Technical Problem

Technical difficulties. Let's go get that Gator.

Kill the Gator Got the Gator? Want to get rid of the Gator? Step-by-step instructions.

Later Gator. Gator gone.

We really like and appreciate the newer text ads that Google and others are using. The Ads that look like this -

Web Designs at Mandarin High price, high quality. Unique Designs www.mandarindesign.com Interest:

you learn something old every day

How to Find Us?
Most search engines know about us.
Google	Yahoo	AOL
MSN	Excite	Lycos
Ask Jeeves	Alta Vista	Alexa

By the way, here is the official page for American Idol. We didn't find the screensavers either. You may have better luck. Let us know.

And if you are really bored go to the popular Opie and Anthony unofficial message board.

Hmmm, the old blog worked a little better. Darn.
Wow, this visual search engine kartoo.com is being touted as a way to look at things a little differently. Yea, but where do you go? It's a curious engine, worth a quick look just to see where search engine are going. We'll stick to Google. Smiles.

Rerun of fun

Return of the Favicon
Oh, this is so cool! Another free icon maker site Favicon.co.uk has taken up where the old guys left off. If you bookmark our site you see next to the bookmark.

Want your own Favicon? So what masterpiece can you create with your logo? Take it for a spin. It will take you about 15 - 30 minutes total to do this and it lasts forever...Make your own Favicon Now

PHP/MySQL Host

We need to work from home today and are looking for a PHP/MySQL host. Our hosting service for Mandarin is Interland, we think. Hosting services are like mortgage companies. They sell your contract to other hosting services. Netcraft tells us that Interliant owns our IP address, an email notification says Interland is now our hosting service. And, the last time we contacted them they pointed to one another, both saying we did not have an account. Yes, we pay in advance.

We've used a couple of hosting services. Maybe we can add on to our GoDaddy hosting service for our PHP/MySQL testing . We used GoDaddy for our last site simply because the name is easy to remember.

Wait, our host was originally icom.com (no link is intentional) and when we go to their site we see an explanation.

Interland and Interliant signed an agreement for Interland to purchase Interliant's Web hosting customer base, which included ICOM ...

The confusion is clear. Perhaps they are saying

Interland purchased ICOM.

Lesson? Bigger hosting services are not better hosting services. We'll let you know if Interland lets us add on the PHP/MySQL service. Some hosting services have add-ons ($$$) like ColdFusion, PHP, MySQL, or whatever it is you need.

Whew, that was tough. Tried to navigate the Interland site. No info on ColdFusion, PHP, or MySQL availability.

Finally ended up at a Prayer Request Page.

Grouping Images

Have you ever tried to put a group of images together? Some tools like Adobe will automatically gallery your images. But using HTML gives you more control over how your images are displayed.

Hey, where's the cool part?

Check out the article Grouping Images for step-by-step help in creating thumbnail visual trickery. Each thumbnail expands. Use your art or photography to create a simple live collage.
This collection of free Web Site Templates is very classy.

Dreamweaver anyone?

Overheard: "My sister uses Dreamweaver, and since she is older than me, she knows more about everything than me."

That's from dgsblog where we went to borrow some accessibility code and stold his her words instead :-)

How can I put that on my site?

Here, copy and paste (or type) this in your blog or Web page

<FORM 
action="http://www.mandarindesign.com/cgi-bin/form1.cgi" 
method="post" target="_top" title="IP Address check">

<input type="submit" value="IP Address?" 
style="color:black; background-color:#CCCCFF;">
</FORM>

That's the quick and dirty way to get the IP Address. And, it should work on your site.

Want your own script?

If you want your own script, just copy our Perl script and transfer it to your cgi-bin directory. For our hosting service we name the file form1.cgi.

Well, posting our Perl code didn't quite work. It wanted to execute rather than display.

The lazy way is to find someone else who has posted the Perl code. So, we searched for "perl environment variables". Ah hah! Their code is nearly identical. Try this code http://www.ualberta.ca/WebSupport/DumpEnvironment.html. It does the same thing.

PC running a little slow?

Clean out the files you don't need.

1. From your Desktop
    Click on My Computer 
    Right-click your C: drive
    Select Properties
    Click Disk Cleanup Button

    Make sure the Temporary Files 
    and Recycle Bin checkboxes are checked
    Click OK

Clean up Internet Explorer

 
1. From the Start Menu
   Select Settings
   Control Panel
   Internet Options

   Click Delete Files button 
   Click Clear History 

You might run a little slower at first but after you visit your regular pages and the fresh pages are cached your speed will increase.

Defragment

When you have some free time defragment your C: drive.

 
Select Start
Programs
Accessories
System Tools
Disk Defragmenter

Select your C: drive
Click Start. 

Shortcuts to your C: drive

c:\Program Files\Internet Explorer
c:\windows\defrag.exe

Cheap Web Tricks

The Shadow Filter

The shadow filter looks a lot like the glow filter. And, it's just as easy to code. You don't have to use big text.

Here's the code if you want to copy and paste it (or type it) into your blog or Web page.

<TABLE STYLE="filter:shadow(color=lime)">
<TR><TD>
<big>The shadow filter looks a lot like the glow filter. 
And, it's just as easy to code.
</big> 
You don't have to use big text
</TD></TR>
</TABLE>

What does this code say?

Extras that you don't need to know

1. TABLE says we are using a table for our layout.
2. COLOR="lime" says use the color lime for the shadow.
3. TR and TD say that we are starting a new row and a new column.
4. BIG says make the text that follows big.
5. </BIG>says close the big text.
6. /TD and /TR say to end the table column and the row.
7. The /TABLE says end our table

Take a look at the Color Chart for named colors. Color names are recognized by browsers but not all colors are recognized by all browsers. The safe method is to use the hex code for cross-browser compatibility.
Tag Your blog is like a car wreck, only not as interesting.

Alexa says our rank is about 297,000 today. Up a few million from yesterday. Love that Alexa. What a quirky thing it is.

 

 

 

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
Nathaniel Borenstein

Overheard: I do whatever my rice krispies tell me to.

"Smoking kills, and if you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life."
-- Anti-smoking spokesperson Brooke Shields

I quit smoking once for six days. And then they untied me.

Bordered Box

I like that box border with the dots. How do you do that?

With inline style. The DIV tag.

Copy and paste (or type) this code in your blog or HTML page.

<div style="width:200px;text-align:left;
padding:5px;background-color:#FF6600;
border:1px dotted black;font-size:12px;">

YOUR TEXT GOES HERE

</div>

We like using style because it's free. No graphics to load. No bandwidth to waste.

So, let's play with some colors using the color chart.

Replace the #FF6600 hexidecimal number with your choice of color from the color chart or with a recognized color name.

Vote for me in THE BLOGS - Best web logs on the internet
Tech IT Easy, it's Friday. Let's make a color table. Tables and background colors are nearly free in the world of bandwidth.

Browser Safe Web Color Chart
000000	330000	660000	990000	CC0000	FF0000
003300	333300	663300	993300	CC3300	FF3300
006600	336600	666600	996600	CC6600	FF6600
009900	339900	669900	999900	CC9900	FF9900
00CC00	33CC00	66CC00	99CC00	CCCC00	FFCC00
00FF00	33FF00	66FF00	99FF00	CCFF00	FFFF00
00FF33	33FF33	66FF33	99FF33	CCFF33	FFFF33
00FF66	33FF66	66FF66	99FF66	CCFF66	FFFF66
00FF99	33FF99	66FF99	99FF99	CCFF99	FFFF99
00FFCC	33FFCC	66FFCC	99FFCC	CCFFCC	FFFFCC
00FFFF	33FFFF	66FFFF	99FFFF	CCFFFF	FFFFFF
000000	003300	006600	009900	00CC00	00FF00
000033	003333	006633	009933	00CC33	00FF33
000066	003366	006666	009966	00CC66	00FF66
000099	003399	006699	009999	00CC99	00FF99
0000CC	0033CC	0066CC	0099CC	00CCCC	00FFCC
0000FF	0033FF	0066FF	0099FF	00CCFF	00FFFF
3300FF	3333FF	3366FF	3399FF	33CCFF	33FFFF
6600FF	6633FF	6666FF	6699FF	66CCFF	66FFFF
9900FF	9933FF	9966FF	9999FF	99CCFF	99FFFF
CC00FF	CC33FF	CC66FF	CC99FF	CCCCFF	CCFFFF
FF00FF	FF33FF	FF66FF	FF99FF	FFCCFF	FFFFFF
000000	000033	000066	000099	0000CC	0000FF
333300	333333	333366	333399	3333CC	3333FF
336600	336633	336666	336699	3366CC	3366FF
339900	339933	339966	339999	3399CC	3399FF
33CC00	33CC33	33CC66	33CC99	33CCCC	33CCFF
33FF00	33FF33	33FF66	33FF99	33FFCC	33FFFF
330000	330033	330066	330099	3300CC	3300FF
660000	660033	660066	660099	6600CC	6600FF
990000	990033	990066	990099	9900CC	9900FF
CC0000	CC0033	CC0066	CC0099	CC00CC	CC00FF
FF0000	FF0033	FF0066	FF0099	FF00CC	FF00FF
333300	333333	333366	333399	3333CC	3333FF
666600	666633	666666	666699	6666CC	6666FF
999900	999933	999966	999999	9999CC	9999FF
CCCC00	CCCC33	CCCC66	CCCC99	CCCCCC	CCCCFF
FF0000	FFFF33	FFFF66	FFFF99	FFFFCC	FFFFFF
000000	333333	666666	999999	CCCCCC	FFFFFF

Subtracting Design Technique

White space is free.
JavaScripts slow you down. It may be the piece that results in errors. For the novice, JavaScript is where you experience most of your errors.

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
-Antoine de Saint-Exup'ery

Two Techniques for Fading Images

Note: Applets are considered deprecated.

Yea, we like the fade too. The Applet version is not 100% reliable. If you add too many images it sometimes pukes. Does it always work for you?

Two Methods for Fading Images

1. How to fade using the Applet provides step-by-step instructions.

2. How to fade images using JavaScript demonstrates another method that may be more reliable.

Google
Top 10 Gaining Queries
Week Ending August 5, 2002
1. spirit airlines
2. vin diesel
3. west nile virus
4. Jason Priestley
5. elvis presley
6. meteor shower
7. Elin Nordegren
8. american idol
9. hochwasser
10. Lisa Marie Presley

We will have to look up hochwasser and let you know what it is :)

The King Lives

Click here to listen to the Elvis Medley.

Picklebird has a colorful site that makes good use of color. Their palette is like this, with different proportions of course.

IP Address

The ARIN Whois Database lets you enter the IP address and tells you details about the owner of the IP Address.

What is an IP address?

Simply put, it is like your street address. It is your unique identifier and looks like this 169.3.169.1887

It might change each time you logon or it may always be the same. It depends on how your hosting service works. Most sites do track your IP address in one way or another.

Customizing Your Tag Board

The following STYLE code works on your blog, web page, or your tag board.

Add some STYLE as in style=

LINKS
To change the link color use the style attribute.

<a href="http://www.tag-board.com/" target="_new"
style="color: #ffff00">Powered by TagBoard Message Board</a>

Change the HTML Form

TEXT
Use <span> tag with the style attribute.

<span style="color: #ffff00">Name</span>

FORM TEXT and BACKGROUND
Use style.

<input name="tagname" maxlength="20"
style="color: #ffff00; background-color: #00ffff;">

FORM Submit BUTTON
Use style.

<input type="submit" value="Submit" 
style="font-family: 'Lucida Console'; font-size:12px; 
color:black; background-color:FFFF66;">
</form>

How can I customize my HTML form?

Tag boards, web pages, or blogs forms

Add some STYLE, as in style=

Item 1 Item 2 Item 3

CSS style is not complicated. You just have to know where to add it. Here is the code for the simple form above. Notice that fonts and colors are defined using the style= Note: Quoted strings can not span lines.

<form>
<input type="text" 
style="font-family: 'Lucida Console'; font-size:12px; 
color:black; background-color:FF0000;">
<select name="" 
style="font-family: 'Lucida Console'; font-size:12px; 
color:navy; background-color:FF6600;">
<option>Item 1</option>
<option>Item 2</option>
<option>Item 3</option>
</select>
<input type="submit" value="Submit" 
style="font-family: 'Lucida Console'; font-size:12px; 
color:black; background-color:FFFF66;">
</form>

BostonBluEyes

has some funny pictures and lots of good links.
Sweetsuite.org is worth a quick visit just to see a horizontal site implementation that works well.
Lydus does nice background work using images and photoshop.

New Article: The Buzz

The Buzz
We discovered Buzz McAdam at the tag-board and couldn't resist writing an article about his unique site. Check out the August 2002 article The Buzz and let us know what you think.

Overheard: I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.

Just testing the color named whitesmoke (hex code F5F5F5), with a bordercolor of black. We need a subtle color for an automated verification email that is sent to the customer. In ColdFusion it's easier to put in the color name than to remember that you have to double pound the hex code. It also makes the code easier to read since each customer type (persona) is presented an email of a different color.

Most Popular Passwords Gosh, I wish this list could be published. I've always found passwords to be interesting and it's one thing that hasn't changed since the 80's. People pretty much stay on the same themes: kids name, car, motorcyle, country name, nickname, sports team, etc. Years ago when a woman used BADIRED as a password I just had to ask. What does that mean? She said it was the name carved in a gun handle that had passed down in their family and they never knew what it meant. But, most people use common words and many use the same password as others. I can mention rosebud because it is one that nobody is using in our system at work right now. Rosebud would likely be in the top 100 passwords that I've seen.

Top System Admin Passwords Sysadmin is common for system administrators, and so is , sysadm, password, admin, guest, root, system, router, user, root, system, test, and super. Knowing these comes in handy when you have to get into an operating system that someone has password protected and inadvertently locked you, the new system administrator, out. If you are working a web related system a good guess for the userid and password is webmaster. System administrators tend to be the laziest userid and password generators. The userid is often the same as the password. End users are usually prevented from making that mistake. Mostly people use words easy to type and spell, and for now that's all I can tell.

Google's Top 10 Gaining Queries
Week Ending August 5, 2002
1. anna nicole smith
2. crop circles
3. marilyn monroe
4. west nile virus
5. friendship day
6. lord of the rings
7. ronaldo
8. scramjet
9. jelena dokic
10. dia dos pais

Anna Nicole Smith

Anna Nicole Smith is on top of the search list. But, the amazing part to me is that this thumbnail image is a good quality .jpg and is only 3K (uh, don't tell anyone but I didn't have a clue who Anna Nicole smith was until today). Looks like Marilyn to me.

Is it the anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death or something? Candle in the Wind was on the radio this morning. There I found it, she died August 5, 1962.

Highlighted Text

You can change the background color behind a piece of text using this simple effect.

Here's the code you can copy and paste (or type) into your blog or HTML page.

<span style="background-color:yellow">
This is highlighted
</span>

Here's the result: This is highlighted

That Alexa Toolbar and the Day Job

Rank: 482

It's a curious thing, Alexa. It's an Amazon affiliated search tool with a toolbar you can add on to your browser. It lets you see traffic rankings and more for every site on the Web.

I'm at the day job right now and the page I'm working on has a rank of 482 at Alexa. It's a bit misleading. That appears to be the ranking for any site in the www.ca.gov domain.

Wow, under site info at Alexa I find an exact date that even I didn't know.

Online since '89

We have been online since 12-Oct-89, and have 12 other sites that link to this site.

So what is site popularity anyway? The google green bar stays about midway at our site while the popularity test at Market Leap would rank on the number of links.

The White House?

And our site hasn't been reviewed yet so I could...okay, back to the real work. Wait, it says that people who visit our site also visit whitehouse.gov and when I click it says the Whitehouse page rank is 3,128.

They say we are more popular than The White House!

that's it for Alexa

I did like the way they described a URL.
Typically, a URL consists of four parts: protocol, server (or domain) where the file is located, path, and filename. However, some URLs have no path or filename. An example of a URL is:

http://www.alexa.com/company/index.html

http is the protocol
www.alexa.com is the server
company/ is the path
index.html is the filename

Monday Morning

I came in a bit early this morning thinking there would be 200+ emails since I was off last week. Wrong. It's 404. Hey, isn't a 404 a page not found error code? Maybe I can pretend that I couldn't find any new emails. So I'll relax here for a moment before hitting the inbox.

so, you want my job, eh?

Gotta do it. Oh, here goes...let's open the mail

so, you want my job, eh?

ah, that was nothing. It's lunch time now :)
Let's go get a gator.

Free Images

We just updated the Gallery that includes free thumbnails or full-size graphics. No permission or link is needed. Take what you want.

 

 

 

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
Nathaniel Borenstein

"Oh, by the way, how do you do the layer effect on your front page? It didn't work for me when I tried it."
Professor Fusion

Floating Text over an image

Professor Fusion, you always ask the hard questions but keep it up. It makes us think. In order to demonstrate with copy and paste code we used inline style here. Also, we found it easiest to work with a heading tag, H3, on the relative positioned text. I have no idea why.

Here we used relative positioning with STYLE code. Relative positioning starts where the text (or object) would have been placed normally and then moves the text as we defined -300px, which says go up 300 pixels from where it would normally go.
Here's the image with text positioned up 300 pixels.

Web Site Design Studio

Here's the inline style code that you can copy and paste (or type) into your blog or HTML page.

<br>

<img src="images/40Trio.jpg" width=316 height=330>

<h3 style="position: relative;
	top: -300px;
	font: normal normal normal 18pt Haettenschweiler;
	color: #FF3300;
	margin-left: 30px;">

Web Site Design Studio

</h3>

We added this one to the FAQ page where there is a little more explanation.


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