Date: 01/02/08 (WebDesign)    Keywords: css, html, web

Hello, I wonder if anyone in the UK could help me. I'm eager to find a good distance learning or part-time course in web design which may actually be useful and not just a huge waste of time and money.

I wouldn't class myself as a total beginner; I've been teaching myself bits and pieces for a while and I'm quite comfortable with HTML, CSS and Photoshop. I want to take it further and I think getting a qualification or at least doing some proper study (rather than just teaching myself) would be worthwhile. I'm just not sure which to go for.

I was going to go for this course from the OU, because they're reliable, well-respected and affordable. I've just been a little bit put off by a comment from the course chair that it is "designed for desision makers rather than hands on practitioners". Hmm.

Then, of course, there's Computeach. Their ads are everywhere. However, they're pretty expensive and I've heard some terrible things about them on the grapevine.

There's an evening-class at a local college which I looked at, but it's listed alongside classes for flower-arranging, Chinese cookery and Indian head massage, so I don't know if it would really be worth bothering with...

I work full time and I'm based in Birmingham, so obviously I'm looking for something local or a distance-learning thing. If the right course came along I would consider working part-time if necessary.

Does anyone have any ideas or thoughts? Tips on which to avoid as well as which to go for would be useful, as there are so many courses advertised online and it's not always easy to tell the good from the bad at first glance!

Thanks in advance for your help.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdesign/1347221.html

Date: 01/03/08 (Computer Help)    Keywords: web

OKAY. Here's my calamity predicament.

My laptop crashed. WOE. D:< Dell/a technician came in, replaced the memory and motherboard and... still crashed. After that, the guy told me that it was my operating system, Windows Vista [Ultimate]. Even more woe, since I don't have the discs (disks?) that install my old OS, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, which I love to death now, especially since it doesn't have damn chess. So. I'm wondering if there is a possible way to retrieve some data off of the hard drive containing Windows Vista before Dell sends the replacement OS disks (discs?) and I reinstall.

Oh, and yet another question. When I reinstall XP MCE '05, what partitions of my drive will it reformat- C: or C: and D:? D: has fanvideo backups, websites, and a whole bunch of Photoshopmania. If it'll format both, see my above problem. :P

And, sigh, one more thing that's driving me nuts- IS IT DISCS OR DISKS?!!!

Kudos and thanks in advance.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computer_help/853264.html

Date: 01/03/08 (HTML Help)    Keywords: php, web

I have been trying to get a new livejournal layout for some time now, but it seems like no matter where I go, all the layouts dont work right. Or Im not doing it right. The colors and the style and such will show up, but the header and the picture wont show up.

I dont understand this instruction:
"Please, please, PLEASE make sure you have a website defined before you complain about the header not working."
can someone explain how to do that and what it means?
If you dont understand what im talking about, the web link is below.

http://www.createblog.com/layouts/code.php?id=15773

PLEASE HELP!

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/htmlhelp/2429860.html

Date: 01/03/08 (Web Technology)    Keywords: html, web, microsoft

Slashdot got suckered and picked up a story by NeoSmart which was able to "exclusively reveal that Microsoft's website is in the middle of a redesign that will feature a fully Silverlight-powered interface - doing away with HTML and everything else." The problem, it's all BS. The...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=691

Date: 01/03/08 (WebDesign)    Keywords: web

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good (and hopefully free) link checker? I'm looking for one that can access both free and password-protected content, won't drag down the site while it works, and can handle dynamically-generated urls (with ?'s in them). No 3rd party add-ons or mean things like that. I mainly need it for a one-time sweep of old, dead links, not a continuous service. So far I've heard about Atomz and the REL Web Link Validator, but I haven't had any feedback from anyone who has actually used them. Hope this isn't off-topic - if so, just let me know.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdesign/1348231.html

Date: 01/03/08 (Web Development)    Keywords: web

OK so this is not exactly a web *design* query, but it's related.... I'm setting up a new website, and need to sign up with a company to handle card payments. I'm looking for minimal costs at the moment because I don't know if the idea will work and don't have money to throw around (who does!)

I was looking at nochex or paypal. I'd read not so great things about paypal, and I see that users either get sent to paypal to process their payment (makes my site look less professional) or I have to pay £20/month to have it on my site instead.
Nochex was looking the better option until I did a bit of googling and read a few pretty bad reviews.

Does anyone here have any recommendations? I'm based in the UK if that makes a difference...

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdev/455989.html

Date: 01/04/08 (Web Development)    Keywords: css, html, web

http://www.freewebs.com/alwaysholdingon/

This is the current state of my site. And thanks for all of your help but so far I have no idea how to make the links on the sidebar to work, the links below the banner are a piece of cake but those in the sidebar I have no idea where to direct them too, and I thought about copying the page and change only the main part to -affiliates, links, videos and stuff but it didn't work i opened the html file and also the css file but when I tried to upload it was not working.

Initially I wanted to make the part where WElcome and UPdates be like the mainframe and direct all the links there but I have no idea how to do that and where does the code for that goes. I got a dreamweaver tutorial but I couldn't find anything related to the links.

And I got one of the stylesheets, that come in the program. I deleted some tables. The part where the links are is PageNav and the center is Col2.

I'm really sorry to bother you. And if anyone can help me that'd be really great. Thanks in advance.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdev/456481.html

Date: 01/04/08 (Web Technology)    Keywords: web

Posted on Prime Minister Brown's Web site, petition signed by 30,000 says host of TV show about cars would be a better PM. He's the host of one the world's most popular television programs and now many people in Britain apparently want him to be prime minister as...

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6224629.html

Date: 01/04/08 (SQL Server)    Keywords: database, web

Okay, now that the compatibility-level problem has gone the way of the great auk (until someone at the client decides to reset it again, I guess), I can now get to my underlying problem-- PIVOT, which I can't seem to understand from the overly-simplistic exampes I've found on the web.

Here's a small, heavily-edited version of the current crosstab query:

--create the pivot
INSERT INTO @m_tblItemDataPivot (brand, upc, item_desc, category, class, subclass, week_ending, week_1_dol, 
week_2_dol, week_3_dol, week_4_dol, week_5_dol, week_6_dol, week_7_dol, week_8_dol, ... 
SELECT DISTINCT i.brand, i.upc, u.item_desc, i.category, i.class, i.subclass, i.week_ending,
SUM(CASE p.period_sysno WHEN @m_intThisWeekSysno - 51 THEN phg.total_dollars ELSE 0 END) AS week_1_dol,
SUM(CASE p.period_sysno WHEN @m_intThisWeekSysno - 50 THEN phg.total_dollars ELSE 0 END) AS week_2_dol,
SUM(CASE p.period_sysno WHEN @m_intThisWeekSysno - 49 THEN phg.total_dollars ELSE 0 END) AS week_3_dol,
SUM(CASE p.period_sysno WHEN @m_intThisWeekSysno - 48 THEN phg.total_dollars ELSE 0 END) AS week_4_dol,
SUM(CASE p.period_sysno WHEN @m_intThisWeekSysno - 47 THEN phg.total_dollars ELSE 0 END) AS week_5_dol,
SUM(CASE p.period_sysno WHEN @m_intThisWeekSysno - 46 THEN phg.total_dollars ELSE 0 END) AS week_6_dol,
SUM(CASE p.period_sysno WHEN @m_intThisWeekSysno - 45 THEN phg.total_dollars ELSE 0 END) AS week_7_dol,
SUM(CASE p.period_sysno WHEN @m_intThisWeekSysno - 44 THEN phg.total_dollars ELSE 0 END) AS week_8_dol,...
FROM   ia_rep.dbo.pos_history phg (NOLOCK)			
INNER JOIN @m_tblSchickUPC u  ON phg.upc_sysno = u.upc_sysno
INNER JOIN @m_tblItemData i ON u.upc_code = i.upc
INNER JOIN ia_rep.dbo.periods p (NOLOCK) ON phg.period_sysno = p.period_sysno
    AND p.period_sysno BETWEEN @m_intThisWeekSysno-52 AND @m_intThisWeekSysno
	GROUP BY i.brand, i.upc, u.item_desc, i.category, i.class, 
            i.subclass, i.week_ending

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/sqlserver/65797.html

Date: 01/04/08 (Computer Geeks)    Keywords: web

Hi all. I'm having a rather strange reverse DNS problem, which I haven't been
able to narrow down as of yet. Basically, no servers i.e., IRC/FTP/web/SSH/etc
are able to obtain my PTR record when they require it. However, if I'm SSH'ed
into a remote machine on a different ISP and I do a host/dig on my IP, I get the
PTR record with no problems, and seemingly in the expected amount of time it
takes to complete the query. Where this problem becomes apparent is for example,
when who shows my IP address next to my username instead of the hostname that
ought to be there. I would like to be able to report this to comcast; however,
I'd also like to figure out what's causing it so that I give them something to
work with. Has anyone here on Comcast Business service experienced this problem;
if so, do you know how they fixed it? Thanks.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/1141129.html

Date: 01/04/08 (Data Management)    Keywords: web, microsoft

When Microsoft starts shipping Windows Web Server 2008 real soon now, the licensing terms and conditions it will require of its customers will be different than they were for prior versions of the company's Web-server version of the product. Customers will be able to use any type...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1075

Date: 01/05/08 (WebDesign)    Keywords: php, html, web, hosting

 I'm new here.  I'm Trish, 34, female.  I want to create my own webpage.  Easier said, I know.  Here are my questions I hope someone can answer:

What's the best language to start in?  HTML? PHP?  my husband soon to be ex always used PHP...?
Where can I post my page for the cheapest (U.S.)?  Lowest hosting??
Can I get a place to put a page and still create it all my own or must I go with a hosting company?
Do I have to use Front Page and if so where can I get "a copy"?

thanks anyone,
trish x

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdesign/1348681.html

Date: 01/05/08 (WebDesign)    Keywords: web, hosting

hi all
anyone have experience with adult content webhosting? where do you get hosted?
muchas gracias
xposted to gd

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdesign/1348517.html

Date: 01/05/08 (Mozilla)    Keywords: css, html, web

For some reason CSS display randomly stops working for certain websites. It isn't bad coding... Rather, it's as if Firefox isn't reading the CSS. LiveJournal, Photobucket, and MySpace are examples. The pages display in pure HTML, without formatting of any kind and it's ugly. Drives me a little nuts on sites with div navigation.

Here's a screen grab.

It's happened once or twice before. In my XP machine and now my Vista laptop. It isn't scripts or adblock because I've disabled all that. It's nothing on my system because when I ended up doing a clean reinstall of Firefox, it was fine again.

Anyone know of this issue or how I can fix it without having to do another clean reinstall? I'd like to avoid having to customize from scratch again with all my favorite scripts and and extensions.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/mozilla/406168.html

Date: 01/05/08 (C Sharp)    Keywords: xml, web, microsoft, google

All,

Hi again. I posted the message two down from this one (unless someone posts while I'm typing this) about the frustrations of .NET WebServices and an OO structure with logical boundaries. I received a bunch of hearty recommendations for WCF, all ensuring me that it would provide all of the great stuff I love from .NET Remoting, but it would let me do it over HTTP(S).

I guess I should have been more specific.

I attempted a WCF implementation of a few of the methods in one of my services. While it certainly behaved better than a WebService implementation (e.g. passing/returning an Interface didn't crash it! *sigh*), I'm still not getting the behavior I want. So I'm going to be a little more specific.

My application's architecture necessitates a large number of application modules, most of which are communicating with most of each other, while what each of them has to say to any given module is fairly narrow in breadth (say, 1-3 possible remote transactions per module pair in the network -- that is, if there were three modules (and there are actually more than double that), let's call them A, B, and C, module A would host 1-3 types of requests from B and C; module B would host 1-3 types of requests from A and C; module C would host 1-3 types of requests from A and B. You get the picture.

Because of this property of my application's communication schema, I was (perhaps stupidly -- I am certainly willing to eschew this particular practice, but read on for what I want to still be able to do) using two generic structs to do the gruntwork for all communication methods: TCPResponse CallRemotingService(TCPAction thisAction)

Where TCPAction is simply:
public string Command;
public string ComputerName;
public object Data;
public Type DataType;

and TCPResponse is simply:
public bool Success;
public string ErrorMessage;
public Exception ErrorException;
public object Data;
public Type DataType;

By switching on TCPAction.Command and verifying TCPAction.DataType, I could cast TCPAction.Data into what I expected (TCPAction.DataType) and execute some private method on it that would return a TCPREsponse which I would return to the caller.

WCF complained that it didn't know anything about the classes (which contained other interfaces or still other classes as members) I was shoving into TCPACtion/Response.Data.

I understand that this approach has a number of unreasonable properties, so after seeing that it did not work with my attempt at WCF (which I suppose is my first question -- could it?), I moved on to the following.

As long as I can use the business objects I created for the purpose of shoving into TCPAction/Response.Data as parameters/returns for operation-specific methods of the WCF service, I am still happy, so I tried setting up a WCF service with a single method to see if my business objects would work in a more explicit form:

public string TestWCF(WSDataObject thisData) { }

Now, WSDataObject is a custom business class that has the following members (with appropriate get/set properties):

private ITransactionObject myITransactionObject;
private WSAuthenticationObject myWSAuthenticationObject;

While ITransactionObject contains native framework value types, WSAuthenticationObject goes even further with:

private IWSPreAuthentication myIWSPreAuthentication;
private string myServerAuthenticationKey;

Again, all of these classes have get/set properties for all of their members, which I've listed -- property names simply chop off "my."

The problem with this implementation was that WCF didn't know anything about some subset of the classes/interfaces "underneath" WSDataObject (ITransactionObject, WSAuthenticationObject, IWSPreAuthentication). The result was some kind of custom exception relating to type conversion.

FYI, I was using the Microsoft WCF "Getting Started" tutorial (modifying it to my needs) at this link.

I have to say I was disappointed that, just like WebServices, WCF requires a proxy class to mangle the public-facing portion of the object. However, I was too disheartened (and found far too little information from Google about "nested" classes like this) to "get my hands dirty" and see if I couldn't use the KnownTypeAttribute, or some other magic entirely, to make my business classes behave. Also, I was disappointed that WCF didn't (or I didn't make it) pass an entire object, private members and all. Is it possible to pass even methods?

That said, it looked like I was going to be pigeonholed into (some of) the same activities that WebServices would have forced me into -- basically writing a kind of serialization/deserialization layer in which I transmit and return only .NET native value types across the wire, but to and from which my applications can pass my real business objects. Which seems like a lot of unnecessary work.

I'm sure I didn't learn 10% about WCF in MS' tutorial -- does anyone have any better WCF resources that might be able to help with my problem? And/or has had experience with this particular problem in the past?

Any information/help is appreciated, as always. .NET Remoting works so well, but I just don't think it will fly in an application being marketed to customers, one component of which must be running from within their firewall. I wish there was some way to use .NET Remoting to make a request, grab the bytes, serialize them with XML, pass them to a really generic WebService with WCF, deserialize them, execute the transaction, and perform the reverse.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/csharp/90948.html

Date: 01/06/08 (HTML Help)    Keywords: css, web

I have a question to do with CSS.

This is a preview of the site I'm working on: http://geocities.com/fionalam73/utsai/
The CSS is here: http://geocities.com/fionalam73/utsai/css.css

I have been trying to create a space at the bottom of all the pages, so that there page doesn't just end straight away when the text ends. This space appears in IE, but not FF for some reason.

In the #content div (the right hand side), I have used a padding-bottom: 50px, but it is not working.

How can I put a space between the end of my website's content and the end of the page, using CSS?

I have tried applying padding and margins to the #content div and body, but it does not seem to be working in FF.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/htmlhelp/2430930.html

Date: 01/08/08 (Data Management)    Keywords: technology, web, hosting

Computerworld chronicles the tale of Web hosting firm C I Host Inc. and details how its data center was robbed. Meanwhile, the technology manager working the graveyard shift was held hostage as the robbers stole computer equipment. The story's point can't be more clear: Data centers aren't...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=789

Date: 01/08/08 (WebDesign)    Keywords: php, mysql, sql, web, hosting

Powweb gave me my money back. I guess I was no longer worth the trouble. Bless them :o).

I had given up on getting my money back. I was searching for class action lawsuits online to participate in and I posted bad reviews about them every time I came across a legitimate review site. I was always in good company with the exception of epinions where I was the first one to post an entry about them. No, I was not obsessed with them, but every day they did something that further aggravated and inconvenienced me. As you all know, I had decided to just keep the account because it was paid for and I didn't believe I'd get my money back anyway. No way they get to keep my money AND shut me down!

They also had a pending charge on my account for November of 2008 when the account would have expired, an auto renewal. I asked them to remove that charge from my account because there was no way I was going to renew anything with them. I made the request twice with no response. On the 3rd request, they closed the account with no warning and no notice. I simply went to sign into the account and got an error. So then I spent over an hour on chat where I told them that I had paid for the account and I wanted it on even though at this point, I was pointing my domain to my new webhost anyway and was in the process of transferring the domain. They said that I had requested that the account be closed it could not be reversed but I could sign up for a new account. I told them that I had not made that request and I explained that I had requested that the auto renewal be turned off. The account didn't expire until 11/08. It was like talking to a robot. She kept repeating the same thing. It was 90 minutes that I was on with her until I just finally got so sick of her that I just disconnected the chat and decided to release this struggle. It wasn't even worth the money. I realised at that point, that I just needed to let it go.

Please be clear that at this point, I am with another company. Unfortunately, Powweb still has their talons in my domain names. My new webhost has been trying to transfer the domain for about 2 weeks now and has been unsuccessful. The new host is telling me the process is taking a while because Powweb won't release their hold on my account. Powweb says this isn't the case. Even though checking with an independent source, I can see that Powweb really doesn't have my domain locked, for whatever reason the new host has been unable to complete the transfer. I don't know what's going on, but it's taking a while and I want my domain names completely moved because I really believe that Powweb is a sinking ship and they will be gone soon and when it's time to renew my domains, I don't want any problems. So I'm paying the cost to get my domains transferred to a different reseller. The whole thing has been a pain in the ass.

I really appreciate that Powweb returned my money, but make no mistake about it, until they fix the MySQL issue, they will still remain a 0 in a rating of 1 to 10 with 1 being the lowest. Also, what I had to go through to get them to give me my money back is an outrage and at the least, I'd say I earned about $5 per hour of my total refund just in the time I spent first of all, trying to resolve this problem that they were never going to resolve for me and then the actual process of trying to get my money back. So they get no cookies, but I do like having my money back. It puts a period on the situation.


P.S. This guy sums up the issues with Powweb much better than I did.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=4893525&highlight=powweb#post4893525

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdesign/1350017.html

Date: 01/08/08 (Data Management)    Keywords: web, google

As I write this, the interwebs are kicking off with the news that Plaxo, Facebook, Google and Robert Scoble have joined the DataPortability.org Workgroup. I can hear the cries already. First up Mike Butcher at TechCrunch who in Twitter said this is MASSIVE NEWS and reported that: As TechCrunch...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=277

Date: 01/08/08 (WebDesign)    Keywords: web

So we build a website for this client, it has an admin tool that's so easy to use a monkey could update the site.

Despite paying a couple grand for this tool, She wants to hire us to keep it updated. We'd happily do it, and she COULD hire a 12-year-old at minimum wage to do it and they'd probably think it was generous.

I could see one of her friends going "They charged you $X,XXX for the site and now they're charging you to update it?!" or something. Granted WE can use the admin tool to update it, and that means it takes US virtually no time to do it.

There's something not quite right about this, its getting on my conscience. Help me out here.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdesign/1350816.html