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Messages - Databits

#121
Hosting Q&A / Re: Question on Mirror Sites
January 17, 2009, 01:45:37 AM
Technically, I own my own web server, but I've been here for quite some time and kinda like hanging around. Besides, keeping my Xepher account here helps me debug things to help people when stuff like Fess's wordpress issue pops up.  ;)
#122
Heh, I use two virtual machines. One with Win98 and IE6 and one with WinXP and IE6.

The reason is the IE6 on Win98 at it's latest update is just slightly behind the one on WinXP, which you'd think isn't that big of an issue but for some reason things don't work in both all the time.

Outside of that, I generally also use a VM with FF2 and IE7, on top of IE8, FF3, Opera, Google, and Safari on my host machine.
#123
There's PNG fixes that work for normal 16-bit png's just fine. Just because IE6 is too stupid to apply the right filters to it doesn't mean it can't be done manually. Generally there's tutorials all over the place for this, in fact:

http://www.twinhelix.com/css/iepngfix/
http://24ways.org/2007/supersleight-transparent-png-in-ie6

and those are only a couple (good ones) of many many results from just "IE6 PNG Fix" using Google.

While it may not matter so much to for a smaller personal site, roughly 25% of the net still uses IE6 so if you want to cater to near everyone, you still need to deal with supporting it.
#124
Web Design / Re: Generic CSS Thread
January 14, 2009, 01:26:24 PM
It's probably because CSS is one of them things that, despite there being a standard, is still caught in the middle of a browser war. Everyone things certain things should work the way they do it, rather than the way it's specified. MS is notorious for doing this.
#125
Probably referring to IE6.

IE6 didn't have support for PNG transparency without the use of some sort of Javascript hack-job. In IE7+ PNG transparency support was added.

There are two possible ways around this issue. The first one, if possible, you can save the PNG as a 8-bit image (256 colors) and set one of the colors as the transparent color. This effectively makes it pretty much the same thing as a GIF. The second and more pain in the ass way is to find (probably via Google) a javascript+css workaround, as they're examples and tutorials on this floating all over the net.
#126
Possibly, the W3 validation will not help you with IE. IE never follows the full rules. In either case, you shouldn't be using nested iframes anyhow.
#127
Hosting Q&A / Re: Question on Mirror Sites
January 08, 2009, 04:01:16 PM
The restrictions that Xepher has in place aren't all that bad.

Granted, banner ad restrictions are kinda pointless (within reason). But pornographic stuff is something that even a lot of paid hosts disallow, and with good reason. Hosting ANY adult-oriented sites can actually end up hurting a hosting service. Some companies that decide to allow that sort of thing will do so under a different name using different servers to prevent it from being linked back to their normal services and users. Primarily because there are a lot of people who frown on that sort of thing, and will refuse to use the host for no good reason at all (many people don't seem to distinguish the difference between the host and the site owner, mainly because many people are rather stupid IMO).

The FTP thing also makes a lot of sense. FTP is a pain to keep secure, it's generally a horrible big gaping hole that says "come on in" to things like botnets. Which then in turn end up hurting every single user on the entire system as well. Besides, SCP and SFTP are perfectly good substitutes for that. I do get that some comic script systems are retarded and require FTP for stupid shit like setting file permissions (despite there's quite a few other ways you could do it). But outside that, it's not that big of a hurdle to jump for the extra security it provides.

The newsbox is also not that bad of a restriction be it a free service, since it's only when using your own domain (noted that it says optional for *.xepher.net domains), and it's a hell of a lot better than having auto-inserted banner and popup ads all over everything under the sun or some framed banner at the top. Since you can stylize it to make it belong to the design more. I'm not sure if Xepher would allow it, but you could even (through some extra work and scripting) make a banner rotation system which just includes the Xepher one in it.

When's the last time you used ANY of the open source software that many people here use to display/manage their comics and it not have some required blurb and link to the software's own site?  ;)
#128
General Chat / Re: The \
January 03, 2009, 05:09:14 PM
Man, for all those who saw the horribly wrong photoshop pic of that lazytown chick, this video tops it like nothing....

Cooking by the Book Remix
#129
General Chat / Re: The OS war?
December 25, 2008, 01:11:30 AM
Huh??

You realize that Microsoft makes most its profits off its Office Suite, not Windows right? One reason they really aren't liking Open Office all that much lately. If enough people use it they lose one of their most major cash cows.

Mac has always been about the logo. I can't think of a single thing on the Mac OS that gives it any particular advantage over Linux or Windows. The interface is harder to use, less intuitive, and it's a pain in the ass to develop software for it. The only thing that Mac was really useful for was artistic composition, but it kinda lost that the moment the software that used to be Mac-exclusive was ported over to other OS's or was replaced with other better multi-platform programs. To be technical though, Mac isn't really an OS anymore. As of OSX it's more or less just another Unix distribution with it's own version of an x-server (sorta like you can use KDE or Gnome for *nix).
#130
No problem, that's generally one of the things I'm around for.

A Xepher.net resident programmer. :P
#131
That was a pain in the ass but I found your problem. You're using a short tag for the end of an if statement on line 623 of that file.

Replace:<?php if($comic_thumb): ?><td><a href="<?php echo $post['file'?>"><img src="<?php echo $post['thumb'?>" alt="<?php echo $post['name'?>" /></a></td><? endif; ?>

With:
<?php if($comic_thumb): ?><td><a href="<?php echo $post['file'?>"><img src="<?php echo $post['thumb'?>" alt="<?php echo $post['name'?>" /></a></td><?php endif; ?>

And you'll find your problem goes away.  ;)

The reason may be that short tags are disabled on Xepher.net, which isn't all that uncommon. Since it's missing the end tag on that if statement (can't parse that), it's expecting the endif before the endforeach.
#132
This means that it's attempting to parse an "endforeach" without a preceding "foreach" loop. There's nothing on Xepher's server that would cause that, it's a PHP syntax parsing error.

If you'd like I can probably take a look at the issue. Is this a new installation of the latest code base for this software?

Actually, if you could take the entire contents of that particular file and place it in this thread within a code block that'd be helpful (remove any sensitive stuff like usernames/passwords first of course).  :P
#133
General Chat / Re: The OS war?
December 23, 2008, 01:04:51 PM
I love it how they refer to "Windows" as "PC" and "Mac" as a "Mac" system. First of all, Windows runs on a PC as does Linux, Unix, and any other variety of it (as well as on some other platforms). Mac is indeed an OS but used to only run on Apple systems. More or less, Windows is an OS, Linux is an OS, and Mac is an OS. Now here's the funny thing... now days they ALL run on a PC. They all run on a standard IBM or IBM compatible i386/i686 or x86_64.

I'm in full belief that is people don't understand the terminology, they don't have enough knowledge to make an informed decision on what is and is not better than the rest.

In addition, each OS has its own usefulness. It depends on what you're doing with them. Pretty much every single computer generated movie out there is produced using Linux run rendering farms, not Mac or Windows. Most general gamers and business people use Windows systems. Then you have the Mac users who think they're better just because they overpaid for the SAME DAMN HARDWARE that I can get in a Dell for half to a third the price, just because it has some pretty logo of an Apple on it.
#134
Knowhow Trading Post / Re: Not-working Javascript
December 18, 2008, 12:55:07 PM
That would simply mean that the code to show it isn't written correctly too. I've done the same thing your doing many many time for things on our ecommerce system for stuff like order editing. It's not really that hard, just need to get the hang of it.

First of all though, I tend to write things a little differently:


...
<head>
  ...
  <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
    MyWebsiteName = {};
    MyWebsiteName.toggleContent = function(elementId) {
      var div = document.getElementById(elementId);
      if (!div)
        return false;
      if (div.style.display = 'none')
        div.style.display = '';
      else
        div.style.display = 'none';
      return false;
    }
  </script>
  ...
</head>
<body>
  ...
  <a href="#" onclick="return MyWebsiteName.toggleContent('link1_content');">Link Name</a>
  <div id="link1_content" style="display: none">
    Text content/other html and stuff here...
  </div>
  ...
</body>
...


A few things to note which you may or may not already know. The portion "link1_content" is the div's id. In HTML an id is supposed to be unique to each element, meaning that you don't want to ever have it repeating. Secondly, this code doesn't just open it, it checks to see what the status is for the div and toggles the hiding on or off depending on its state. The weird object stuff "MyWebSite" is a form of name spacing to keep the javascript from being interfered with from other scripts you may add. I also tend to have a habit to always place my JS into onclick handlers rather than the href of the element, and to always have it return "false" to the element telling it not to proceed on to the link contained in href. Finally, just in case the JS fails to do that the "#" will stop it anyhow.

Most the stuff can just be renamed to whatever you like, such as the "MyWebSite" and "link1_content" stuff. I'd also advise that if you wish to style the elements your using, not to use the id's set for styling (even though you can). It's a bad habit to get into. Much more appropriate to use a class in that case in addition to the id element.
#135
Just as a side note to the topic he posted. SMTP is supported by PHP internally through its own mailing stuff, so if you have something that can't use SMTP that's written in PHP... it's probably shotty software in that department.  ::)