Jacks Resort Officially Launched

Hi All

I am pleased to announce The Official Launch of “Jacks Resort” website:

http://jack-dmt.site88.net/jacksresort/index.html

Hidden Paradise of Fiji, your favourite place to be all year around!!

“Jacks Resort is a simple informative and easy to use, site for general public; bit appealing to people wishing to take advantage of the cheap holiday accommodation in a small western town of Fiji.”
The site provides information about resort, its location, some entertainment activities and a convenient means of booking an accommodation. For more details please visit Jacks Resort Online!

My sincere thanks to Alastair Weakley for all support and group members for giving feedbacks.

Wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

EditPlus: Good Text Editor

Guys

I have been using this text editor for my project thought to share with you. Its a nice piece of shareware and has some handy features like: code validator, spell checker, code organiser, colour codes and styles etc.

“EditPlus is a text editor, HTML editor and programmers editor for Windows. While it can serve as a good Notepad replacement, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers.”

Website: http://www.editplus.com/

Gradient background using CSS

Hi

I found this technique very cool as it lifts the look and feel of the site. There are some amazing things you can do with CSS, just have to play right. The trick is having correct dimension of your image and its matter of applying repeat-x in CSS. Create image about 2 px wide and 1200 px in height and apply liner gradient effect. 1200 px will work perfectly for monitor size: 1024 px with out replicating on y-axis.

Apply the image in the body {} of you CSS

e.g.

body {
padding:0;
margin-right: 0;
background-image: url(images/body_bg.jpg);
background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-position: 0;
}

Adobe CS 4 Released!

Hi

Adobe has recently announced their latest Web Design Package; the promises are big and better. Fireworks have some stunning wireframe design features. Have a sneak preview of the launch and e-seminars:

Resource: http://www.adobeonlinefestival.com/

Web Form Validation using JavaScript

Hi Guys

While reaesrching about the web form validation, I came across this simple but nifty code which actually places the cursor in the required field, just add .focus(); syntax after mandatory field and will work.

function validateForm(formname)
{
if(document.forms. formname.requiredfield.value=="")
{
alert("Please enter……...");
document.forms. formname. requiredfield.focus();
return false;
}

Resource: http://www.w3schools.com/js/js_form_validation.asp

connecting php to a database

Hi

My project is "Online Resort"; one of the components is a dynamic form, which is used to collect booking data in to database. I would like to learn more about designing PHP form processor and connecting to MySQL database. My users will also get an email acknowledgement upon successful transaction.

Thanks
Jack

The solution: CSS and structural markup

"By using structural markup in our HTML documents and Cascading Style Sheets to lay out our pages, we can keep the actual content of our pages separated from the way they are presented.

This has several advantages over using tables...."

Have fun reading this, useful too: www.hotdesign.com/seybold

HTML Validation Errors!

Hi


When validating HTML, I found some errors generated by some kind of javascripts displayed at the bottum of each page. I found that these javascripts have been added my my free host provider 000WebHost which is unavoidable.


These are some commons errors:

<script type="text/javascript">
src="http://analytics.hosting24.com/s.php"></script>
<noscript>
<a href="http://www.hosting24.com/"><img src="http://analytics.hosting24.com/s.p

I hope these would not affect the validation process.

Thanks

Tables Vs. CSS - A Fight to the Death

I created my very first web site using tables with following properties: width: 700 px, height: 500 px, background colour: ##000000, border: 1 px, border colour: #FFFFFF, align center.

When viewed on a browser it worked perfectly, the way I wanted, so why bother using CSS. Well, I may be still in "dark age" but having fun to see fight going on...no doubt looks like someone will be the winner here...!

"The first time I surfed the Internet it was through a dumb terminal. After a short while, its monochromatic screen was spewing out the full script to Monty Python's "Holy Grail" from a server in Minnesota. It was nothing short of magical. We had no mouse, no fancy interfaces and certainly no 24-bit color. Gopher ruled all. To search, we used Archie and Veronica. No one had heard of the World Wide Web. For a while, that seemed to be enough."

Resource Website: www.sitepoint.com/article/tables-vs-css

CSS - All you need to know!

"You've heard the buzz about the seperation of style from content, but you are stuck in the world of nested tables and deprecated markup. If so, you have come to the right place! Using CSS to style your (X)HTML files, will benefit you and your visitors in many ways."

Resource Website: www.cssbasics.com

PHP - Where to Start?

Recently I have been spending lot of time reading about PHP technology, mainly langauage structure trying to understand some syntax. I am totally new to programming and require lot learning exposure to get bits and bobs of this creature.

Nevertheless I am not going to give up as yet. I have hit a “jackpot”, of course not lottery but something that will bring joy to our learning. I am found some nice PHP basics video tutorials, may be a good starter. My favourite is lesson 13........check out!

Resource Website: www.phpvideotutorials.com

Hello PHP - My First !

This is my very first PHP programming, am delighted to apply what I have been reading about all this while. The file (.php) didn't work when opened locally in FireFox I was not surprised at all, in my reading I found out that extension .php is a dynamic web page and requires some server side technology for execution.

Analysing this php date code was very exciting, though my first but I have learnt php is very powerful programming language.

After doing my research and reading the date reference table provided on the page, all started to make sense. Basically I rearranged the parameters (strings) to display the date in "Monday 15th August 2008 03:12:46 PM" format.

This is my interpretation of the php date code:

// new format: ('l jS \of F Y h:i:s A');

l (lowercase) - Tuesday (day);
j (lowercase) - 19 (date;)
S (uppercase) - th (suffix);
F (uppercase) - August (month);
Y (uppercase) - 2008 (year);
h (lowercase) - 07 (hour);
: - colon
i - 55 (minutes);
s - 56 (seconds;)
A (uppercase) - PM (Post meridiem);

The new date format script as follow:

echo "The date is: ";
echo date('l jS \of F Y h:i:s A');
?>

Result: http://jack-dmt.site88.net/week4/week4prac.php

PHP Freaks for Learners

I have been doing some reading on php form processing, came across many interesting articles and tutorials. There are many ways you could implement this, for simpler web forms PHP codes can be embedded with in XHTML tags. For more complex forms it would be good idea to have a separate page to avoid cluster and for easy editing.

Here is the site dedicated to PHP learners, surely you all will find useful.

"PHP Freaks is a website dedicated to learning and teaching PHP. Here you will find a forum consisting of 67,971 members who have posted a total of 621,024 posts on the forums. Additionally, we have tutorials covering various aspects of PHP and you will find news syndicated from other websites so you can stay up-to-date. Along with the tutorials, the developers on the forum will be able to help you with your scripts, or you may perhaps share your knowledge so others can learn from you.

Resource Website: www.phpfreaks.com

What is SSL?

I was reading about setting up an online e-commerece store and came across about payment system and realted security. SSL provides a safe means of passing vital client information between browser and web server.

Well at this stage I am not sure if I need this security feature as I am planning to create an online booking form for my website.

"SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral. SSL is an industry standard and is used by millions of websites in the protection of their online transactions with their customers. "

Resource Website: www.ssl.com

My Learning Proposal Online Now!

Internet has become a potential and versatile media circulation area that can't be missed and it has almost become a requirement for a business to have online presence. Web site is extremely valuable tool to create business awareness, bolsters existing marketing, increase sales revenue and effectively communicate to customers any time any where around the globe. Read more....!

Click: Learning Proposal

Visit: My DMT Homepage

Web Image Formats - Which one to use?

Hi

Selecting an appropriate web-based format for your images is the first step towards optimized web graphics. GIFs, JPEGs, and PNGs are the formats used to display images on the Web. Each has its own strength and weaknesses.

In general, palette-based or index-color formats like GIF or PNG are best for flat-color art like buttons, logos, or cartoons. For smooth-toned images like photographs JPEGs are usually the best choice. However, there are exceptions.

Resource: HTML Goodies Website

Favicon Icon for Your Website

"A favicon is a graphic image (icon) associated with a particular Web page and/or Web site. Many recent user agents (such as graphical browsers and newsreaders) display them as a visual reminder of the Web site identity in the address bar or in tabs."

How to Add a Favicon to your Site

Reference: www.w3.org/2005/10/howto-favicon

Web Design Library

Hello everyone!

Make to visit this online Web Design Library, it has something for everyone, from design to programming, all you can get under one roof. “Designers one-stop resource”

Reference: http://www.webdesign.org

Microsoft Silverlight

Hi all

Recently I attended a seminar named Microsoft Remix 2008 where Microsoft launched their premium web production tool: Microsoft Expression Studio. With in the context I found this rich interactive application for the Web technology named Silverlight.

This is more of a plug-in that needs to be installed in a browser to support any interactive media for web site e.g. audio, video, Java based animations etc.

I would like to hear from anyone across this technology.

“Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.
By using Expression Studio and Visual Studio, designers and developers can collaborate more effectively using the skills they have today to light up the Web of tomorrow.”

Reference: Microsoft Silverligt Hompegae: http://silverlight.net/

DMT - Week 2: Network

Following the lecture on Network, I have found the video very informative, it clearly illustrated entire internet switching process. Technology is so precise and complex but we don’t normally realise when dealing on everyday basis. Just imagine how frustrated we become if one morning we find our email or web site is not accessible. Oh my God, thanks to the person whose idea was behind the wonderful invention.

Here is some further reading about: How the Internet Works

The Internet workings include a technical design and a management structure. The management structure consists of a generally democratic collection of loosely-coupled organizations and working groups with mostly non-overlapping responsibilities. The technical design is founded on a complex, interlocking set of hierarchical tree-like structures like Internet Protocol addresses and domain names, mixed with networked structures like packet switching and routing protocols, all tied together with millions of lines of sophisticated software that continues to get better all the time.

So far this combination of management and technical structures has worked well, providing the reliable, powerful communication platform on which the rest of the complexity of the Internet is built. The following link provides more information.

Website: www.livinginternet.com/i/iw.htm

Website Resources

Please feel free to check out these great resource sites, maybe a good starter....!

www.smashingmagazine.com
www.pixel2life.com
www.tutorialized.com

Cheers!