| |
Tips, Tricks, News and Reviews for Web Coders
In This Issue...
|
 |
 |
 |
|
Note: This newsletter is supported solely by advertisers like the one
below. We stand 100% behind every ad that we run. If you ever have a
problem with a company that advertises here please contact us and we will
try to get it resolved. - Kevin Yank |
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
| |
Announcing
Amazon.com Web Services 2.0!
 At Amazon.com, we want to see Web services work. We
believe they are important to the future of the Internet. To help
stimulate Web service innovation, we now offer software developers the
opportunity to integrate Amazon.com features and content directly into
other Web sites using either SOAP or XML over HTTP. Partner with the
leader in e-commerce and join the Web services revolution today!
Participation Is Easy and Free!
To participate in the free Amazon.com Web Services Program, you simply
need to:
1. Download our free developer's kit;
2. Apply for a free developer's token;
3. Write your application.
For more details, please visit www.amazon.com/webservices today. |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
| |
Hi, Tech
Timers!
When it comes to Web technologies, I'm all over the map these days!
At the office, I'm heavily into researching every aspect of Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS) as I am writing the reference appendices for a new
SitePoint book on CSS. It's scary what kind of nitty gritty details about
CSS I can pull out of my hat at the moment! Witness this issue's Quick
Tip!
I'm also getting a higher-than-usual dosage of PHP with the new design of sitepoint.com having
gone live this week. Reacting quickly to visitor feedback and bug reports
to put that final bit of polish on the new site is requiring everyone at
the office to pitch in -- in one way or another. If you haven't seen the
new SitePoint yet, what are you waiting for?!
In my spare time, I'm deeply immersed in exploring the Apache Struts framework for
a personal project. Struts is a complicated, yet extremely powerful
framework for building large Web applications with Java Servlets and JSP.
It takes care of many of the code organization issues that so often plague
sites built with server-side Java so that you can focus on the
application. And while saves you from having to re-invent the wheel, you
first have to learn how the super-powered, ready-made wheel they provide
works. If nothing else, I'm sure this project will spawn a feature article
or three. :-)
Dream job? I think so!
Speaking of feature articles, be sure to read my all-new article this
issue! It's been awhile, and it's good to be back in the writer's seat.
Kevin Yank
techtimes@sitepoint.com
We value your membership. If for some reason at this time it is
inconvenient for you, you may discontinue your subscription by simply
sending a "Blank" email to the following address: leave-techtimes-html-8346742R@lists.sitepoint.com. Scroll to
the very bottom of this issue for further instructions if you have
problems.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Editorial
CSS
design does work! But it's not always practical...
One of the big design goals of the new SitePoint was to
demonstrate that a sophisticated, content-rich, and usable site design
could be achieved while complying with the latest Web standards. The front
page of SitePoint complies with XHTML 1.0 Strict, and the rest of the
content site will as well once we iron out a few straggling remnants of
the old design.
Our CSS code is also standards-compliant, but for a few Internet
Explorer-specific extensions that add to the functionality of the site on
that browser, without hindering it on others. CSS was designed with these
sorts of extensions in mind, so we feel well-justified making use of
them.
Now, with all that said, I think the goal was only achievable because of
the nature of the site we were building: a content-driven information site
for Web developers. If we had to build the Web site for the next Lord of
the Rings movie, or for a community of gamers, we'd have been much harder
pressed to produce a satisfactory result with pure standards-compliant
code. CSS2 is a great start, but it isn't up to the task of creating
graphically rich, organic layouts.
CSS2 is
very much centered on its box model, so as soon as you want to do anything
non-rectangular, you have to play a manic game of "hide the
boxes". This could technically be done with a bunch of empty
<div> tags (one for each "decorative" element you needed
to put on the page), to which you would assign background images,
positions, and dimensions with CSS. But when you've got 20 <div>
elements on the page that have no meaning in the document except to be
"raw material" for your CSS code to play with, they might as
well be table cells with spacer images in them.
The current working draft of CSS3 shows promise with support for border images, but it will be some time before we see mainstream
browsers supporting such things. And even then, we'll still be talking
about sticking things to rectangular boxes, which must also contain page
content unless you're willing to add empty, "raw material"
elements to your HTML code.
What CSS will need to provide the flexibility to create organic layouts
will be the ability to position an arbitrary number of images (and
possibly other primitives, including vector graphics and text) relative to
any document element.
In the meantime, I say respect the standards and try not to break them
without a reason. But just because we have a standards-compliant content
site doesn't mean we look down on those of you whose audiences demand
sites that can't be achieved with pure CSS.
Maybe in CSS4...
Kevin Yank
Editor, The SitePoint Tech Times
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
128 bit
Supercerts from Thawte
Thawte is one of the few companies that offers 128 bit supercerts. A
supercert will allow you to extend the highest allowed 128 bit encryption
to all your clients even if they use browsers that are limited to 40 bit
encryption.
Download a guide
to learn more |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Quick Tip
Mark
external links on your site (and others!)
This issue's
feature article shows you how to create links that will open in a new
browser window without violating the latest W3C standards. But most people
would like to know in advance if a link is going to open a new window by
default.
In up-to-date browsers like Mozilla (including Netscape 6+), Opera 7, and
Internet Explorer 5 for Macintosh let you use CSS to apply styles specific
to element attributes. Consider the following CSS rule:
a[target=_blank]:link, a[target=_blank]:visited {
text-decoration: none;
border-bottom: 1px dashed;
}
Assuming normal links are underlined on your site, adding this rule to
your site's style sheet will remove that underline from new-window links
and replace it with a dashed border of the same color (borders are the
same color as the element text by default).
In this issue's feature article, external links are marked with
rel="external" instead of target="_blank", and we can
extend our rule to apply to those links as well:
a[target=_blank]:link, a[target=_blank]:visited,
a[rel=external]:link, a[rel=external]:visited {
text-decoration: none;
border-bottom: 1px dashed;
}
Unfortunately, Internet Explorer for Windows does not support the
attribute selectors used in these rules. If you want to support that
browser as well, you can assign a CSS class (e.g.
class="external") to new-window links and add a separate CSS
rule for them:
a.external:link, a.external:visited {
text-decoration: none;
border-bottom: 1px dashed;
}
We use a separate rule because MSIE ignores the entire rule when it
encounters a selector type it doesn't support.
As a bonus tip just for you this week, if you use Mozilla or Opera 7, you
can add this CSS to your personal style sheet to help you spot external
links on every site you visit! In Mozilla, you can create a file called
userContent.css in the 'chrome' directory of your Mozilla user profile.
For example:
C:\Documents and Settings\Kevin\Application
Data\Mozilla\Profiles\kevin\b0ksf8a4.slt\chrome\userContent.css
In Opera 7, you can configure the location of your user style sheet on the
'Page Style' page of the browser settings. The default location of mine
was:
C:\Documents and Settings\Kevin\Application
Data\Opera\Opera7\profile\styles\user.css
After adding your rule(s) to that file, also be sure to check the 'My
style sheet' option under 'Author mode', which tells Opera to use your
style sheet even when displaying the page normal style sheet.
If you're new to this CSS stuff, check out my article: CSS Is Easy!
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | |
|
|
|
| |
New Technical Articles at SitePoint.com
 |
 |
 |
|
 Feature
Article
New-Window Links in a Standards-Compliant World
By Kevin Yank
On the surface, the latest (X)HTML standards seem to frown upon
links that open in a new window with target=_blank. But with a little
creativity, new-window links can be done in a standards-compliant way,
with minimum hassle.
Full Story
|
|
 |
|
 |
Sending Web eMail in ASP.NET
By Peter Todorov
Web email just got a whole lot easier... thanks to ASP.NET! In just
3 simple steps, Peter shows how to get your Webmail up and running.
Full Story
Build Your Site Navigation With CSS
By Larisa Thomason
CSS offers a range of benefits over images or JavaScript for use in
navigation systems. Larisa explains all, and shows how to build the
navigation for your site in CSS.
Full Story
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
