k_nitin_r

Hi!I haven't heard of the band, but I think the forum skin looks cool!The header/logo on top looks like it was simply copy-pasted so you might want to turn the black background into something that matches the background on the rest of the site. Also, it ought to be wider, perhaps all the way till the search box.BTW, can you add icons to represent the different categories with the simple machines forum? If it does support the feature, then you ought to.Regards,Nitin

My experience with Zymic wasn't too good either. The first problem I had was with speed; it was extremely slow during the day. Then, there was the problem of MySQL database connectivity - I would often get the "Too many connections" error during peak hours... I'd have to keep refreshing the browser to finally get the page to work.I'd say Zymic is a place where you could upload your PHP scripts for testing during their off-peak hours, but then I could just as easily setup something on my own computer!

In computer graphics, there is a 4th dimension - alpha. It's the opacity of an object, so you could say there's a object in front of you at coordinates X, Y, Z, but it's transparent with an alpha value of 0.1 (like glass).

Unlike what the other replies on this thread state, FreeBASIC is not simply the free version of Visual Basic distributed by Microsoft. On the contrary, FreeBASIC is an open-source BASIC compiler used for developing with traditional BASIC code. If you've worked with GW-BASIC and the later-introduced QuickBASIC, think of FreeBASIC as a successor to both. You can download the FreeBASIC compiler from http://www.freebasic.net/ . Look up the Gallery for some sample source code. You can also download the All Basic Code (ABC) snippets containing QuickBASIC code, which I believe you can get from Simtel. Regards, Nitin Reddy

Hi! I agree ASP.NET development is at a level of abstraction the makes the developer believe that it's just a windows forms application being built by emulating state for the state-less HTTP, but it does a good job for building quick-n-dirty intranet applications. Without ASP.NET, I'd see my firm hiring more senior developers resulting in higher development costs. Regards, Nitin R.

Hi! I would suggest using Visual Web Developer or Visual Studio for ASP.NET development, and NuSphere PhpEd or EclipsePHP for PHP development. Both are purpose-built and offer features such as debugging, syntax-checking, and auto code completion. Regards, Nitin Reddy

Hi! I first picked up HTML way back in 1998. I read an online tutorial on how to create websites with HTML by using Notepad, after coming across a website on Sherlock Holmes run by an acquaintance. I used the free web hosting services of Geocities, which was later acquired by Yahoo! and is now being shut down. I then picked up some XHTML while developing ASP.NET applications as the Visual Studio IDE uses warnings to point out markup that is not XHTML compliant. Regards, Nitin Reddy

Hi! You can learn VB by downloading Microsoft Visual Basic Express 2008 for free from the Microsoft website. You can also find plenty of eBooks on Visual Basic floating around on the web, but one source worthy of mention is the ASP.NET website at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ that contains videos and a Wiki. For developing web applications with VB.NET, you'll also need to download Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express, both of which are also available as a free download from the Microsoft website. Regards, Nitin Reddy

Hi! I picked up a couple of basic CSS attributes from looking at other people's CSS and trying it out myself. I also looked up a reference for CSS attributes on the Microsoft and Mozilla websites. I also found Macromedia DreamWeaver's (now called Adobe DreamWeaver) auto-complete to be very helpful. I picked up advanced CSS techniques by reading a couple of web design magazines that I came across in the lobby of a couple of offices I visited. I wish I had noted the names of the magazines though, as I can't remember any more. Regards, Nitin R.

Hi! I'm guessing you want to install a script on your website that re-directs the user to another server. The problem that is apparent is that if your web server is down, the user would not be able to get to the script. However, you can have a small amount of space on a managed hosting provider and host stuff like videos and other bandwidth intensive stuff on your own web server. You can then have a script on the managed provider that checks for connectivity to your web server; if it is inaccessible then it can redirect the user to another web server. To mirror your data, you could have a cron job to run a shell script or something similar that can ZIP your files, while a shell script on the other server can download them via FTP and copy them to it's own document folder. For MySQL, you might be able to setup replication using a 3rd party solution or, alternatively, you could write your own script to synchronize the data. Regards, Nitin

Hi Chandrashekhar! You can find lots and lots of videos on the ASP.NET website at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ . Click on the "Learn" link on top to get to them. By template, I'm assuming you are referring to ASP.NET Master pages. ASP.NET master pages are similar to regular ASP.NET pages except for the @Master tag on top and the asp:ContentPlaceHolder tag that acts as a placeholder for the content. An ASP.NET master page can have multiple content place holders, such as one to hold the page title and another to hold the content of an article. Regards, Nitin R.

I would say simply don't have the libraries needed to execute the program you've got. Microsoft's .NET Framework can't do anything for you if you haven't got the libraries needed to run the program - it's the responsibility of the application developer to include the DLLs or OCXs as a part of the setup package. This is the case with just about any programming platform with only the file extension varying - with Java you'll need to have JAR class library files, with C/C++ you would need DLLs or SOs, with PHP you would need the dependent INC/PHP files. This is analogous to complaining about a car that doesn't run when you haven't got any tires on it! The problem that Microsoft's .NET Framework does solve is the ability to have different programs run different versions of a particular DLL. You can have one application running v1.0 of a DLL while another application can run with v1.1 of the DLL.

Hi! I've got some clarifications to make here: PHP has a couple of popular IDEs, but you probably aren't aware of them yet. EclipsePHP is free and easy to use if you are familiar with any of the other Eclipse-based IDEs. We also have commercial IDEs such as NuSphere PhpED and the Zend Studio extension for Eclipse. ASP.NET is used by firms to power their intranet portals but they're slowly moving to Sharepoint with a couple of 'ASP.NET widgets' called web-parts. However, for Internet applications, you're more likely to see PHP. FaceBook, Yahoo, Flickr and Wikipedia run PHP. Orkut runs ASP.NET. Google uses Python. You can take just about any major technology and you'll be able to name a couple of big players using the technology. The point is, if you're able to justify the use of a technology, it'll work for you. Regards, Nitin R.

Hi! If you haven't tried ASP.NET, I'd strongly recommend you get yourself a copy of the Visual Web Developer 2008 and the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express Edition from the Microsoft website. It enables you to build web applications quickly and more efficiently when compared to PHP. The availability of ASP.NET developers and the development cost is a huge plus in Asia. The drag-and-drop interface in the IDE makes it easy to train staff too. Imagine adding validators to a textbox with a simple drag-and-drop! The AJAX functionality is a breeze, with the Microsoft AJAX Extensions to ASP.NET (included as a part of ASP.NET 3.5). There's also the Microsoft AJAX Control Toolkit that provides you with easy-to-use Javascript snippets. ASP.NET also keeps your code well-structured (so does PHP, if you use a framework such as CakePHP!). Building web services is a no-brainer with the ASP.NET framework. Hosting your application with ASP.NET simply requires you to have a copy of Windows (a server edition of Windows is recommended) as IIS is included. Administration of IIS is simple enough, as you are presented with the graphical user interface (GUI) to make changes. On the downside, when developing Internet applications (as opposed to Intranet applications), you would want to have greater control over how your markup is generated. You would want to streamline your applications such that there is less data passing between the web server and the browser. In this case, you're better off working with PHP, since it would take you quite a bit of effort to achieve the output with the desired markup. Regards, Nitin

You have 2 files to change, one for the HTTP port 80 and another for the HTTPS port 443 so look for the configuration directive that starts with the keyword "Listen". The configuration files to look at are: * C:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf (Look for "Listen 80") * C:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-ssl.conf (Look for "Listen 443") Regards, Nitin

Hi! Can you post the settings that you've made to the php.ini file, and the SMTP settings that you use for your email client (such as Outlook Express). Often, you might also have to contact your network staff to add your server's IP address to their 'relay allowed' list, which enables to you send email outside your domain. It really would help if you could describe the environment in which you've deployed your PHP application. Regards, Nitin

Hi! I see your post is from 2004, so a lot might have changed since then. When I go to Invision right now, I see the Invision Power Board as a commercial product. I've seen a forum post dating back to 2005 indicating Invision was free in the past but as it is now a paid product, Asta Host took it off their website. Invision Power Services charges $150 for their basic support package and $300 for their business support package for the 1st year, after which the renewal is for $25 and $50, respectively. They also provide migration of your existing forum board for $60, as well as an MS SQL or Oracle database connectivity driver for $60. IMHO, I see the $275 to take off the copyright notice at the bottom as a really big gotcha because if you're paying for support to run the forum, especially with a business support package, then you shouldn't have to put up with having another firm's name on your website. Regards, Nitin

Hi! The short story: "Create log/ip_log.html and run the script again" The long version: Your first post had a problem of file permissions - your script was unable to create the file as the Apache account did not have permissions to do so on the directory/folder. This script failed because you are trying to append to an existing file, but the file does not exist. I'd suggest you create a blank file with the same name that you are trying to write to, so the script can find and write to the specified file. I suggest you do not do a chmod 0777 due to security concerns - anyone else with an account on the server would be able to modify or delete your file as you are granting them full access to your file with this command and the parameters. Either way, since achieving the functionality is of a greater concern than security at this point, do post back to let us know you were able to actually get the PHP script working. Regards, Nitin

If you do not wish to show the print dialog box, then you would need a Java applet or an ActiveX control - a signed applet or control can do quite a bit outside the security sandbox, making the browser little more than a mere container for a desktop application. You might want to stick with the idea of displaying a print dialog box because some people have multiple printers configured and they might want to have the option of selecting a printer. BTW, I think a desktop application is better suited for this situation - get the user to download an application that connects to the server via web services. That way, you can modify your existing PHP scripts to serve data to the client and use the client application to customize the print behavior to your liking. Regards, Nitin

Hi! It is indeed possible for PHP and Visual Basic to interact, but it is up to you to decide how you want to do it. Here are a couple of ways you can do this: 1. Write to a file using one language and read using the other 2. Create a webservice on one platform that you can call from the other 3. Use TCP/IP sockets for communication between the two 4. Use a message broker application or a message queue - MSMQ is available with MS Windows 5. Store and read values from a database Most of the applications that I work with use a database for storage so I simply have to create a database trigger to copy the values across the applications' tables. Regards, Nitin

OpenOffice runs on both Linux and Windows, but you'd normally see it included with most modern Linux distributions aimed at desktop users. If you buy a new computer that comes with a trial version of MS Office, you could switch to OpenOffice. I still notice a couple of layout issues in documents that I open with OpenOffice, but at least it works. I like using Notepad++ for all my quick editing needs - it takes a couple of seconds to get DreamWeaver or Visual Studio started. Notepad++ is both open-source and free! BTW, I worked on a Java-based text editor called NText. It didn't really take off due to a lack of commitment from the developers (myself included; I had a lot of stuff going on at the time), but if you would like to work with the source code of NText, I could walk you through it.

Hi! I feel the need to clarify an issue here - the phone company did NOT use the phone to make the calls. However, they did run up a $50 phone bill and charge the customer the $50. In the end, the phone was not fixed - the $50 was simply the estimation fee. ...but the idea of using customers' cell phones to make phone calls sounds like a really wicked idea. Regards, Nitin

Hi! I think anything older than Visual Basic .NET 2005 is quite old. It's mostly because there was a pretty major shift when Microsoft went past .NET 2.0 - they chose to keep the Base Class Library as-such, and built upon it, so .NET 3.0 is actually .NET 2.0 plus additional libraries, and the same goes for .NET 3.5. I would say .NET 3.5 change quite a bit with the introduction of new language features in C# and VB.NET. The Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is the coolest addition to the framework, if you work with data. There's always new stuff happening on the web front (ASP.NET). With Astoria Data Services, you can easily expose the database to external applications via web services, though you'd have to consider the security implications of implementing such a thing. The new ListView control also gives you more control over how data is displayed via the browser - think of it as a Repeater with the functionality of a DataList. You can get a whole lot more information about the web development features in .NET at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ . Regards, Nitin PS: As you can tell, I strongly push for .NET for web apps & plain business apps (PHP is great; let's leave the ASP.NET vs PHP argument for some other time). For windows apps, I'd suggest you still stick with C++.

Hi! The Microsoft .NET platform unifies developers of all kinds - Windows Forms developers, Web Form developers, C# developers and even Visual Basic developers. If you want to develop a web application, you are pretty limited to Visual Basic and C# for the front-end development. If you choose to go with the Express Edition, you would have to download Visual Web Developer. The Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition IDE only enables you to create Windows applications. Don't un-install it just yet, because you can use Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition to create class libraries (DLLs) and use them from within an ASP.NET application. While you are trying out ASP.NET, why don't you use the newer 2008 IDE? (Visual Web Developer 2008 and Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition)? It's got support for newer features, such as LINQ (Language Integrated Query) and implicit properties. Regards, Nitin

The best OS for gaming, according to me, is Microsoft Windows XP. It doesn't add the overhead and compatibility issues that Windows Vista does, and it supports most modern games. CounterStrike, Grand Theft Auto, and Age of Empires run perfectly well for me on Windows XP.You might be a fan of abandonware games, in which case you'd have to use an emulator to get the games working or would prefer to use an older version of Windows (Windows 95/98) or MS DOS. My favorites from the old days are Crusader: No Regret and Protostar.You might find 're-mastered' versions of a game you are looking for, such as OpenTTD (a re-mastered version of Transport Tycoon) and WinDig (Digger re-mastered) that can run on your OS.If you happen to be on a Linux box, the ease with which you can use yum to type a single command that can download the game off the Internet and install it for you is simply amazing, but most mainstream games don't run on Linux, unfortunately.