes. If we use single quotes, then it would recognise the apostrophe after Maggie as the closing single quote and then the PHP would wonder why there was an "s" and another single quote after that. In otherwords, it will throw up some error messages. Similarly, if you were trying to output; Maggie said "That is mine." Then we will use single quotes. There is another way around this and that is to use a backslash as an escape character. Look at this bit of code. <?phpecho "Maggie said \"That is mine.\"";?> Notice how we put backslashes before the double quotes? This tells PHP not to take the next pair of double quotes as closing tags. The Semi-Colon of doom You may have also noticed the semi-colon ";" at the ends of the echo function. This is a PHP syntax perk you are going to have to get used to. I am still forgetting to put the semi-colons at the end of my lines and almost half of my errors are specifically that. Basically you need to tell PHP "Hey, this is the end of this line, nothing comes after this so move onto the next line and continue processing". If i done this; <?phpecho "I am trying to cause an error"echo "Will it throw up an error?";?> The answer is yes, it will throw up an error. On line 2 to be exact, we have left out our semi-colon. That is one of the great advantages of PHP it will tell you the line number and the nature of the error that is causing your script to not function properly. This makes error fixing ten times easier. You'll still get quite angry with some of the errors though but you'll get used to error checking, with the more PHP you encounter. A new line The final trick of outputting data in this tutorial is taking a new line. Look at this example; <?phpecho "line 1";echo "line 2";?> You may expect this to show up in your browser like this, Line 1Line 2 Why? You haven't told PHP to output line 1, take a new line, and output line 2. You have just told it to output line 1 and output line 2. So you will in fact get; Line 1Line 2 So we need to add the return command "\n" where we want the new line to take place. This uses the magical backspace command again, once again it tells PHP to treat the next character specially and PHP will read the n and take a new line. <?phpecho "Line 1\n";echo "Line 2";?> That will output the desired result. We print out line 1 and take a new line, then print out line 2. You may notice that you can combine the two lines of code into one statement and still get the same result; <?phpecho "Line 1\nLine 2";?> Whilst this is perfectly acceptable, it all comes down to user preference and readibility to combine the statements. Say you wanted to edit line 2 and you looked through your code. You'd expect to find it in the second echo statement but in reality, it's in the first. This seems relatively obvious when are lines of text are "line 1" and "line 2" but if they didn't have numbers in it, the "\n" would be hard to spot in amongst loads of text. So I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and it has taught you something. Maybe I even helped you create your very first PHP page. Please leave any comments, or suggestions to my tutorial and I will try and implement them into it, if certain areas are vague.

PHP: A server side scripting languageMySQL: A databaseWhen a user selects a page, index.php, the code is sorted out on the server, gaining the information and processing it. The output is then sent to the user's browser.If you compare this with Javascript, which is Client-Side, the script is sent to the user's browser and the browser processes the code. The main difference is Javascript can update a page on the user's browser in real time (i.e. you could put a countdown clock on a page) but on PHP this isn't possible unless the user hits the refresh button. On the other hand, PHP is much more secure and doesn't rely on the user to have Javascript installed on their browser.A good website is http://www.hackingwithphp.com/

I always wondered how sites were built so when I discovered the amazing feature that was View Source, I began teaching myself how to things by comparing the codes of various sites with their layouts.Then I found out what FrontPage was and so I started building my first website with that, as horrible as it was. It was faulty, error prone, and took ten minutes to update a few lines. So after that I realised I was going to have to learn it the hard way.So after asking for a few recommendations from Message Boards, I started working through the W3C tutorials on XHTML to build a safe, easy to read site. Then I found a neat website at http://www.htmldog.com/ which I still use today...things just began getting more and more simpler for me to update. Soon I discovered a thing called PHP and that it could integrate with XHTML and updating my site would take a minute at most!

Well first of all make sure the HTML you know is Standards Complient otherwise, when new versions of browsers come out, your site may no longer work properly and you will have to relearn the proper syntax all over again and your old habits will force you to do things you shouldn't do. For that I'd recommend http://www.htmldog.com/ which also deals with CSS which is very handy to learn.For PHP I would recommend an online book found at http://www.hackingwithphp.com/ I learnt everything I know about PHP from there and the author takes you through it in a simple, easy to understand fashion. I'd advise you to do examples after each chapter and really work on it until it sticks in.