Re: [WSG] A few questions needing answers
On 6 Mar 2004, at 13:14, Michael Kear wrote: I cant see what difference it makes to them whether you have absolute or relative links. On advantage of using a href=/resources/reallyusefulpage.htmllink/a instead of a href=resources/reallyusefulpage.htmllink/a is that if the page the link is on gets moved to another location on the files system - and you forget to link-check - the link will still be good to go. That's one small advantage, and I tend to use that even if it does add a few characters to the HTML sent to the client. Ian Lloyd ~ WEB: http://www.ian-lloyd.com/ | AIM: uklloydi Round-the-World trip blog: http://ianandmanda.typepad.com/ * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] A few questions needing answers
Thanks for your answer Ian, but that's to do with the site owner/developer. It's got nothing whatever to do with the hosting company. They provide space and bandwidth to people who hire their facilities (i.e. you and me) and site owners can't put any files outside their own space. If they do then the hosting company has serious security problems and is a disaster waiting to happen. This issue came about cos the hosting company said the site had to use absolute links and that's just plain daft. It's got nothing to do with them. The developer can choose to use relative or absolute links and it makes no difference whatsoever to the hosting company. It doesn't even matter to the hosting company if the site works or not. If the developer writes a whole bunch of useless code that doesn't work, that doesn't even impact on the hosting company if they have set up the security and access properly. The only thing the hosting company has to make sure of is [a] that they get paid, and [b] reckless or unwitting users can't write code that brings everything to a halt, this wrecking other users' sites too and [c] they don't breach the law in some way (hate/obscenity content etc). And no matter how you write your links, you can't affect either of these issues. IF the hosting company wants to use absolute links because they might be moving files around off their own bat, then I'd be telling them to take a hike on that count too. They've got no business tinkering with their customers files unless they are breaching the law. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com -Original Message- From: Ian Lloyd [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 9 March 2004 1:11 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [WSG] A few questions needing answers On 6 Mar 2004, at 13:14, Michael Kear wrote: I can't see what difference it makes to them whether you have absolute or relative links. On advantage of using a href=/resources/reallyusefulpage.htmllink/a instead of a href=resources/reallyusefulpage.htmllink/a is that if the page the link is on gets moved to another location on the files system - and you forget to link-check - the link will still be good to go. That's one small advantage, and I tend to use that even if it does add a few characters to the HTML sent to the client. Ian Lloyd ~ WEB: http://www.ian-lloyd.com/ | AIM: uklloydi Round-the-World trip blog: http://ianandmanda.typepad.com/ * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ * * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
Re: [WSG] A few questions needing answers
Thanks James and the others who replied, much appreciated. I've since disposed of the middleman and talked directly to the host and found out that the problems I was told existed do not at all - there's a lesson learnt! As for the other - yep, a step too far into programming land for me. I think I'll leave it to the experts! Thanks for the help all, Peter On 06/03/2004, at 12:02 PM, James Ellis wrote: Hope this helps. James x-tad-bigger /x-tad-biggerUniversal Head Design That Works. 7/43 Bridge Rd Stanmore NSW 2048 Australia T (+612) 9517 1466 F (+612) 9565 4747 E [EMAIL PROTECTED] W www.universalhead.com
[WSG] A few questions needing answers
Hello fellow pit miners! I have a couple of questions that have plagued me lately - feel free to ignore these if they are too OT, but if not, perhaps someone can shine a lamp into the dark corners of my ignorance ... so to speak ... Forms on Websites Is there a good place that explains/makes available the coding involved for putting simple forms on sites? My programming knowledge doesn't go beyond css, xhtml and using JavaScript nuggets, but I've always wanted to be able to put contact forms on my sites. Relative vs Absolute Links I came across a server host the other day who insists on having all links in my site as absolute. Not only do I have to change all my links, but I can't check changes to my site without uploading it first. Why would he insist on such a thing? Do I have to go along with it or should he change *his* system? HTML vs PHP I notice a lot of sites I admire are using .php pages instead of .html. What are the advantages of this system, is learning basic php a nightmare and should I even contemplate it? I often download css ssites I admire to my computer to study and changing the .php suffixes to .html seems to not affect the working of the site at all. Thanks for any enlightenment! Cheers Peter PS I'm going to be sneaky and throw in this, but only cause it might be very useful to any Sydney designers - my colleagues and I have studio space for up to 3 people available. It's the best studio in town - check it out at http://www.universalhead.com/studio x-tad-bigger /x-tad-biggerUniversal Head Design That Works. 7/43 Bridge Rd Stanmore NSW 2048 Australia T (+612) 9517 1466 F (+612) 9565 4747 E [EMAIL PROTECTED] W www.universalhead.com
Re: [WSG] A few questions needing answers
Hello Peter Here's my thoughts: Universal Head wrote: Forms on Websites Is there a good place that explains/makes available the coding involved for putting simple forms on sites? My programming knowledge doesn't go beyond css, xhtml and using JavaScript nuggets, but I've always wanted to be able to put contact forms on my sites. The HTML4 rec is the first place to start looking - it has some great stuff on fieldsets, labels and legends - the oft-forgettong good bits in forms that let you do some really good stuff and move away from using tables to align elements. The basics are, when you submit a form to a server side script the variables available there mirror the names you give the input name=car tags in your markup. PHP stores everything in $_POST, $_GET and $_REQUEST. eg. $_POST['car']. Relative vs Absolute Links I came across a server host the other day who insists on having all links in my site as absolute. Not only do I have to change all my links, but I can't check changes to my site without uploading it first. Why would he insist on such a thing? Do I have to go along with it or should he change *his* system? I'd suggest you change hosts. Relative links are the only way to make a site portable. If you want to mirror a production site using Apache for instance, add a virtual host to the httpd.conf file - say peter.localhost then add this to your hosts file in your OS. If this freaks you out then send me an email offlist and I'll help you out with setting up a local Apache server for personal use (very easy). It's a great (free) way to mirror production sites on your own PC. HTML vs PHP I notice a lot of sites I admire are using .php pages instead of .html. What are the advantages of this system, is learning basic php a nightmare and should I even contemplate it? I often download css sites I admire to my computer to study and changing the .php suffixes to .html seems to not affect the working of the site at all. PHP is a server side scripting language (like CF, Perl, Ruby, Python etc) that is interpreted by a module sitting on a web server. It can perform purely server based scripting AND it can output HTML to the browser (but leave the static HTML to the web server :D). HTML is sent by the web server to the client box (like CSS and JS) and interpreted by the varying array of browsers and other user agents. The two are different things. The file extensions you note are simply there to tell the webserver how to handle the file. *.php is generally handled by a PHP interpreter with any results outputted by the script sent back to the webserver then to the client, *.htm is sent to the client (user). Once you get a .php file on your client it will be html (or possibly plain text... or PDF... or Flash) - you won't see any of the PHP script. PHP stuff is available at php.net Hope this helps. James Thanks for any enlightenment! Cheers Peter PS I'm going to be sneaky and throw in this, but only cause it might be very useful to any Sydney designers - my colleagues and I have studio space for up to 3 people available. It's the best studio in town - check it out at http://www.universalhead.com/studio Universal Head Design That Works. 7/43 Bridge Rd Stanmore NSW 2048 Australia T(+612) 9517 1466 F(+612) 9565 4747 E[EMAIL PROTECTED] Wwww.universalhead.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] A few questions needing answers
And I'll add a bit: Forms on Websites Is there a good place that explains/makes available the coding involved for putting simple forms on sites? My programming knowledge doesn't go beyond css, xhtml and using JavaScript nuggets, but I've always wanted to be able to put contact forms on my sites. I think your question was more on how to process them. While you can do it using JavaScript, it is NOT recommended. I'll go further, just don't do it. Processing forms should be done on the server using whatever server side application server or scripting language you have at your disposal. ColdFusion makes it really easy. I assume PHP is easy as well. In the absence of those you'll probably find that you have access to a server wide Perl script (like formmail.pl) or something in ASP or .NET. At worst maybe a Frontpage widget (yukko). Ask your ISP what is available (or look in the help files on the ISP website) as they'll generally have this common question answered. With formmail.pl you don't need much knowledge, you just add info in hidden form fields in your form, but the email sent is butt-ugly! See http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html Relative vs Absolute Links I agree with James first answer. Change hosts! I can see absolutely no reason for this apart from an idiot ISP. Speaking of idiot ISPs... Was it TPG (http://www.tpg.com.au/help_desk/activate.html - This form is best viewed with IE 3.04 or Netscape 3.03 and above.)? HTML vs PHP Nothing to add here. P * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
Re: [WSG] A few questions needing answers
Peter Firminger spoke the following on 6/03/2004 12:26 PM EST: Relative vs Absolute Links I agree with James first answer. Change hosts! I can see absolutely no reason for this apart from an idiot ISP. Speaking of idiot ISPs... Was it TPG (http://www.tpg.com.au/help_desk/activate.html - This form is best viewed with IE 3.04 or Netscape 3.03 and above.)? Relative and absolute links have no difference on the server. The client/browser/user-agent are the ones who have to figure out the difference. The fact that your host doesn't understand this is a pretty good reason to change hosting providers. Did he give you reasons for requesting you use absolute links? -- tim www.toolmantim.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] A few questions needing answers
I run a small hosting company, and for the life of me I cant see what difference it makes to them whether you have absolute or relative links. They provide the disk space and bandwidth and you fill it with your own files. What does it matter to them how you arrange your links? I don't think they know what theyre doing. Id look elsewhere. And on our system, you have perl, asp, aspx, coldfusion, php, front page extensions all enabled so you can have your choice of server-side scripting technologies. Use your favourite or learn how to use another one as well. Any worthwhile hosting company would offer a choice of server side scripts. No one builds web sites without some kind of server side scripting these days - even if only to process forms.. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com From: Universal Head [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, 6 March 2004 11:27 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [WSG] A few questions needing answers [snip] Relative vs Absolute Links I came across a server host the other day who insists on having all links in my site as absolute. Not only do I have to change all my links, but I can't check changes to my site without uploading it first. Why would he insist on such a thing? Do I have to go along with it or should he change *his* system? [/snip]
