Posts by roryt

Almost everyone has it, Adobe Acrobat Reader. But which version. Security staff are reporting that there is a bug in past versions of this popular piece of software. The bug is infact in the browser plugin for the reader that allows users to view pdf documents inside their browser.

This bug could allow "hackers" access to the users hard drive! Luckily no hackers are seen to be exploiting the flaw but it is only a matter of time. Unfortunately this bug is present in both the IE and FF plugins and it is not until you upgrade to version 8 that you will be clear from the bug. There has even been a quote from a Symantec security researcher that said: "The ease [with] which this weakness can be exploited is breathtaking.".

So please follow this link and upgrade now!!!

It's what we have all been waiting for, a flash based solid state memory form that is comparible to a hard disk. Sandisk has launched it's new 32GB hard drive with the use of flash memory. Sandisk claims that this new type of hard drive is faster and it will not lose you data when you and is much harder wearing than your normal hard disk. Have you ever dropped you laptop and lost your data? Then this is what you need. Unfortunately for every good piece of news there is always a down side. This new tech toy is going to add an extra $600 to the price of your laptop. Will you buy it?

The creator of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has switched his concentration to search engines. Jimmy Wales, owner of Wikipedia has decided to create a new wiki style search engine. Instead of using complicated and sometimes obstructive computer algorithms he is going to use people-power to control the rankings of sites up his search.
"At the moment the results returned to those using keywords on sites such as Google are generated by computers which analyse webpages to work out what they are about and how useful they are.

Webpage owners use all kinds of tricks to outsmart the computer indexing systems and ensure their pages appear high up in results - even if they are not relevant to particular keywords. "

This quote is very true and is a very good reason for Mr Jimmy to create his brand new search engine. He is currently recruiting people and buying hardware for his new business venture but unfortunately no dates have been announced. I think it will be very interesting to see where sites fall in the results and whether he can pull it off!!!

Good Luck Mr Wales

If you like to multi task by opening multiple tabs so you can browse lots of different sites in one window then why haven't you thought about doing the same thing with a search? Well Twerq have! On Twerq you can open your search results on seperate tabs and even search for multiple things at once!

If you need to search lots of items in a small amount of time (or even at once!) then this is for you and it truely is great for every one! So back away from Google and start using Twerq.

Photoshop CS3 beta is now in the Adobe Labs section of their website free for download. You can now download it! so quick get clickin, hey not so fast! unfortunately you can't see it if you don't have an adobe labs login and a valid version of CS2. Well that isn't strictly true because of course with all good programs there is a preview but it only lasts for a couple of days!!!

This is apparently a way for Adobe to test their validation process! Which could mean that in the future they are planning on releasing more of their software online! I't's like they read our minds. Ow wait no it was our lips.

Hope that peice of news will keep you going until tomorrow and I am sure you will all be about to top your download limits;)

I would be prepared to bet alot of money (if there was somewhere to bet this) that 60%+ have got there homepage set as one of the Google sites. I also bet that 60%+ of them have got the google toolbar. So why do they?

To be honest I can't think of a reason to have a homepage set as google because there are much more useful pages like NetVibes. First of all you can search and you can pretty much fully customize the page, I think the only thing they really stop you from doing is making it look bad!!!

It is an excellent site you really should check it out. http://www.netvibes.com

If you have more than one tag open in IE 7 the browser sometimes degrades the graphics on the one you are not looking at! For example, if the website you aren't looking at has a gradient which is normally smooth and well done IE degrades the gradient to be poor quality and has solid colours for 10px at a time!

So is this some kind of clever way of saving temporary files or is it some kind of bad accident. In my opinion it really makes some sites look bad and for some reason it doesn't do it on a regular basis!

When Mike Shaver spoke at the fifth annual Free Software and Open Source Symposium yesterday he announced many things including: small is better than big, and Open Source software requires your super powers!

Shaver went on to talk about how it is the little things that count towards his project: the Mozilla Project and this is where FireFox comes from. He explains that although much of the work on FireFox has come from the Mozilla company itself but much of it also comes from other individuals who put forward the smaller things that make firefox what it is.

Shaver goes onto say that it is really catching the people who are talented at small things that is the most important part to keeping the project running but he also admits that this does mean that the costs of reviewing all these many small patches is high and does sometimes lack stability.

Mike finished of his speech with this sentence "
"Think about what is the thing that I do best, whatever it is, that's my X factor, my superpower. Think about how you can you use that."

Now I know there are loads of gurus on this type of open source software development so there is your call :!:

22 Year old, Jon Lech Johansen who previously hacked DVD encryption in his teens has now hacked through the iPod copy protection. This copy protection stops iPod users from playing downloaded music from online music stores other than iTunes. This "copy protection" also stops music that has been bought off iTunes from being played on other devices (apart from the iPod).

His company now plan to license the code to businesses who can use it to make Apples downloadable music play on their devices and to allow themselves to sell downloadable music that will play on the ipod.

So the kid who became famous as DVD Jon in his teens is now famous again for cracking open Apple's copy protection.

So why do we steer clear from tables? Well it is basically because they were never created to be used in the way we were using them. They were more intended for word processing and simple "tables" of data not whole web pages with all of their content.

I remember a couple of years ago a friend of mine showed me his website and then he showed me what it looked like with all the tables borders showing, as if to say "look how complex this is, how long do you think that took to make". Of course as any normal human being at that point I was thinking "shouldn't there be a better way?".

Well now there is. We can now create symantec html pages which do not look different in every browser. When i started designing for the web I used tables and I remember that when I used to validate my html I would have errors into the triple figures. Now with a couple of DIVs and CSS I can make pages that have absolutely no errors.

So if you have not started designing without the use of tables START NOW. Otherwise you will not be able to keep up with web trends and fashions.

I am sure you all have lots of views on this subject so please comment with your thoughts.

So, this is my first Blog entry. I decided to start a blog today because i now have 200 posts woohoo! Anyway on to the subject. Does Dreamweaver really weaver dreams?

To be honest I don't think there is a simple answer to that. It really depends on how far your dreams go. I for one like my websites to look as good as possible because when I look at a website to buy something I know that one of the first things that I think is:

Would I buy something from someone who has put this much effort into their website?

• in this case http://www.myatt.co.uk/ NOPE, - just a list no real quality.:-|

and

• in this case http://www.dabs,com YES - you can search, sort and comment.:)

Now they both could have been made in dreamweaver but I think I am pretty safe in saying it would be more likely that the first website was created in dreamweaver. This is because it is mainly HTML based and none dynamic. Whereas the second website is a very clever dynamic website with very little none dynamic content. That does not mean to say that it would be impossible to create this website in dreamweaver but I know I ain't gonna try!

Now calling the software Dreamweaver is all well and good until you find out that even Macromedia didn't use dreamweaver to build there website. Of course I don't know …

This piece of css will show you that it is perfectly possibly to create a good looking navigation bar without any images or javascript and just a couple of lines of css.

All you need to do is create a html file that contains a unordered list in it with your navigation links in it as <li>. You will then need to simply attach the css file to your html.

I hope this will help you to realise that it isn't all about huge flash navigation and rollover images.

You can find my example here.

Use

This script can be used to mimize space of a textfield by putting the title of the field inside the text field itself when the page loads. This title will then disapear when it is clicked.

How To Use

Use the following code as your textfield and fill in the "value" property with the text that you want appear inside the field.

I hope you can use this handy code somewhere

This is my code. I realise there are far better ways of doing some of the things, but at the moment it is just how the logic has come out of my brain!

It should make some sense, but all the vbtab stuff is (i think) pointless coding because there must be another way of doing this!?

Public Class stock_control
    Dim con As New OleDb.OleDbConnection
    Dim ds As New DataSet
    Dim da As OleDb.OleDbDataAdapter
    Dim sql As String
    Dim rnum As Single = 0
    Private Sub stock_control_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        con.ConnectionString = "PROVIDER=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source = D:\computing_db_work\Signature Solutions Ltd Shop system\rory_stock.mdb"

        con.Open()

        sql = "SELECT * FROM products"
        da = New OleDb.OleDbDataAdapter(sql, con)

        'MsgBox("Connection to Database opened")

        da.Fill(ds, "products")

        con.Close()

        'MsgBox("Dataset filled")


        'IN STRING!
        Dim tab
        Dim txt, txt2, txt3
        Dim length, Length2, Length3, Length4 As Single
        rnum = 0
        While ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(0) < 1290
            txt = ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(4)
            length = (Len(txt))
            txt2 = ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(5)
            Length2 = (Len(txt2))
            txt3 = ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(6)
            Length3 = (Len(txt3))
            Length4 = Length3 + Length2 + length
            ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(27) = Length4
            rnum = rnum + 1

            'If Length4 = 16 Then
            'MsgBox(ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(5) & " " & ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(4) & " " & ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(6) & tab & ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(26) & vbTab & ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(11))
            'End If
        End While

        'MsgBox("Finished")
        rnum = 0



        While ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(0) < 1290

            If ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(27) < 16 Then
                tab = vbTab & vbTab & vbTab & vbTab & vbTab
            ElseIf ds.Tables("products").Rows(rnum).Item(27) < 17 Then
                tab = vbTab & vbTab & vbTab & vbTab …

I will ignore. But Ancient dragon, the thread is two years old but the rep came through - Mar 17th, 2009 5:51 pm.

Just thought i'd point this out, incase you'd overlooked it. Thanks

I have received negative reputation from a member who has been banned - The Dude. The bad reputation was given on a thread that he posted that i said was spam, because it was! So why should i have these reputation points when i clearly don't deserve them?

This problem is causing me a massive headache! I'm sure I can't be the first person to do this but I have searched the internet high and low for answers about this.

I want to be able to display in a list as seperate fields:
- A product name
- Quantity on hand
- Price

It will display a long list of a couple of thousand but i would like the columns of each to line up. There must be a simple way to do this?

I am taking the data from a dataset which is reading from a access database using sql.

I would really really appreciate a reply. Thank you in advance.

You need to find some html tutorials on the internet. Create a thread on daniweb with a specific question if you are stuck with something. It may be useful for you to use a program like adobe dreamweaver. You will also need a image editting program to create any graphics. So it may be worth getting a version of adobe cs4 with photoshop and dreamweaver in it.

Good luck

http://geocities.com/midimagic@sbcglobal.net/index.htm

Midi,

Although you have designed by those rules it really isn't much of a design at all! It is really quite unattractive. I would really like to see a list of popular websites that follow your rules.... I can't find any at all.

I'm not sure about the scrolling from left to right thing, but without a doubt this is THE way to pop up images for a larger view:

http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/

Hope that helps a bit. ;)

Have had to post another thread on this, Oh man... I have never had so many problems with hardware before.

Please take a look: http://www.daniweb.com/forums/post777615.html#post777615

I have been having some serious problems with my PC over the past week or so.

Please have a look at this thread which will explain my initial problem: http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread167352.html

After replacing the power supply, which appeared to be causing the problem my PC seemed to work again. I backed up all my data incase anything happened again. My computer stayed on for about 12 hours doing this. That was yesterday, and today I turned my computer on again and it has died again :( and won't turn back on - not even for a milisecond like it did before.

I am starting to think it isn't the power supply that is the main problem. Anybody got any ideas? I would really appreciate your support on this. I don't post many problems on Daniweb (and contribute to other alot) but this one has really got me!

My ideas are:

• The PC could have blown the power supply but I don't know why it would do that all of a sudden?
• Something may be overheating but nothing feels hot when I open it up, so could something on the motherboard be sending a false message?
• Could the new power supply be completely faulty and blown the power supply connection to the motherboard?

------------------------------------
This is my PC's spec:

* Pentium 4 - 3.6ghz (with hyperthreading)
* 4 Gig of ram
* two 200gb hard disks
* DVD …

Formatting the player and it removing essential files seems a little silly, but a possibility.

It depends how he has formatted it... and if (like the ipod) crucial files are stored in the main stick storage or a different bit of internal memory.

yes almostbob BUT people with dislexia may not use a screen reader so your page would still need to be made so they can access it... atleast according do Midi. Also people with sight problems may not use a screen reader because they can cope with most things but may struggle with some.

I think it is pretty clear what he wants to do... I stand by the fact that you have to be a very big well visited website, with alot of content, otherwise I guess the googlebots just don't make the effort!

Can I suggest you may get more help if you post this in either the PHP forum or the database design forum.

Not that the posts so far haven't been helpful, just more people that know about this sort of thing will be looking at the PHP forum.

It is a very big job to set up something robust that has those sort of features.

Good Luck!

Firstly, unless you really no what you're doing do not set anything as position: absolute.

You should put your html code for your footer right at the end of your html document, ie just before </body>. Then just before it put this html:

<div class="clear"></div>

and add this css:

.clear {clear: both;}

Also clear all the absolute position properties, ie position + left + right + bottom. and add margin-bottom: 20px;
I believe this will fix your issue.

If it doesn't please post your entire css and html and a link to your page. And I will definitely solve it for you!

Hope that helps.

It was a power supply problem. It had obviously decided enough was enough after 3 years of fairly hard use.

I just bought a new one for a fairly good price of £29.99 - much quieter than my old one, have a look: http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=221194

You really need to get rid of as many of the <br/>s as possible and also having styling code in your html is not recommended. You should put it all in your style sheet. You should also not have pixel widths of 1100px!?

If you have anymore question, reply.

Personally, no offense or anything, but I want to see your website, do you have one? If so lets see your ideas in action.

I second that, can we see your website? It would atleast let us see your views in practise.

Ok then. That is much easier and much less contraversial to do.

Have you thought about putting all your pages in an iframe? That would mean that when you click a link and the page appears to change it is only changing the page in the iframe which does not display it's own address bar or effect the main browser address bar. The problem still is though that even if you do that the links to these pages can still be seen in the source of your page. But I seem to remember you can block your source code - google it.

If you need anymore help on how to use an iframe, just reply.

It is possible to hide the address bar in web browser on a specific computer and it is definitely fairly simple to create your own web browser in visual basic that has no address bar.

But the problem is, you have to look at it from the web browser developers perspective: phishing scams are becoming more and more of a problem so if the enable a site to take away the address bar from your browser remotely, the user loses any hope of knowing if a site is real or a clone.

I don't know how you could possibly be doing it for your own security?

And plus if there was an answer to this problem I don't think the forum administration would look kindly on me writing it on their forum. As they can't be seen to be giving out information that could potentially cause a security risk for somebody.

Sorry we can't be of more help.

You should assume from my response that it is impossible to do. IE does not let the web developer choose whether or not to display the address bar - the class it as a security violation.

The user never uses the address bar to search, but to navigate away from your web page... which they should have free will to do!

I know most people hate it when people dig up old posts but i thought it might be quite interesting to see how people are doing on there gmail accounts now.

Mine now reads: "You are currently using 1014 MB (13%) of your 7282 MB."

I never delete email (apart from spam) which gmail does a very good job of finding automatically. But still that has only gone up by 800mb in just over two years!

There are some pretty good add ons for firefox that treat you gmail inbox as a server but i have never used them really because, well i have memory stick.

I do have daniweb to thank for my gmail invite though. User amd_sucks gave it to me i believe in November 2005. How things have change. If google had kept it at 1gb mine would now be full.

Good service though and they deserve alot of recognition for it.

If by thumbnails you mean movie specific thumbnails then:

I know you said you have tried everything else but... well this may be a completely pointless post but: have you tried copying the files to another storage device and then deleting the original file and copying them back.

If you mean just the standard AVI (etc) thumbnails, then i would have thought they would be program specific for you so have you tried reinstalling the programs?

I guess you didn't back up your registry?

i would post this in a different forum on daniweb. Put it in the Software development section under the language you intend to use. Try searching for tutorials online as well.

Do the students take the laptops home? if not can you not just put a blocking program on the school network? I do think it would be better to achieve this actively rather than in a passive manor.

I can't find anything about a backup directory for IE history, probably because the developers couldn't see why they needed to create one.

You could try something like this (i have never used it but it seems to fit the bill): http://www.everstrike.com/lock_folder.htm you may be able to stop them deleting the file - but then i don't know if IE can still write to it.

At the end of the day, being a student myself, I know - there is always a way round anything an admin puts on to your pc. Especially because all they need to do is use a proxy and then you won't be able to track it at all.

Why would you want to do that? That is a really dodgy thing to do.... because then people don't know what site they are on, so phishing scams etc become easier.

I would not have thought it would be best practise to do this. From just searching around it doesn't look like a very easy thing to do (and rightly so!). Oh and it is also a security violation in IE so there is no way you will find out how to hack that.

I have also never ever seen a page do it without popping up a window and still then i guess that would have been in the days of IE 5 and 6.

Aaah... I see the same people active at the accessibility thing and art(not) thing again.

So have at it! Quick! I shall hold these raving graphics fans and non-fans at bay while you read those articles!

haha. lol yeh well, whatever! I can't seem to get past it.

Try this: http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Photoshop/1 it has always helped me. And have a look at my site as well: www.photoshopthis.co.uk There is a navigation bar on there. Not really up to the modern touch but it will give you some ideas and photoshop concepts i'm sure.

Just so you know vandenzergen more people are moving away from graphic intensive designing and concentrating on very clean elements (like this site does) as well as trying to minimize the bandwidth used by the user.

Sorry for going off topic so much!

We don't know what the site is!

Perhaps Google (homepage). :D

I would agree BUT, there is actually a drop down menu for "more" at the top of the page. Also, they do use a table to display some of the page, which i think Midi said was wrong (i agree with that but i don't see how that effects people with learning disabilities).

I genuinely can't think of a single mainstream site that obeys your ten rules.

So does it not recognise your 2nd Hard drive? That's pretty major. Can you post some screen shots. What is the boot up time like? Anything unexpected?

I replied to your other thread on the same subject:

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/post771331.html#post771332

I'm pretty sure you have called almost every site on the internet unaccessable in some way. There has to be a half way point. People with severe learning dissabilities tend to use a text only setting and/ or a screen reader. You can't always design websites with that in mind because then they look dated to the rest of the population.

I would be interested in seeing what mainstream websites meat your criteria?

wow I never new that. Really interesting there is such a big quirk in windows... although not that suprising.

ermm... hmmmm... well there is the shop shelves or internet retailers of free software from download.com. Just search google for what you want.

Bit of a strange question really.

If you are going to buy one, get vista because as Jbennet said XP is going to be left completely unsupported soon enough. Vista has started to grow out of it's quirks and bugs now so soon it will be good. But check your hardware first... but if it is a new computer it should be fine. What do you have on it now?

Does it do this with other windows blings themes? You could put your PC into hibernate for the time being and see what we can come up with... that should be atleast your computer is completely "on".

Have you considered restoring your computer to a point when this didn't happen? I had a massive problem with windows blinds but it was much more severe so i had to completely uninstall it.

digg.com would be a good one but depending on what your site is about there are others as well.

Can you not get more than $1000 for it? I would have thought it would be worth quite alot to them.