mama_soap

Varun, I think I've worked this one out - by complete chance, btw, just hit me on the head - I'm generally bad at brainteasers. But I don't want to spoil it for the others who want to think about it, just in case my guess is correct The guess is here anyway. I AM AN ENVELOPE . [highlight to read, of course] Cheers!

hineshgudka,Nice work. There is a lot of feeling in those lines, and it's well put. If this is a personal poem, then excellent work, and keep writing. If, on the other hand, you're looking at sending this off to a lit zine or any other form of publication, a little tinkering might be in place (just my opinion, of course). Let me know if you want a more elaborate feedback I'll try to hang around and dissect the poem, even though I hate doing it with poems that as emotional as this one :DKeep Writing!Cheers...

Velvet-like violet erupts in a riot on miniscule white canvases harp-like; focused at a bunch of seeds. All trouble to no avail, one day the bee will come and take it all away. Side Note: This poem was selected among the top sixty in the Binnacle Ultra Short Poetry Contest. The seem to have gotten around 750 entries, so I am beginning to think this can't be too bad. Not sure if the selection means anything much, but I feel vaguely happy

How to Build a Successful Website This is a free book online, and I am hoping some of it's contents will be useful to fellow members here. [To all members of Xisto]: You can freely ignore the 'finding a good webhost' chapter, I think we've managed that part successfully I hope I'm not violating the TOS by linking to a site like this, perhaps one of the mods can let me know if I am. Chapters Overview: I found the chapters on copyright issues and SEO quite interesting. Hope some of you here will find this useful as well. *whisks off to read what's in the Revenue section*

Rvovk,Yes, you're right - I think I'm just using the resolution at which the scrollbars just about disappear. Will fix the CSS, thank you again :DFusion,Thank you so much for the input. It helps a great deal I'm still looking for the right background for the frontpage. Will come along soon, hopefully. That comment was spot on I'm looking forward to some more color, although colors that won't be too conspicious.Thanks again!Cheers...

Hello Twilight,I daresay I appreciate your feelings, and I understand that whatever you are going through cannot be easy. But on the other hand, no one promised life will be straightforward Everyone has to handle his/her share of struggle, perhaps this is yours.I am genuinely sorry to hear that you're having to put up with so much trouble. I am sure there are people who can give you excellent advice, even I could throw in my two cents, and I really hope that will eventually help you out. As far as I am concerned, I think I have realized that life is finite. You have only so much time, and it becomes, therefore, all the more important to spend that time in a way that gives you some vague sense of satisfaction, and a good night's sleep. I'd suggest you find ways of keeping yourself busy, and ignore everything else. Discover something you're passionate about (such as your drawing skills) and get obsessed with it. I'd prefer the obsession be with something inanimate, such as a hobby, that makes things simpler.Easier said than done?Perhaps. I have faced a lot of people talking about me behind my back sort of thing. I have always tried to distinguish between people I respect and people I do not. Once I have decided I do not respect someone, I choose to ignore everything by way of insult, advice, blackmail et al that comes from that person. Whether you have any respect for your friend Liz is really up to you to decide. Assuming everything you have said so far is an accurate description, if I were you, I would probably not have that kind of respect for Liz. Thereafter, you might want to decide that she is not worth the time you spend worrying about her, maybe you should just move on. If there is any amount of feeling left in her, perhaps you'll make up eventually, time wil tell. For the moment, quite caring about people who don't care about you. It might sound selfish, but a manageable amount of selfishness is not always a bad thing. In the end, what really must matter to you is what you want. I know a lot of situations can be rather tricky. But you sound like someone who can handle it if you want to. Don't be afraid of losing friends, because friends worth having will not let go that easily I am not suggesting you become some workaholic with no time for relationships. But if you can keep your mind busy, things sometimes do become simpler. Try to spend more quality time with yourself and feel generally lighter about life. I'm worried if you're feeling bad enough about all this to want to throw up. Ask her to get a life, and move on yourself. Again, go with your own convictions, trust yourself I get the instinctive feeling you'll work it out on your own. Good luck!Cheer up!

Thanks, Tyssen, I will modify my stylesheet As far as the backgrounds are concerned, I rather like it background-less for the moment. Maybe you can check my site and tell me what you think, either by using the feedback there or posting here. Only if you have the time, of course Will be grateful for any responses, but don't bother if you're busy. Cheers!

Hello again :DAnyone who can make a site like that is a wizard as far as I am concerned I'm glad if any of that helped. I'll look forward to any updates that you might have, and whenever they come. I also prefer to keep JS and DHTML to a minimum, and perhaps use it, if at all, in such a way that it degrads gracefully for incompatible browsers. Anyway, good luck on the site in general, and thanks for taking time on my site and the rep point as well (I'm trying to figure out how the system works here, haven't quite looked around at rep thing). Best of luck, and if you don't mind, maybe I can put a link to your site on mine? Provided, of course, that you don't have a problem with that.Cheers!

rvovk,Thanks a ton for the feedback. I am a bit of a stranger in the CSS world, but trying, nevertheless, to find my feet in there. I do use a bit of CSS for the layout, but it's all very basic. I guess I didn't notice the horizontal scrolling because it doesn't show up on my computer. I will put a overflow: hidden for horizontal scrolling in the external stylesheet, that should, hopefully, set things straight.I'm glad you liked the poetry. Thank you very much Again, still a beginner to the world of writing, but I am enjoying it very much so far. That counts enough to keep me from giving it up, hehe. I am, of course, thinking of ways of developing the site; and even if don't put an "Under Construction" sign over there, it's still being worked upon Thanks again for the feedback, it helps tremendously.Regards,Neel

Oops, sorry if it didn't work. I use Konquerer when it comes to FTP transfers, and that's the address that works for me. Didn't mean to give wrong info there... Like I said, haven't used Frontpage in ages, so you might try one of the other suggestions. Come to think of it, yourname.trap17.com might be more like it. Good luck

This is something that Opera allows you to do as well. They're just called "sessions". It's an interesting feature, although it does not save pages for offline viewing... that can be good and bad. If you're on broadband, you'd like pages to be updated everytime, so good; but otherwise you might want to actually save the content sometimes, and there is no option that allows you to do that. It's not just that it's free, but that it's freeware. Learning programmers can tinker with the OS code and get some practice. Experienced programmers can contribute to development. From all over the world. MS is closed source, and perhaps fails to give the 'community' feeling. I don't have a problem with the OS not being free, it's just that I, as an individual, may not find it worth that money, which is when Linux becomes a good option Similar sentiments, probably, go for other s/w. Hope it does not rain stones here... ***chooses to stay away from the ff/ie debate*** Getting a little tired of it, actually... no offense, though. Cheers, and peace

Haven't read too much Tolkien myself, but I might check this out, looks interesting I think you got the section spot on, as long as you're not looking for credits

He/She is probably trying to say that few people pursue advanced studies/research, but go on to do a job instead; in the Indian context. If my two cents is worth it, I'd say that - a) this is a generalization and could be a misconcieved one, and b ) a job can be just as challenging/worthwhile as doing research. There is no need to imagine that every 'worker' is an uncreative sort of guy who only wants to make money Again, there is nothing seriously wrong about simply wanting to earn either. It's just that guangdian sounded a little put off by the idea of everyone becoming 'workers', but I could be mistaken. I'm just judging from the tone of the post, sorry if I'm getting it wrong. Sudhakar, Welcome aboard Curiously, I'm from India too, into my first year of Bachelor Science (Math, Computers and Statistics - lethal combination if you don't have good lecturers ). Hope to see you around here. I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself at Xisto, it's a great place to be!

I am not entirely sure if I am right, I've stopped using FrontPage for a while now, but anyway... Try using this url for ftp access: totalwar.trap17.com, where accountname is your Cpanel account name and password is the corresponding password. Or you can just leave the ":password" part and it should prompt you for the pw automatically. I hope you get this sorted out, keep us posted here, and I'm sure more able members will be able to help you out You may find this thread useful. Cheers!

Hello!And welcome aboard Have a great time at Xisto; this is a wonderful place to hang out at. As you might have found out already, there are plenty of places for talking about computing and the internet, even for the non-experts. I'm from India; that's pretty close Cheers...

Hello, frost,Thanks for reading the tutorial. I'm glad you liked it :DI was vaguely aware of the possibility of creating rollover effects with CSS, although I wouldn't, probably, use the feature very well, I'm still finding my feet in CSSland, I'm afraid Thanks for the info, though, I'm sure everyone will find it useful.Regards,Neel

Ron, on the dark side? Oh dear... I hope Percy dies *evil grin*

Fedora 2 for me. Debian and Mandrake are also very neat distributions. Linux is both free and open soruce - ok, not *really* free because the boxed sets cost some money - and you could, strictly speaking, download it from the net, but you'd still be spending on the internet bill, and more importantly, your time. Linux support groups are extensive and are all over the place. It's reassuring to know that whenever you want help, someone's bound to do give it to you I personally have a soft corner for anything released under the GPL; so I'll obviously prefer Linux. Off hand conversations may lead you to think that Linux won't stand the test of time, because most s/w is created for the Windows platform, especially game engines and such. However, I would ask you to consult reliable sources and judge for yourself. Some such sources are listed at the end of this message. Finally, you can always partition your disk, that's what I've done - 20 GB for Windows 98 and the rest for Linux. Remember, you can setup Linux so that all data from the drives allotted to Windows can be accessed while working on the Linux platform The Linux Homepage The Linux Magazine The Linux Journal Another Linux Magazine Linux World, yet another magazine. Good luck, and keep us posted

snlildude, I was not suggesting a lot of good guys will meet their end. Just read a JK Rowling interview where she said one important [and 'good', whatever that means ] character will die, and I was wondering who it could be. There are two books to go, and plenty of characters left, and one or two killin's will probably not be enough to bring the story to a standstill. Just my two cents :(rejected,I like Ron the best in the movies, although in the books, I have no special feelings, lol. Sorry, Ron, no offense I think it could be Hagrid, although I hope not. As long as Dumbledore is alive, I'm fine. Three cheers to the Headmaster! I know I'll miss Sirius, why did he die?

Thank you all for taking the time, and for the great feedback :DYes, I will fix the title tags. They're useful, as I can see... *grin* I thought I included them, but I think some of them got mixed up with the javascript in the <HEAD> part of the pages and were ignored; and for a few pages, I think I must've plain forgotten :oops:I'm glad the navigation seems okay. I have been trying to keep it as simple as possible. Good to know you liked the message board for the front page, cmatcmextra Also, thanks for the links to the banners. I'll try to include one of them on the credits page, or even try my hand at creating one (wonders if it needs admin approval... maybe I should just post the banner and see what everyone thinks). Didn't notice that thread before, thanks again for pointing out.The colors are deliberately restricted. I wanted the site to have a very blue look, and since I have no specific theme to go by, I was actually thinking of making it monochromatic (shades blue and white only). Luckily, I like gray and dark green, so some of the content is non-blue. I'll try to find unobstrusive ways of including more color Thanks again, everyone!Cheers,Neel

Javascript in action can render some very neat visual effects, which can make your website more appealing, and sometimes even easier to navigate. Among the most common effects are the 'button' effect, and the mouseover effect. The buttons are very common, of course; if nowhere else, most of us have seen them at the end of forms (Click the 'submit' button to proceed...). The basic idea is to have a 'depressible' object, which can give you the illusion that you're 'pressing' it when you click it. The rollover effect causes something to happen when the mouse pointer points over a certain object. The object itself may change, or cause another object to change. This is a very basic tutorial for people who are JavaScript beginners. Basically, we will try to build objects which behave like buttons, that is, they change in a special way when they're clicked, and simultaneously give in to roll over effects, meaning that they change in a certain way when a mouse pointer 'rolls over' them. You might want to (although it is not necessary) first see how plain rollover effects are created, and how simple buttons are created. To begin with, you will need the pictures. The basic object (our to-be button) is composed of three pictures – one corresponding to it's state when the mouse pointer is nowhere near, one for the mouseover, and one for the click. Creating these three pictures is not very complicated. For those who do not know how to go about it, read the next section, we'll do it using the GIMP. For the rest, you can just move on to section 2 For those who do not have the GIMP, and are on Linux, I strongly urge you to download it. For the rest, this should be a trifle on Photoshop or Dreamweaver. 1.Making the buttons using the GIMP The GIMP luckily has a lot of pre-installed scripts, so it really does all the work for you. Most people usually figure out how to use them pretty much automatically; but if you don't know how to make those buttons, then read on to save time *grin*. Goto Xtns->Script-Fu->Buttons->Round Buttons A screen like this should show up: You can modify all the values to your heart's content, till you are satisfied. Clicking on OK should give you three images, that look like this (well, depending, of course, on what parameters you entered): The first one is the inactive button, the second is the 'mouseovered' button, and the last is the depressed button (pardon the pun). For reference, we will call these buttons test1, test2, and test3 respectively. Next, you create the 'extra' picture that you want to change on mouseover. Normally, you would like to have one main picture and a list of buttons, and that 'main' picture changes as you mouseover individual buttons. You'll need to create all the pictures you want to use. As a sample, I'll be using these: Again, for reference, I'll call the first image 'base' and the second one 'journal'. Save these pictures, we'll be needing them soon 2.The javascript This is what will have to go between your <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags: <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- if (document.images) { pic1on= new Image(100,26); //Your image dimensions go in here. pic1on.src="./test2.gif"; //enter the relevant url of the button called test2. pic1off= new Image(100,26); //Your image dimensions go in here. pic1off.src="./test1.gif"; //enter the relevant url of the button called test1. pic1down=new Image(100,26); //Your image dimensions go in here. pic1down.src="./test3.gif";//enter the relevant url of the button called test3. image_off= new Image(256,100);//Your image dimensions go in here. image_off.src="./graphics/base.jpg"; //enter the relevant url of the picture called base. image1= new Image(256,100);//Your image dimensions go in here. image1.src="./graphics/tut4.jpg"; //enter the relevant url of the picture called journal.}function lightup(imgName,picName,img) { if (document.images) { imgOn=eval(imgName + "on.src"); document[imgName].src= imgOn; test=eval(img + ".src");document[picName].src= test;} } function turnoff(imgName,picName,img) { if (document.images) { imgOff=eval(imgName + "off.src"); document[imgName].src= imgOff;test=eval(img + ".src");document[picName].src= test; } } function clickdown(imgName) { if (document.images) { imgDown=eval(imgName + "down.src"); document[imgName].src=imgDown; } } //--> </SCRIPT> Now, in the <BODY> section of your HTML document, you first need to insert the images. You can position them using the <div> tags, if you know CSS, this will be trivial, I'm not going into that. This is basically what you have to write: <IMG SRC="./graphics/base.jpg" name="image_off"><A href="your_url" onMouseover="lightup('pic1','image_off','image1')" onMouseout="turnoff('pic1','image_off','image_off')" onMouseDown="clickdown('pic1')" onMouseUp="lightup('pic1','image_off','image1')"><IMG SRC="./test2.gif" name="pic1" border="0" alt="Some_relevant_text"></a> Again, instead of 'test2.gif', you will have to enter the relevant url. You're done! Want to see what it looks like? See the demonstration! 3.Why does it work? If you have understood how the javascript works for buttons and rollovers separately, you should see why this works in no time. The functions have been manipulated a little to incorporate extra image changes. You can modify them further so that one rollover changes more than one image – although a word of caution is in place here – the more images you have, the longer your page would take to load, so use these functions carefully. 4.Troubleshooting Make sure the image types and urls are specified correctly. Pay special attention to the width and the height of the image. As far as possible, try and ensure this matches the original width and height. In other words, do all the resizing using an image editor, do not leave it to your browser. Make sure the name specified by the image tag <IMG> matches the variable name in the javascript. If you want more pictures, just add them in the script section, call them – for convenience, pic2, pic3, and so on, and name them accordingly in the <IMG> tags that go in the <BODY> section. For more troubleshooting, just post your questions here. I'm sure the moderators will answer them Just kidding, I'll try my best to help if you run into trouble with the buttons

Well, if you're going to exclusively use it for research (depending on what kind of research), then I think we might as well get back to google. All though it's still in Beta stage, Google Scholar may be what you will find more useful I would love to add Scholar to my site, although I want to modify the search button so that it looks more blue. But again, I am not sure if I'm allowed to do that. I'm straining my eyes out reading their guidelines, but they haven't said anything about the button. Duh, maybe I'll just add it as it is or not add it at all

Rejected, That's a nice picture I'll link you as soon as I can; I'm just trying to see how I can incorporate a 'my favorite sites' corner into my page. It'll be nice if you can give me a short description of your site; I can try to include that if you want me to. Most of my external links appear a right hand column, and the links are different on different pages so that they stay relevant to the content of that page. (The url of my site is in the sig, in case you want to have a look.)I'd like to give you an image, but before that... just wondering, are there some 'standard dimensions' you'd like me to stick to?

Oh, I thought it should take a default value of zero (just because it showed up without borders in Opera), but it I realized it does not . Anyway, it's now showing up without borders in firefox... thanks a ton

*yay* for Notepad (or any other text editor)! I like writing my page myself... although I have fooled around with WYSIWYG editors, and they are probably useful for large sites when you don't have the time to actually code everything - I mean, they save time - I prefer getting down on all fours and doing it myself Maybe I'm just ancient... But since this is not about Dreamweaver v/s text editor (forgot about that, sorry), I'd say dreamweaver is the way to go if you're comparing it with M/S Frontpage. Somehow, I never liked the code that Frontpage generated. But, like people before me have mentioned... perhaps it's good if you've never designed a page before