Skemcin

Ok, well after a little more investigative research, I stand corrected (to a degree). The Copyright Act dates back to 1909 and saw major changes in 1979 and 1989. It was in 1989 when it was more clearly defined that registration is not a condition of copyright protection. But, the law does provide advantages to those who do register:http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#crIf you ever wish to file and infringement suit, you are required to register your work if it originates in the US.All in all, I am incorrectly correct. Its kind of like the opposite of insurance. You don't need to pay/register for it until you need it, but you can have it and use it as much as you like.

What the point is here is that you currently have three options for sitemaps.a.) HTMLb.) XMLc.) both HTML and XML (err, not XHTML)If you code it in HTML, then google (along with all other serach engines) will be happy to use it. Of course, the links should not be broken and should be using teh "title" attribute to increase the relative rating of teh page.If you choose to use XML, then you are limiting yourself to an extent. Since there are only a few search engines that are using this method (makes it easier to insert into their databases since the data is already structutured) your effectiveness will be limited, but your flexibility and the amount of detail you provide the engine increases.Of course, if you were really smart, you would do both - and not just make one exclusive from the other. But make the XML and then XSLT to transofrm that page into HTML - effectively knocking two birds out with one stone.

The only real secure feeling you can take away from this is that in the process of applying for a copyright, there is a period of time in which the government researches the submission which gives anyone else a chance to disbute the original creator. So, if you do not have a copyright right now, and then you find out that someone stole it, if you CAN prove you had the idea first, you will be rewarded the copyright.So, when I feel I have something authentic, I've only done this 4 times in my life, you can do something to protect yourself VERY easily. Simply document the idea on a piece of paper in as much detail as you can on one side - use very small print if you must. Then, fold it, stable it, and mail it to yourself. DO NOT put it in an envelope. You want the post office to post mark your actual document. It is a legal GOVERNMENT stamp that prooves without a doubt the authentic date of creation. If the idea later surfaces you have a very powerful case, especially if the person is someone you have had a conversation with or somehow might have gotten wind of the idea.I do not intend to fluster anyone into not using the copyright symbol on your own site, I just would make sure that you don't do it for anyone else unless you are certain they can legally display it. Again, there are some very weak forms of protection for original authors who do not have copyrights, but you have to be well documented to win that case - and I've given you one example on how you could increase your chances of being on the positive side of the battle.

I had a feeling you were lookng for the XML style site maps that google is trying to push developers to adopt. I believe you are looking for this specification:http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/...n/protocol.htmlI've toyed with it, but got a few errors the first time through. Supposedly, the solution to my errors are explained here:http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/b...wer=34654&hl=en

Displaying a copyright symbol without owning a copyright is absolutely against the law - no questions ask. In order to display the symbol you must apply and own the copyright before doing so. Same goes for TM (trademark) - that is international as well.And there is a process to obtain a copyright you would have to follow. And it realisitically doesn't matter to you and me, in all honesty, if you do put the symbol on your site even if you owned the right. If someone wants to copy your site or images, they will. The only strength behind a copyright is your ability to enforce it.So, you either have to endlessly surf the web in a paranoid state of mind hoping to see something someone copied from you or hope that someone has seen your site, and then sees another one like it, then is intuitive enough to think that it might not be a template (since we know there are soooo many of those), then contact you to make you aware of it, just so you can write and email threatening legal action IF you cna prove your design came before theirs. Thats alot of inprobability. The fact is, most personal sites don't need it, but illegally display it for the sake of feeling/looking safe.Is the government going to surf the net endlessly cross referencing every copyright symbol they come across, NO. But, if you have been displaying it, and you suddenly become a huge entitiy, then you could be in trouble.I will never put a copyright symbol on a clients site unless I know they have the right. If they insist, then I ask them to sign a waiver that acknowledges my warning.

yes, russia is in Asia for many reasons. Here are a couple:a.) The USSR was never considered part of Europeb.) They would have never needed the word Eurasia to describe Europe and Asia - they would have just said Europe and the Far East.c.) Russia is not part of the European Union (EU) but that is more a policial measure, not a geographic measure.

ok, its final. this is what I have to do: position:absolute;left:10000px;top:-10000px;visibility:hidden; Visibility doesn't forfeit the real estate used to render the code - so I have a big block of space where their CMS form is rendered but not visible. So, I am doing that and keeping the absolute positioning to gain the space back.whew - 1 more issue down, 137 more on the list.:)time to revisit this issue now:http://w3schools.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=5471

yes, I am using display:none; exactly what I was hoping/expecting to hear and confirm, thanks Scott. I'm quite happy with the placing the form off the page, but I'll try the invisible thing to see what that does. If the space that it consumes is still rendered but the form is just not visible, then there will be a problem - asthetically speaking. So, I could get around that by making it invisibile and absolutely position it somwhere. In that case, I'll just add the invisibilty to my last resort just for redundancy.Thanks again you too.The light at the end of the tunnel for this project is beginning to not look like a train.

Ok, so this is another weird one for me:prefaceI'm working on a project were I have very limited control over the environment (which was designed for WYSIWYG users and not developers) I am developing in - think of it like a huge Content Management System that only allows me control of code that appears between the <body> tags - not including them. I can only use HTML, Javascript, CSS, XMl and XSL.historyThe CMS allows me to insert a predefined and preformatted login box for my users to use. The problem is it looks horrible and I have no control over its look and feel. The only fortunate thing is that it is statically classed, so I can overwrite the CMS CSS definition for it by assigning it display:none; - so that has been done. Now, I have created my own log in form that I display in my very restricted environment. Since I have to have the CMS login form on the page in order for this to work (.NET for ya) I wrote a javascript that will take the values from my form and populate them into the CMS form (which is hidden mind you) and when you press the return key (another js to capture that) or you click the "go arrow" (a script to capture that) the other script submits the form from the CMS button (and not form mine) because thats the only one the system will recognize - please do not bother asking why. That all works fine in IE and FF when the CMS login form is not hidden.When I envoke my CSS overwrite of the CMS login form, their form gets hidden so no onw vomits when they visit the site. But when I do that, FF is no longer able to use it for submitting the form. If it visible, everything works as it should - I enter information in my form, then it populates thier form and when I click return or my button, the system recognizes it. But as soon as I assign the class of the CMS form to display:none; all my form functionality is gone but only in Firefox, IE still allows the form to be posted.noteI am not posting code, this problem is more theoretical than syntactical - the code works.problemHas anyone encountered this before? In any case, why do you think the form objects would not be recognized in FF when the object they are wrapped in is rendered, but just not visible?last resortRather than display:none; I'll just relatively position the form 10,000 pixels to the left so its off the screen, but still (technically) rendered.

years ago I was contracted to for a job where I created this look and feel:http://www.lessonlab.comI'm not sure how large your imagemap is, but the mouseovers down the middle here are images - I used a simple rollover script and embedded my text in the image.Without more information or a visualation of your page/image, I am not sure if this solution would be feasible - but, the idea of embedding your text in your image and then using a rolloever might be worth exploring - even if you have several different text messages that need to be overlayed, just make more copies fo your imagemap with that text embedded.It may seem like a lot of work, but if done properly, the benefits outweigh the means. For instance, this solutions is better for search engines because the links and the text (img alt text) are able to be spidered by search engines - very important for this client. If you use div and display:none; then all that text is not typically accessible to search engine spiders.Just a thought . . .

Okay, but do you notice that it is not a google page? If anything, google should go after these folks for copyright infringements.

if you add the url string &message=xxxxxxxx you can make what ever you want in there. The big BUT is that it needs to be URL encoded.So, you might say message=Thank you for coming.you would have to code it like this message=Thank%20you%20for%20coming.If you want HTML in there, the you will need to escape all the < and > symbols - theoritically, it should work.But its much easier to use a server side scripting language to send HTML enhanced messages - especially since they can be multi-part.

thanks for all the input, here is what I was able to piece together given the code presented and my sick, twisted, yet creative mind:this is the only content on the page that performs the redirection <script type="text/javascript">function readCookie(name){ var nameEQ = name + "="; var ca = document.cookie.split(';'); for(var i=0;i < ca.length;i++) { var c = ca[i]; while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1,c.length); if (c.indexOf(nameEQ) == 0) return c.substring(nameEQ.length,c.length); } return null;}onload = function exeRedirect(name){ var goto=readCookie(name); if (goto=='null') document.location="xxxxxx.xxx?page=xxxxxx"; else document.location="xxxxxx.xxx?page="+goto+""; }</script> Essentially, I just used aspnetguy's suggestion and then created another function to read the results of my first function, then I use that as my url parameter in a document.location. that resolved my second issue. I have also figured out an acceptable way to resolve my first, related issue. I am calling an external js file like stated before, defining the createCookie, readCookie, and eraseCookie functions, then use the following two tags in the applications equivilant of an SSI: <div onmousemove="createCookie('redirect','homepageA',0);" /><div onkeypress="createCookie('redirect','homepageA',0);" /> So the divs (loaded on every page) call my functions which create my cookie. Then, whenever one of my shared sites comes to the parent site, the parent site can execute the redirect script since the cookie has been set.I'll test it a little more thoroughly tomorrow, thanks for all the help.

but the function is shared by all the sites I am wokring on, so I need some script that will look like this: <a href="javascript: readCookie('redirect');">Read Cookie</a><br /> but execute automatically. So, are you saying this will work? <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">onload = function readCookie(redirect)</script> cuz that doesn't

Ok, so I got the setting part done using this: <div onmousemove="createCookie('redirect','homepageA',0);" /> and <div onkeypress="createCookie('redirect','homepageA',0);" /> but now I need to figure out how to ge the redirect to happen when the page loads without having access to the body tag . . .

I'm back with my environmental restriction nightmares. Here is my latest . . . [1] Assume I have the equivilant of a server side include, I need it to create a cookie called redirect with a value of homepageA or homepageB or whatever I set it to. This needs to be done without using the <body> tag in any way shape or form.[2] Given that that cookie exists, I need some code that I can put on a page that when linked to will redirect the person to xxxxxx.xxx?page=[cookie value]Here is what I have so far, everything being manually triggered. Remember, I have no access to the <body> tag and the cookie and the redirect have to be in javascript.Thanks in advance. <script type="text/javascript">function createCookie(name,value,days){ if (days) { var date = new Date(); date.setTime(date.getTime()+(days*24*60*60*1000)); var expires = "; expires="+date.toGMTString(); } else var expires = ""; document.cookie = name+"="+value+expires+"; path=/";}function readCookie(name){ var nameEQ = name + "="; var ca = document.cookie.split(';'); for(var i=0;i < ca.length;i++) { var c = ca[i]; while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1,c.length); if (c.indexOf(nameEQ) == 0) return c.substring(nameEQ.length,c.length); } return null;}function eraseCookie(name){ createCookie(name,"",-1);}</script><a href="java script: createCookie('redirect','homepageA',0);">Set A Cookie</a><br /><a href="java script: createCookie('redirect','homepageB',0);">Set B Cookie</a><br /><a href="java script: readCookie('redirect');">Read Cookie</a><br /> When you load this code into page and safe it locally, it works the way it is coded. But, what I am struggling with is two things:[1] automating the cookie creating without the use of a body tag[2] inserting the rediection into the script so that I can use the same logic used in resolving my first issue to read the cookie and redirect the user accordinglyMake any sense?

what is even funnier is that its been like that for years. just like this one, use the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for this phrase:"french military victories"

p.s. stay away from BulletProof FTP. I used that at one of my former employers and although its is nice once it is set up correctly, it is very easy to misconfigure which can casue weird caching and deleting - on btoh sides.

I'm old school:http://www.ipswitch.com/products/ws_ftp/I actually still use a version called WS_FTP LE which is not y2k compliant but the most stable i've ever used.You can still download this version here:http://www.frognet.net/help/archives/wsftp...loadinstall.php

yes, the situation justsomeguy describes is the case for any machine or set up. one way I typically describe is like this. think of your website as your house and the pages on your site are like each room of the house. Now lets say I want to get to the kitchen. You could say goto 1234 My Street and goto the kitchen. For your site, that might translate to http://www.mystreet.com/kitchen.htm - that is an example of an absolute path - you stating how to get ther without any question, you absolutely must go to 1234 My Street to get to my kitchen.Now lets say, from the kitchen, you want to go to the living room. You have two options in the world of the internet. You can go the long way or the short way - I won't go into the benefits or drawbacks of each right now. The long was would be to tell your friend to first go to 1234 My Street and goto the kitchen, then goto 1234 My Street and goto the living room. That would be, in internetesse, http://www.mystreet.com/kitchen.htm then http://www.mystreet.com/livingroom.htm. But, if you chose to go the short way, then you do not have to state the whole street address if you are already there. So you could simply say, goto 1234 My Street and goto the kitchen, then goto the living room. That would translate to http://www.mystreet.com/kitchen.htm then livingroom.htm. This is known as the relative path and you can remember it two ways. Since a relative lives in teh same house as you, then you know you can use the short method - you're in the same house. Or, and more appopriately, the file is located in the same folder or location relative to where you are right now. That is to say that if you are already at 1234 My Street and in the kitchen, then the living room is already relative to your location.Now this is why this is relevent to the question at hand. No matter what file you want to reference on the internet and no matter where it is, be it an image, another web page, or a pdf file, you can only do it through an absolute or relative path. Therefore, you have to make sure all your references <a> or <img> begin with a file name/location or the web address of the file.Hope that helps in addition to the other information offered.

It really comes down cost and demand. There are sooo many published resources that have more involved explanations to coding. There is no question that the content on w3schools is very valuable, but its format and delivery is not condusive to print. Web content and print content are written in two totaly different ways - this is one reason why it is doubtful we'll see w3school tutorials in print. The other is the interactive nature of this site - you learn by doing, not seeing/reading. And, just for clarification, you will not be able to package the tutorials onto a CD because they require server side technologies like ASP and PHP to be running - at this current point in time, it is not feasible (I do think its possible) to put a portable web server with all this content on one CD.It is no doubt a good suggestion, just one we doubt the founders would be interesting in persuing. They do check in here from time to time so there is a chance we could be off the mark on this - you could always try to PM the admin.Hope this helps.

You make excellent points and I can't agree more. I've been in the same situation when sitting across the table from a client when quoting a project.I do not think it is realistic to bill for every minute - or 15 minute intervals as I do - when it comes to consultation. But there is a fine line between a conversation you have with a client that can be written off and one where the client is trying to get something for nothing - pushing your generosity to the limit. I tend to base the decision to bill the client for the minimum 15 minute interval on who initiated the conversation and what was its intent and outcome. I openly explain to my clients that I will charge them for the "what if" and "what then" conversations. Its my tacit knowledge that they are tapping into after all. This, actually is extremely helpful as it conditions my clients to come to me with something real. If they want me to hold their hand through a brainstorm (light drizzle in many cases) then thats fine if they want to pay for it. They know I am all about solutions, not small talk - thats why they trust me.There are three types of web developers out there:a.) one that pretends to be your buddy to and oversells him/herself.b.) one that wow's you with technology speak and impressive portfolios who will trap you and over run your budgetc.) meJust kidding about the last part - put thats the attitude you have to take sometimes.

I know I provoked the defensive tone you take in your last statement which is why I am fine with seeing it. Please, just understand that I am only challenging you to think about the much larger picture your goal encompasses.Let me answer your question by letting you know from my experience something I realized. The more your business begins to take the very shape you dreamed of, the less you end up doing the things you love to do. Whether you enjoy coding the site or managing the clients, eventually will you be doing neither one. That is fine only when you are comfortable seeing the code you worked so hard to write a particular way go down the drain and you're okay with the relationships you worked hard to build your company off of become less personal, less intimate, and more removed. Also, understand, that you may admit that is something you can handle, and it maybe, but whatever you think it will be like is only one tenth of the reality it becomes as it becomes the reason you business will plateau at a certain point. Again, if that happens to be at an acceptable level - then more power to you. But even in that case, it will be easy to become frustrated with seeing what is just beyond your reach.Having said that, I will leave the client to you, thats "ok" with me. As for costs, to many starts ups don't consider two major indirect costs, their time and their time. that would be their time to manage the client and their time to manage the project. Many mask reality by writing that off as sweat equity. Well, its not sweat equity, its sweat losses. If you do not plan for and charge for every minute you speak to a client or the time you spent figuring out what you are going to do, then you are only adding to your losses. I'm not saying that you can't offer an initial free consultation, but you will have to figure out how to make subsequent visits billable. Your clients will need to feel that its worth what ever that is or they will find someone cheaper - and even though they might not be as good, it won't matter to your client. For them, it is all about money, unless you can persuade them otherwise - which is possible (I've had great success with selling my trust before I sell my skills and services). Just make sure you include your wages in your costs - even if you don't want to pay yourself (another bad idea).Hope that helps.

I hope I do have it wrong in my post. I just have to say I seen this way to many times. And no, its not about making money - financial rewards should be second to your clients rewards. You should have said, its all about the client. its the client that pays your bills, its not the money that gets you the client. And what do you expect to happen in the first five years - do you have enough money to take on losses for that period of time? Will you be able to keep a full time job AND have enough time to make the site profitable. I mean profitable in not just it breaking even with direct costs, I mean indirect costs as well.I'm not at all a pessimist, you just have a heck of alot of work to do given the place you are starting from.Good Luck.

Sorry, but I heard this a thousand times from 5 different people. I can assure you, that you have already failed. Anyone who knows me by now will understand how out of character that comment is - and I really do apologize - but I HAVE to keep it real.You're approach just screams out to me - "How do I make a quick buck using the internet". By saying you want to start and online business but yet having no idea which one you want to start and then asking which type is most profitable or worth it . . . you only show ME (for one) that all you care about is money.So, my suggestion, get into porn and never come back here.However, if I am totally off base here and have not come close to reading your post correctly, then, by all means, please enlighten me how whatever you intend to do online is not going to manipulate someone in some borderline unethical way.If you really want to start an online business and if you really have the intent to do so, then you will need to put MUCH more thought into it than that. You will also find that in order to be successful you will need to do something a little different, like its already been mentioned, otherwise you would not have to ask the question. How will you market yourself and make it worth people to try something new if you are no different than something already established, etc.If being successful online was as easy as asking what market to get into - the I dare say noone that frequents this forum would bother coming here.I do sincerely and respectfully apologize for anyone who might take offense to my post, especially regarding my remarks on failure, but I have seen and dealt with my share of get rich quick clients, and NONE of then has ever been able to bring me a solid business plan that would come close to making money in less than 5 years.If you wanna make money online, use ebay.P.S. I'm not in a pissy mood today either. This, to me, is trolling.