Oops, turn your Volume down

By popular demand we are demonstrating how to play sound files. You will see the copy and paste code if you scroll down this page. And, if you stay here long enough the music will stop.
Netmechanic Quick and Easy

Instant and Free! We are at Netmechanic this morning doing a free test of 1 Web page. The results for a 1 page check are displayed instantly. It's checking our links right now, and says we have 1 bad link of the 25 links. Oops, let's see what it is...odd, they say it is the validator and even give us a hyperlink to it that works fine. Another says "access denied for robots".

It tells us the size of each image on the page and says they are "ok". That was fun :) and took about 3 minutes.

You know you want it.... Free Sample of Netmechanic HTML check

Blue Robot

For CSS layouts a visit to BlueRobot Layouts will get you started, and then some.

They kindly remind you "to borrow, steal, abduct, and/or torture the documents contained in the Layout Reservoir".

Oops! Turn your volume down...

Fred is having some problems getting music to play on his site. It's always nice to hear from Fred :) We don't really do music and only have old code that may be outdated now. We use EMBED and BGSOUND . If anyone can help out on this one please let us know! Here goes Fred...

Playing a MIDI file
1. I'm uploading a file named michelle.mid to my root directory
2. Now putting in the BGSOUND and the EMBED code

removing sound code, driving us crazy!

<BGSOUND SRC="michelle.mid"> 
<EMBED SRC="michelle.mid"HIDDEN="True"> 

Ah, how nice. It's playing the song Michelle by the Beatles on this PC. Playing a .WAV File

<EMBED SRC="deja_vu.wav""hidden="true"> 
<BGSOUND SRC="deja_vu.wav" loop="0" >

This one worked too. This post is to test a short .wav file named deja_vu.wav
It's deja vu all over again.
Attempting to Archive the blog and updating the template today ...
How Popular is Your Site?
MarketLeap Site Popularity Checker is another tool for checking your site popularity in popular search engines. They have cut-and-paste HTML code so you can add the function to your site if you want. And, of course it is free. Take it for a test drive today!
Blogging
You learn something old every day. Blogging isn't new, it is just getting to be an easy to use customizable tool that happens to be free and easy to use.
Smiles to Microsoft. Here is a cut from a Microsoft page today
"The sample is best viewed on an 800 x 600 display, with the browser set to full-screen mode."
STYLE
If you are so into STYLE that you are now picking your scrollbar color properties visit this M site to generate your HTML.
Dear Miss Manners,

Q: What is a polite size for a banner graphic or image that is going to be posted in a Top Site list or in someone elses Guest Book? Some have stated rules while other sites don't.

A: A rule of thumb might be to try to stay within 100 wide or high. The weight, or size of your graphic image, should not be more than 15K. Lighter than 10K is very polite.
We use the traditional size of 468 x 60 and sometimes a 200 x 150 banner.

Subj: Mic's Pics  
Date: 3/19/02 6:22:30 PM Pacific Standard Time 
From: removed to protect the innocent
To: webmaster@mandarindesign.com 
Sent from the Internet (Details) 

Can you add to what's hot- "The Kings,"
 and what's not-"The Lakers"? 
Thanks for the consideration!

Done. Learn how to be grief
. That was a typo. It was supposed to be
Learn how to be brief.

Mics Pics
What's Hot Slam Dunk Renegade Highlights News Flash Relentless energy humor defensible metrics dynamic decisions sensitive data simplicity company slogans testimonials cheesy music (ok on homepages) mouse litter - the trail forms that work quick reference FAQs Breaking News commentary KINGS Blogging kewl	What's Not Flash without purpose Spash page without purpose Pop-up windows broadband pouting (yawn) redesign News Nuggets (even chickens don't have nuggets) denied License Fees JavaScript Tickertapes JavaScript snooping 4 letter words, including "cool" killer designs synergy spam microsoft cookie monsters LAKERS Blogging cool

Speaking of Art...If you are an artist or an art lover you will like Breaking Art.com.It's all free. Send a postcard from a selection of artists or or add your own art page where others can enjoy (and buy) your online art. For art lovers, the art postcards are offered by quality artists like Ron Guthrie. This isn't the usual cheesy stuff that online postcards are made of...and it's all free!
Back to work
How do we add a border around a table? Here's a simple table with three columns.

col 1

col 2

col 3

Now, add the style code to put a border around the table.

<STYLE type="text/css">
.myborder{
border-color: black;
border-style: outset;
border-width:10px;}
</style>
<table class="myborder">
.
.
.
rest of table code here

col 1

col 2

col 3

and now our table has a 10 px thick black border (in some browsers). The border doesn't display in some versions of Netscape.
Art Sites Visit guthrieart.com for a glimpse of the beauty of black and white. While you are there go ahead and order the notecards. I just got mine in the mail and they are excellent quality for the price. You will like Ron's site design and the featured art.
Borders, Borders, Borders CSS Border Tip Just when we were working on some instructions for borders Larisa beats us to the punch and explains it all at Netmechanic At least we know we are on the right track with the topics!
Cooper.com It's not about flashy interfaces Yes, he literally wrote the book on interaction design. He wrote Inmates are running the Asylum where the premise is that business has inadvertently put programmers and engineers in charge, leading to huge wastes of money and ...hey, we are indeed in charge and we are running the asylum but it's the suits that waste the money. We all know early on that the next multi-million dollar project is going to fail. It surely must be interesting reading if they think that they can show how to harness the talents. The site design, unlike the other so-called design experts, is a work of artful simplicity.
Pirated-sites.com lets you view both the original site and the copied version of pirated sites. The worst part is that the pirated version sometimes looks better! Oh, no. Highly recommend this site for cruise in your spare time. Only steal from the best! This style type is named smalltype in our style sheet. Don't recall where I borrowed it from but it is rarely used so I'll use it now.
When in doubt, do as Amazon does

When in doubt, do as Amazon does Today a site referred to the "tacky underscores" on hyperlinks. Hmmm, we use the underscore. It's intentional. A quick visit to Amazon and we see that they too use the underscored hyperlinks. Hey, not only do they use the underscore they stold our color palette! No, it isn't likely that they visited one of our sites and "stold" our colors. They just happen to be a mix of mostly browser-safe colors that look quite nice. Seventy, Eighty, Ninety... This background color 708090 is a popular color. It is a subtle blue, nearly gray on some monitors, and best of all it is easy to remember if you are manually coding: seventy, eighty, ninety...
cc6600 is a nice color	990000 is a nice color	003399 is a nice color
ff9933 is a nice color	996633 is a nice color	ffffdd is a nice color
708090 is a nice color	ffcc66 is a nice color	000000 is a nice color

The blog template is our ever-changing easel. Buzz, beep, and woof sound effects for your site are at ziffdavis.com. Hey, we can't even get the tables to display properly in all of the browsers and now we are going for sound effects? Please don't do it. Is it time for a free NetMechanic Checkup? You can do a an online one-time tune-up or sign up for a "Free Monthly Tune Up". It's useful tool and doesn't generate too much junk mail. A List Apart is a site for people who make Web sites. If you are interested in style they have some fresh content. D'oh!

Yahoo!

and other search engines http://www.yahoo.com Why should you want to be listed in Yahoo? Yahoo is still the Web's most popular search engine. It has a well-deserved reputation for finding relevant information. The secret to Yahoo is that it is the largest human-compiled guide to the Web. Yahoo uses human editors to categorize the Web. The Yahoo editors may even send you an email before listing your site asking for more specific information, such as geographic location. Yahoo uses Google when it can't find a match for your search. Tracking Your Ranking We are tracking our ranking in some carefully selected search engines. Why? For Grins. Yahoo! web design sacramento Day 1 we are # 17 in the Yahoo list. Today we are # 2 in the Yahoo list. web design west sacramento Day 1 we are # 1 in Yahoo. Today we are # 1 in Yahoo. Actually we are the only site listed in this small town. Logo Design California Day 1 we are # 12 for Logo Design California. Today we are # 13 for Logo Design California. AskJeeves.com mandarin web design Day 1 we are # 6 when searching for mandarin web design Again, we are not sure how we are indexed. mandarin web help Day 1 we are # 2 Lycos web help coldfusion Day 1 we are # 7 Cheap Web Tricks Meta Tag Generator might be worth a test drive.
The CSS Validator is a handy tool. Run it on your own style sheet when you make changes. Before you borrow another sites style sheet you can use the validator to make sure it is a good style sheet. 1. View the source code to get the name of the style sheet in use. 2. Enter the name of the style sheet in the CSS Validator. For our style sheet you would enter

http://www.mandarindesign.com/style1.css

The CSS Validator will display the entire style sheet and point to any possible errors. 3. Cut and paste the entire style sheet or just the elements you are interested in. CSS Validator for our style sheet This is a good method for trying out the syles you see at another site.
Still setting up the blogger template to work well in Netscape. The fluid pages are a little too fluid in Netscape. Works well in IE. Microsoft is spying with the media player. Expected.
Dual Monitors (Matrox G450, 16MB) So what's the deal with the dual monitor flat screens? If you are usually develop using a 21 inch screen, set at 1024 x 768 you are in for a treat. This is a brand new toy. The two monitors sit together and form one screen. If I set my wallpaper to display center, one half of the image is on the left monitor and the other half on the right monitor.You mouse drag from one monitor to the other. When you see me come in you will detect a setting of 1600 by 600 pixels. What's with that? Each monitor is displaying 800 by 600. I kept the 21 inch screens for testing but am spoiled by flat screens and the real estate that comes with dual monitors.

Calendars Just in time, Netmechanic's Larisa Thomason publishes an article JavaScript Tip: Easy JavaScript Calendars Larisas articles are always clear and precise. And, without looking there in the inbox is another link from JavaScript.comthat provides the code for a Window Calendar (only works in IE) Critique Your Site Do you want someone to brutally critique your new web site? We will do that. Yes, it's free. We will take a quick spin through your site (a live person, not software) looking at your text, colors, links, graphics, spelling, and the overall impact of your site. If there are glaring errors we will point them out. Just email us with the name of your completed site. We might even say something nice. You can visit Fixing Your Website , a Vincent Flanders (web celebrity) site. He's a little behind the times though. It might just be that he types very slow.

Splash Pages

Splash pages are used in applications to entertain the user while the database is being loaded, your authority and saved preferences are being checked, and other housekeeping. The page is intended to entertain you, and keep you from hitting the enter key while the application is preparing itself for your use. Once it has completed all the startup tasks you automatically see the main form.

Splash pages on the Web are not usually functional. Right-click to see the code and you usually see that absolutely nothing is being done while this spash page is entertaining you (or not). It is simply a front door that is closed and you have to virtually knock to get in by clicking on the picture.

The Flash Splash is worse. It's tempting to use splash pages, especially for those who are creative and want to show off their art. Resist the urge to use a spash page. Look at your site and see if you have a couple of extra clicks required that can be removed. Watch someone else go through your site and see if they get confused. It's a good test.

Animation is out, or is it? Animation is out. We are all tired of it. Anything that blinks or distracts us. But, today at an auto-racing site ITV-F1 it nearly seemed appropriate. When you live for speed, the roar of the cars, the smell of methanol in the morning, then you may be entertained by the animated ads flashing on both sides of the screen and on top. It's basic animation but they somehow make it work for this type of site.
I blog, therefore I am contains links to the 2002 Blogging awards, and other blogs.

Web Celebrities
Someone referred to "web celebrities" which is an interesting way to look at some of these folks whose "rules" we read. Take Jakob Neilson (take him please). He is a web celebrity who we all let lead us to some degree. We strive for simplicity and follow all of the rules for accessibility and then we see the deep-pocket companies sites and view the source code to find out that they still use the FONT tag. They aren't even using style sheets. And, the purpose in browser-safe colors still baffles me. Why do I continue to use browser-safe colors and let the user stay in control with the fonts when the big guys, even Computerworld, still hard-code even the simple stuff and completely ignore browser-safe colors.