redbullmarky

Hi all I'm kinda deciding what to do as far as my setup here goes. On a day to day basis, I use my PC for web design (dreamweaver), email (thunderbird), browsing (FF), etc - no games, etc. I'm looking at the possibility of converting to a Linux-based system, for many many reasons, and have looked at Ubuntu. Also, as two of the 3 programs I use every day are open-source, I'm only left with one commercial piece of software. My questions: 1) does anyone here develop on a Linux setup? 2) are there any open-source packages that could give me the PHP/MySQL development environment that dreamweaver does (with ability to also preview site), and are they any good (in your opinions)? 3) a nice extension to my last question, what would be the best package to use to enable me to keep better track of re-usable scripts? I have dozens of scripts that I use for various projects, but keeping track of little tweaks I make are quite hard when they're copied in various different locations. in summary, I'm just looking for a bit of advice in making the switch. Having used Mac OSX and getting a strong idea of all the benefits, the only decision now is in regards to the software available for web design. Cheers Mark

Hi all Having a bit of a problem with a little bit of JS i'm writing. For an application I'm working on, I'm trying to partially simulate a Desktop environment. I have a script which, when called (clicking on a "desktop" icon), uses the DOM to open a popup window, with an iframe inside it. Sometimes, however, this popup will also contain icons that can open a further popup window, and so on. The problem I have is making sure that the popups are ALWAYS attached to the parent window, and not to the Iframe that requested a window to be opened. I'm trying to do a check here - how can my script detect whether it's being called from within an IFRAME or from the main parent window? I thought about checking for the existence of "parent.document", but this seems to give the same result whether i call it from the iframe or the parent window. Can anyone help me here? Cheers Mark

Hi all Has anyone got a clue how to take DHTML/JS Drag and Drop capabilities to dragging/dropping beween frames/Iframes? Any help/pointers would be appreciated - not even 100% sure it's possible. Cheers Mark

i did. i purposely set the z-index of everything other than the absolute-positioned DIV to low, and the DIV's z-index to very high. only IE has this problem. digging around, it seems to be a fairly common issue - there are hacks etc to do with IFRAME's, like i tried, but they're all a bit messy - some of which create other issues for other browsers to deal with, etc. the problem doesnt affect all form fields - just SELECT tags apparently. so if it's possible to deal with this purely with CSS and without any form of hacking, that'd be great - if there's a solution out there, i havent found it yet.

hmm was an interesting problem. tried out several things - and the solution came by setting the 'position' of the bordered box to 'relative'. pretty much same solution as a previous problem i posted. now - if anyone can help with another IE6 issue, i'd be grateful - how can i stop an absolutely positioned DIV falling behind a <SELECT> tag? i've noticed that an IFRAME seems to do the trick, but it seems a very "botched" solution. i also tried hiding all the <SELECT> tags when the DIV is visible, but again that just looked wrong. The more I test on IE6, the worse my opinion of it gets. cheers Mark

Hi all Anyone know why IE6 has problems rendering styles of a DIV I have nested in my <FORM> ? I've tried several methods, but basically I want the fields contained within a white, bordered box but the submit button to sit outside of it. IE seems to ignore the background-color and border properties of the inner DIV, even when i set them up as !important. If I wrap the FORM inside the DIV tag, or style the actual FORM, it works fine - but doing it this way would mean I'd have to have my submit button within this styled area which I don't want. Oh - and it works with TABLE's fine, but I'm trying to keep it purely CSS/layers. Can anyone give me any pointers on this? Cheers Mark

ok thanks for your thoughts! have taken a fair bit on board so will be looking at making more changes soon. cheers all Mark

thanks andy - yeah i got it fixed i think. there are still things that look better on FF/Opera, etc, but the problem in most cases seemed to be the way IE handles floating divs. if someone can clear this up, that'd be great. other fixes (top nav and gap on right of page) were fixed with a seperate, IE6 only stylesheet - margin problems. cheers Mark

[quote author=ober link=topic=102591.msg407559#msg407559 date=1154466149] I edited your post to show the tag you were talking about... And if you look at the source, the tag shows up as "<br" and that's it, right before the opening div. [/quote] sure - i was playing around with that and forgot to save it, but the problem was there before and is still there now i've corrected the tag. very weird behaviour. [b]edit:[/b] and weirder still - if i remove the 'border-left' style property from the containing div, the blue div comes back as it should. [b]edit2:[/b]: sorted - answers on a postcard please - what is it about IE 6 that required me to explicity put in "position: relative" ? same sort of messing around also solved the problem on the homepage, albeit with a bit of extra space here and there.

yeah i kinda like it the way it is too. i purposely wanted to keep it seperate to the other tabs, but also at the same time i wanted it up there having the same importance. just for the purposes of trying to sort out problems that andy b pointed out (with IE6), can you let me know what browser you're using if you make any critique about whitespace, etc. i think i've nailed a few, but i'm really having all sorts of problems with two issues in particular: 1) the big space on the 'quick search' panel on the home page (IE6). this appears perfectly on other browsers. 2) possibly one of the weirdest problems is on the 'contact' page. the background behind the form fields should be blue with a border, just like the other forms. directly before my <div> tag, i have a [nobbc]<br />[/nobbc] tag - when i remove this [nobbc]<br />[/nobbc] tag, the <div> regains its proper colour - but the 'Your name' text totally disappears. if anyone can offer help on particularly the above two, that would be most appreciated. jcombs - yeah the logo is bland. i guess it's kinda stuck after my inital attemps, and as people are kind of aware of it and recognise it, its quite hard to just change it. ober/stevie - good call about the grad for the background - after critique offered on one of my other sites about a background, and the improvement it gave, its definitely worth a shot. cheers Mark

[quote author=AndyB link=topic=102591.msg407426#msg407426 date=1154456112] Looks fine in all 'good' browsers.  IE on a PC has different ideas.  The bottom border of the tabs is visible; the menu doesn't make it all the way to the right edge; the form content is vertically displaced in the space. http://www.digitalmidget.com/temp/legacy-site.gif [/quote] hmm thats odd. i have IE7 beta on the PC so overlooked this one, and can't find a way to load up IE6 now 7 is installed. FF (mac+pc), Safari (mac), Opera (both), all work fine as you say - just seems to be the prob you pointed out. thanks andy - i'll sort it. cheers Mark

lol yeah - i'm currently in the middle of a pretty huge project which has been well designed, so i've learned a hell of a lot from the designer about colour and whitespace, etc. - margin at top: noted. agree with you on this one. - still playing around with this one. i've used a couple of tables in the site (as opposed to my normally complete table-based layout), but it was really to keep it nice and contained - was having all sorts of problems when i had it as the layer approach. - progressbar - ok, maybe its not subtle, but i think something like it is necessary. reason being is from time to time the server will have a 'slow moment' where people click and it would otherwise appear to be doing nothing. maybe an overkill having it like this and not something smaller, but the difference without it when the server has a 'slow moment' is quite major. cheers for your comments though - much appreciated. Mark

hello all i've given my company website a complete overhaul recently - just looking for some opinions, generally on the functionality and the layout, etc. The biggest thing i changed was the 'Job Search' - ok, so maybe not the most necessary use of AJAX, but I think it works well and has sped things up 10fold. I also wrote it using my own template engine, which (although you cant see it) has drastically improved performance, using output buffering/gzip, etc - the home page is little over 2k... any thoughts appreciated! [url=http://www.legacyrecruit.com]http://www.legacyrecruit.com[/url]

as r-it said - you're leaving yourself to SQL injections if you do not do any processing to input provided by the user - be it $_GET, $_POST or $_COOKIE (GPC). If you pop 'SQL Injection' into Google, you'll get a better idea of how it works and how to do it yourself, hence learning how to cover your tracks using 'addslashes' and other. i have a little function i use for everything - $_POST, $_GET, the lot, which to now has worked very well for me: [code] <?php function parse_input($g_p) {   $ret = array();   foreach ($g_p as $key=>$value)   {       if (!is_array($value))       {         $value = strip_tags($value);         $ret[$key] = get_magic_quotes_gpc() ? $value : addslashes($value);       }       else       {         $ret[$key] = parse_input($value);       }   }   return $ret; } ?> [/code] which strips out any html tags and also adds slashes depending on the PHP settings. basically I just call it like: [code] <?php $post = parse_input($_POST); $get = parse_input($_GET); ?> [/code] and only refer to $_POST and $_GET values via my new $post and $get arrays. I'm also not keen on having login scripts run on $_GET - basically, your html form presents the user with a password field (ie, starred out instead of showing the characters) but as soon as the form is submitted, the password becomes clear text in the URL. I'd recommend changing the 'action' of the form from 'get' to 'post' and also all the $_GET's to $_POST's. cheers Mark

Hi all Just hoping to get some help re mod rewrite. I managed to solve the last problem, but now I've got one more I could do with some best-practice advice on, which is handling virtual directories/subdirectories, etc. For example: "/redbullmarky" or "/redbullmarky/" should resolve to /profile.php?user=redbullmarky "/redbullmarky/blogs" should resolve to /blogs/index.php?user=redbullmarky "/redbullmarky/blogs/123" should resolve to /blogs/index.php?user=redbullmarky&blog=123 "/redbullmarky/something/" should resolve to /whatever.php etc etc. so basically, the username is variable, whatever follows is fixed. the problem is just trying to write a condition that will a) ignore any trailing slashes if nothing follows and b) go to correect page without redirecting - ie, i want to keep the nicely formatted URL. any ideas? currently i have everything that's not a 'system' file going to a 'redirect.php' file which does the dirtywork, but i want to maintain the clean URL's any thoughts? cheers Mark

sorry dont worry - figured it out not long after i first posted. i had a few errors, so i didnt realise you could just call a function by the actual parameter name in the function you passed it to... all works now! Cheers

Hi All Just wondering if anyone has a different take on this. I'm trying to expand a simple AJAX library that I wrote by allowing a custom callback function on success. The options that can be passed to the first AJAX request is the URL and parameters (mandatory) and also the return DIV/element for the result. Now I want to ALSO be able to pass in a function name, so that as well as putting the data into the DIV/element, it also calls a return function. I can pass the function name into the AJAX library, and it recognises it as a function - the only thing I'm struggling on is how do I actually call this function? I have the line: xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=xmlhttpChange in my code which does the checking of the result/response, etc. How can I get the function xmlhttpChange() to also call my callback function that was passed as a function parameter? ie, without changing the above line to xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=callbackfunc; ? cheers Mark

one more quick question - is it possible to actually clone just the dropdown's options and values instead of the whole thing? each of my dropdowns also has a load of 'onchange' properties which are unique. i tried cloning the whole thing and yes it was faster - but getting all the 'onchange's to act correctly was a different story. cheers Mark

great stuff, i'll give it a go!! Cheers for the help Mark

what's the best way to clone an entire <select> with all its options? and do you know why opera has a problem with the current way? cheers Mark

* bump * anyone?

Hi all I'm having a bit of an issue with Opera. I have a function which populates a drop down menu (SELECT tag) with a list of countries. I also have a table of items, each of which has an 'edit' link and its own (initially hidden) form with a country dropdown/Save button. These forms are named/id'd as 'editform1', 'editform2', 'editform3', etc, etc. When you click on the edit link, the hidden form appears underneath the item and my function populates the dropdown list (the list could be very very long, and there are hundreds of countries, etc, so hence why I've chosen to populate the drop down as required, rather than all at the beginning). This is where the problem starts. When you click on 'Save Changes', I'm using AJAX to update the info on the server and redraw the table of items, again with all the forms hidden. But on Opera, when I click on Edit again, the dropdown menu does not populate with the countries, but it works on FF/IE/Safari, etc on the Mac and PC. This is my function which is called directly after clicking the edit link and displaying the FORM: [code] function listcountries(theelement, thedefault) {   var theel = document.forms['editform'+theelement].elements['country'];   var cnt = 0;   for (var country in countries)   {       if (countries[country] != '')       {         theel.options[cnt] = new Option(countries[country], country);       }       cnt++;   } } [/code] i did a bit of digging, by putting a few 'prompt' calls in certain places, to find out why this is not working, and the thing with Opera is the type of 'country' seems to change from HTMLSelectElement (when it works) to HTMLCollection (when it doesnt - ie, after an AJAX reload). This does not change on other browsers I've tested on. Can anyone tell me why this happens, and how I can get it working on Opera? Cheers Mark

ober, steelman and phpfreak - i think you've done a cracking job. i'm sure once you've customised things to taste, and when there's been a bit of a cleanup (old bbcode, etc) things will be spot on - i changed to SMF myself a while back and seriously, I wouldnt choose any other over it again.

[!--quoteo(post=387785:date=Jun 25 2006, 04:53 PM:name=redbullmarky)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(redbullmarky @ Jun 25 2006, 04:53 PM) [snapback]387785[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--] good suggestions, chaps. thanks for your help! If there are any alternatives, I'd still be keen to hear them, but using the ~ for directory names would help a good deal Cheers Mark [/quote] Hi Just wanna clear up with one more question. Aimed at anyone who's got a myspace profile. How do you reckon they do it? They have an 'index.cfm' to drive most of the content, which would be easy enough to work around on its own. They also have 'misc', 'images' and 'modules' directories from what i can see, all with no special characters in their name. Would I be right in guessing that you could have a list of rules that check each of my 'built in' directories one by one, and if found, stops processing any more rules - then as the last rule, redirect anything else to a page such as '/people/profile.php?user=redbullmarky' ? If so, and if that's possible, could you possibly provide me a little example or provide a link of a good tutorial? the stuff i've done in the past has been relatively simple stuff, so i'm a little dazed... Cheers Mark

[!--quoteo(post=387779:date=Jun 25 2006, 04:38 PM:name=Eric_Ryk)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(Eric_Ryk @ Jun 25 2006, 04:38 PM) [snapback]387779[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--] No, it wouldn't show up like that on a member list. You'd just search specifically for the part after the symbol used. [/quote] good suggestions, chaps. thanks for your help! If there are any alternatives, I'd still be keen to hear them, but using the ~ for directory names would help a good deal Cheers Mark