chadmichael

i don't know what your programming background is, but a little script my make short work of the immediate problem. ( The ultimate problem, one of writing web sites that are maintainable, is addressed by the first reply above; most of the web application platforms specifically address such issues of maintenance ). If you really have a lot of pages that need changed, it's probably worth your while to learn a scripting language, such as Perl, that can automate those changes. I'm quite sure that you can learn the scripting language and do the work in about the same time it will take just to do the work manually. So, might as well make it interesting.

You can also use style sheet attributes such as margin, padding, and text-align settings. The text-align is probably the same thing as the tag attrigutes align and valign.

You need to use a javascript function to change the URL of the other frame at the same time as you send the new request from the main frame. You can refer to the other frame via the window objects frames array. It depends upon how deep you are inside of various frames, but if you just have one frameset and two frames, then its probably something like this parent.frames[0].location="url"In this, parent is the window object that contains the frame you are executing from ( the one that you are submitting the logout request from ), and the frames[0] refers to the first frame in the frameset. I assume that you are currently in the second frame ( which would probably be the case if you have a menu frame and a content frame ). Then, the location property of the object is set to the desired URL, which causes it to automatically load that url. This code should go in an event handler such as a form's onsubmit(). this assumes you are submitting the logout request from a form. Hope this gets you started!

I am using tables for layout. I have trouble getting the cells to actually respond to the widths that I set. I seems that the cells are disregarding the widths I set for them and just resizing to match the cell widths set in cells at the top of the columns. Can anyone explain what is happening here and how to fix it.Thanks,Chad

So . . . the id attribute is the preferred way of doing things nowadays?

Hello,I've been working on an existing web site and have come across the use of the name attribute in such tags as <table> and <tr>. As far as I know, this isn't valid. Does it do anything at all? Under any circumstsances? Can I remove it safely? Thanks,Chad

I've found a solution for this but it seems hackish. I was hopeing someone could do better. scenario: I have a select box with a some options. The value for each option is a key type identifier for the backend, so it probably shouldn't be changed ( but could be . . . with some work ). Though the options are all the same type of thing, lets say vehicles, amongsth the vehicles we can discern two different types -- trucks and sedans. problem: How can we check to see which kind has been selected, and thus change the processing of the submission ( in my case, "sedans" need to use a secondary window for the target of the form, and "trucks" should use the current window). Remember, it would create a lot of work to mess with the value, which is the backend key and derives from logic that I can alter. In other words, it can't really be examined for clues as to truck or carness. I thought about setting the class attribute to car or truck, but that seemed like a worse hack than the one I have settled on. Thanks in advance,Chad

Skemcin,Thanks. That's great stuff. Chad

Hello,I'm working on a web application. We need to enforce some sort of timeout of a users session ( automatically log them out; invalidate the current page, etc. ). We use java ( servlets ) on the server side, and it is easy to timeout there session on the server. If the session times out on the server, the next request sent from the browser can easily be intercepted and routed back to a login page or some other page that indicates to the user that the timeout has occurred. But this only occurs when the user, after a certain period of time, submits another request. We would like to do something even if the user doesn't send another request. For instance, could we run a javascript function after a certain amount of time? We could use the function to display a dialog or something. I guess the important thing is the ability to run afunction after a certain period of time. ThanksChad

JSP ( with the accompanying J2EE platform ) is hard to beat. I think they all have enough power to do what you want but there are clearly differences. I like the java stuff because A) its very cheap ( you can get full enterprise servers, or simpler servers, for zero dollars ), the platform has much documentation, C) the platform demonstrates best practices of software engineering If you are going to pay for a hosting site, then support for platforms is probably one of the most important things, as someone has said. Cost of development tools is also important. With the J2EE stuff, development tools are very cheap. I'm unfamiliar with the cost of hosting space though.

I appreciate your help.Chad

The options in the select box have several "pieces" of data. Such as first name, last name, gender, etc. Above the select box are headings, such as First Name, Last Name, Gender. These items are controlled through layout and style sheets. But I need the pieces in the options to line up under the appropriate headings. The option tags look something like this<option value="1">Chad Michael Male</option><option value="2">Elvis Costello Male</option><option value="3">Jennifer Aniston-Pitt Female</option><option value="4">Mark Mothersbaugh Male</option>Of course, while my headings, in table cells, are controllable, the text of these optoin bodies collapses. Again, 's could do the trick but that seems to be bad style. Maybe I'm just using the select box in ways it isn't meant to be used. Is there a better solution?Chad

Thanks! That works great. Actually, I was just overlooking that because of the struts HTML-EL tag has a styleClass attribute instead of class. BUT . . . the bigger problem is preserving the space in the option text. I have headers above the select box at fixed widths. Now I need to make the items of data within the option text stay a fixed width apart??? I tried to use pre tags inside the option but they don't seem to work there.

I need to make a select box stay to a certain width. More importantly, I'd like to keep the text of the options formatted to a certain width. Do I just need to insert non-breaking spaces? This seems kind of hackish. Any ideas? Seems basic.