My Very Strange Webhost, SBI! -- Opinions, Please

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My Very Strange Webhost, SBI! -- Opinions, Please

Friends, your opinions and advice, please:

I have a very simple JavaScript image-swap which works on my end but
when uploaded to my host at http://buildit.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html
does not work.

To rule out all possible factors, I made up a dummy page for an
index.html to upload, along the lines of <html><head><title></title></
head><body></body></html>.; the image-swap itself is your basic <img
src="blah.png" onMouseOver="bleh.gif" onMouseOut="blah.png">.

All file paths are correct; all image files have been uploaded; the
JavaScript itself, such as it is, is also correct.

That is to say, all very simple.

And still it doesn't work.

Now I contacted their customer/tech support, and only after three days
with the third rep was it acknowledged that I had a problem which they
ought to look into (at first they did the usual tech support thing
and, upon seeing the keyword "JavaScript" immediately disavowed any
responsibility for my situation, as if I was calling about third-party
software or something like that).

After another three days of not receiving my files that they asked me
to send, which I did via Yahoo!, they took a whole week to investigate
the matter

This is what I was told, in relevant part:

The issue is with how the absolute and relative links are
used, and our programmers have said (and tested) that
if you...

1. Upload a dummy file with all the images referenced
separately, i.e. in separate <img src ="..."> tags

2. Make all the links absolute before uploading

....then what you want to achieve will be successful on
the live page.


Can someone parse that for me, please?  I don't understand what's
being asked of me, exactly.

Am I really being asked to use absolute path-names?  Couldn't that
prove very messy down the road should I decide to move files/pages
around??

And, moreover, how am I supposed to use separate <img> tags for the
two image files that are to be used for an image-swap??  How would the
browser know to link the two in the manner of an image-swap if
"distributed" over separate <img> tags??

And is it perhaps somehow too much for me to expect my webpages to
upload "as is" -- or is it not unusual for a webhost to have
particular requirements about how such things need to be??  SBI! is my
first webhost so I really don't know what industry standards would be.

Prisoner

5/8/2008 8:54:01 PM

On 2008-05-08, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Friends, your opinions and advice, please:
>
> I have a very simple JavaScript image-swap which works on my end but
> when uploaded to my host at http://buildit.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html
> does not work.
>
> To rule out all possible factors, I made up a dummy page for an
> index.html to upload, along the lines of <html><head><title></title></
> head><body></body></html>.; the image-swap itself is your basic <img
> src="blah.png" onMouseOver="bleh.gif" onMouseOut="blah.png">.

Doesn't onmouseover etc. have to be a script, not just the name of
another image?

I've never heard of this technique before and can't find it in the HTML
spec.

> All file paths are correct; all image files have been uploaded; the
> JavaScript itself, such as it is, is also correct.
>
> That is to say, all very simple.
>
> And still it doesn't work.
>
> Now I contacted their customer/tech support, and only after three days
> with the third rep was it acknowledged that I had a problem which they
> ought to look into (at first they did the usual tech support thing
> and, upon seeing the keyword "JavaScript" immediately disavowed any
> responsibility for my situation, as if I was calling about third-party
> software or something like that).

It's not like the JavaScript is running on their server, so it shouldn't
make any difference to them.

> After another three days of not receiving my files that they asked me
> to send, which I did via Yahoo!, they took a whole week to investigate
> the matter
>
> This is what I was told, in relevant part:
>
> The issue is with how the absolute and relative links are
> used, and our programmers have said (and tested) that
> if you...
>
> 1. Upload a dummy file with all the images referenced
> separately, i.e. in separate <img src ="..."> tags
>
> 2. Make all the links absolute before uploading
>
> ...then what you want to achieve will be successful on
> the live page.
>
>
> Can someone parse that for me, please?  I don't understand what's
> being asked of me, exactly.
>
> Am I really being asked to use absolute path-names?  Couldn't that
> prove very messy down the road should I decide to move files/pages
> around??

Yes. And if they're absolute, how are you supposed to know what the root
is?

> And, moreover, how am I supposed to use separate <img> tags for the
> two image files that are to be used for an image-swap??  How would the
> browser know to link the two in the manner of an image-swap if
> "distributed" over separate <img> tags??
>
> And is it perhaps somehow too much for me to expect my webpages to
> upload "as is" -- or is it not unusual for a webhost to have
> particular requirements about how such things need to be??  SBI! is my
> first webhost so I really don't know what industry standards would be.

I don't think things are supposed to be this difficult.

Ben

5/8/2008 9:37:40 PM

Prisoner at War wrote:

> 
> Friends, your opinions and advice, please:
> 
> I have a very simple JavaScript image-swap which works on my end but
> when uploaded to my host at http://buildit.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html
> does not work.
> 
> To rule out all possible factors, I made up a dummy page for an
> index.html to upload, along the lines of <html><head><title></title></
> head><body></body></html>.; the image-swap itself is your basic <img
> src="blah.png" onMouseOver="bleh.gif" onMouseOut="blah.png">.
> 
> All file paths are correct; all image files have been uploaded; the
> JavaScript itself, such as it is, is also correct.
> 
> That is to say, all very simple.
> 
> And still it doesn't work.
> 
> Now I contacted their customer/tech support, and only after three days
> with the third rep was it acknowledged that I had a problem which they
> ought to look into (at first they did the usual tech support thing
> and, upon seeing the keyword "JavaScript" immediately disavowed any
> responsibility for my situation, as if I was calling about third-party
> software or something like that).
> 
> After another three days of not receiving my files that they asked me
> to send, which I did via Yahoo!, they took a whole week to investigate
> the matter
> 
> This is what I was told, in relevant part:
> 
> The issue is with how the absolute and relative links are
> used, and our programmers have said (and tested) that
> if you...
> 
> 1. Upload a dummy file with all the images referenced
> separately, i.e. in separate <img src ="..."> tags
> 
> 2. Make all the links absolute before uploading
> 
> ...then what you want to achieve will be successful on
> the live page.
> 
> 
> Can someone parse that for me, please?  I don't understand what's
> being asked of me, exactly.
> 
> Am I really being asked to use absolute path-names?  Couldn't that
> prove very messy down the road should I decide to move files/pages
> around??
> 
> And, moreover, how am I supposed to use separate <img> tags for the
> two image files that are to be used for an image-swap??  How would the
> browser know to link the two in the manner of an image-swap if
> "distributed" over separate <img> tags??
> 
> And is it perhaps somehow too much for me to expect my webpages to
> upload "as is" -- or is it not unusual for a webhost to have
> particular requirements about how such things need to be??  SBI! is my
> first webhost so I really don't know what industry standards would be.

The onmouseover and onmouseout parameters of the tag needs to refer to
a JavaScript function, or even a small JavaScript contained inside the
parameter text, not a reference to an image location.

How to achieve such an effect is described, among other places, here:
http://www.hypergurl.com/rolloverimage.html

-- 
Kim Andr� Aker�
- kimandre@NOSPAMbetadome.com
(remove NOSPAM to contact me directly)

iso

5/8/2008 11:17:40 PM

On Thu, 8 May 2008 13:54:01 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War
<prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> wrote:

>
>Friends, your opinions and advice, please:
>
>I have a very simple JavaScript image-swap which works on my end but
>when uploaded to my host at http://buildit.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html
>does not work.
>
>To rule out all possible factors, I made up a dummy page for an
>index.html to upload, along the lines of <html><head><title></title></
>head><body></body></html>.; the image-swap itself is your basic <img
>src="blah.png" onMouseOver="bleh.gif" onMouseOut="blah.png">.
>
>All file paths are correct; all image files have been uploaded; the
>JavaScript itself, such as it is, is also correct.
>
>That is to say, all very simple.
>
>And still it doesn't work.
>
>Now I contacted their customer/tech support, and only after three days
>with the third rep was it acknowledged that I had a problem which they
>ought to look into (at first they did the usual tech support thing
>and, upon seeing the keyword "JavaScript" immediately disavowed any
>responsibility for my situation, as if I was calling about third-party
>software or something like that).
>
>After another three days of not receiving my files that they asked me
>to send, which I did via Yahoo!, they took a whole week to investigate
>the matter
>
>This is what I was told, in relevant part:
>
>The issue is with how the absolute and relative links are
>used, and our programmers have said (and tested) that
>if you...
>
>1. Upload a dummy file with all the images referenced
>separately, i.e. in separate <img src ="..."> tags
>
>2. Make all the links absolute before uploading
>
>...then what you want to achieve will be successful on
>the live page.
>
>
>Can someone parse that for me, please?  I don't understand what's
>being asked of me, exactly.
>
>Am I really being asked to use absolute path-names?  Couldn't that
>prove very messy down the road should I decide to move files/pages
>around??
>
>And, moreover, how am I supposed to use separate <img> tags for the
>two image files that are to be used for an image-swap??  How would the
>browser know to link the two in the manner of an image-swap if
>"distributed" over separate <img> tags??
>
>And is it perhaps somehow too much for me to expect my webpages to
>upload "as is" -- or is it not unusual for a webhost to have
>particular requirements about how such things need to be??  SBI! is my
>first webhost so I really don't know what industry standards would be.

bleh.gif would never be parsed as a valid function.  By any scripting
engine.

<img src="blah.png" onMouseOver="this.src='bleh.gif';"
onMouseOut="this.src='blah.png';"> will work.

Yet the support is plain clueless.  Dump'em.  Find yourself a real
hosting service - or host it yourself, all you need is static ip from
your 'net provider.  Even plain XP can support up to 80 concurrent
connections - enough for an amateur site.  Need more?  Get
Linux/Apache for free, or eMule WinServer2003 - Bill Gates surely will
not go broke without your license fee.

NNN

nobody

5/9/2008 12:33:31 AM

nobody@nowhere.net wrote:
> On Thu, 8 May 2008 13:54:01 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War
> <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> Friends, your opinions and advice, please:
>>
>> I have a very simple JavaScript image-swap which works on my end but
>> when uploaded to my host at http://buildit.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html
>> does not work.
>>
>> To rule out all possible factors, I made up a dummy page for an
>> index.html to upload, along the lines of <html><head><title></title></
>> head><body></body></html>.; the image-swap itself is your basic <img
>> src="blah.png" onMouseOver="bleh.gif" onMouseOut="blah.png">.
>>
>> All file paths are correct; all image files have been uploaded; the
>> JavaScript itself, such as it is, is also correct.
>>
>> That is to say, all very simple.
>>
>> And still it doesn't work.
>>
>> Now I contacted their customer/tech support, and only after three days
>> with the third rep was it acknowledged that I had a problem which they
>> ought to look into (at first they did the usual tech support thing
>> and, upon seeing the keyword "JavaScript" immediately disavowed any
>> responsibility for my situation, as if I was calling about third-party
>> software or something like that).
>>
>> After another three days of not receiving my files that they asked me
>> to send, which I did via Yahoo!, they took a whole week to investigate
>> the matter
>>
>> This is what I was told, in relevant part:
>>
>> The issue is with how the absolute and relative links are
>> used, and our programmers have said (and tested) that
>> if you...
>>
>> 1. Upload a dummy file with all the images referenced
>> separately, i.e. in separate <img src ="..."> tags
>>
>> 2. Make all the links absolute before uploading
>>
>> ...then what you want to achieve will be successful on
>> the live page.
>>
>>
>> Can someone parse that for me, please?  I don't understand what's
>> being asked of me, exactly.
>>
>> Am I really being asked to use absolute path-names?  Couldn't that
>> prove very messy down the road should I decide to move files/pages
>> around??
>>
>> And, moreover, how am I supposed to use separate <img> tags for the
>> two image files that are to be used for an image-swap??  How would the
>> browser know to link the two in the manner of an image-swap if
>> "distributed" over separate <img> tags??
>>
>> And is it perhaps somehow too much for me to expect my webpages to
>> upload "as is" -- or is it not unusual for a webhost to have
>> particular requirements about how such things need to be??  SBI! is my
>> first webhost so I really don't know what industry standards would be.
> 
> bleh.gif would never be parsed as a valid function.  By any scripting
> engine.
> 
> <img src="blah.png" onMouseOver="this.src='bleh.gif';"
> onMouseOut="this.src='blah.png';"> will work.
> 
> Yet the support is plain clueless.  Dump'em.  Find yourself a real
> hosting service - or host it yourself, all you need is static ip from
> your 'net provider.  Even plain XP can support up to 80 concurrent
> connections - enough for an amateur site.  Need more?  Get
> Linux/Apache for free, or eMule WinServer2003 - Bill Gates surely will
> not go broke without your license fee.
> 
> NNN
> 

The hosting company's job is to keep servers running, not troubleshoot 
our code.  I would never expect a hosting company to be knowledgeable 
about javascript or any other language.

And hosting it yourself is the worst thing you can do.  What happens if 
your phone line goes down?  Your power goes out?  Your server hangs 
while you are at work - or worse yet, on vacation.  Additionally, it may 
be a violation of your ISP's TOS (and they may even have port 80 blocked 
for incoming requests).

Plus you wouldn't get support for your javascript.

Hosting is a commodity.  But don't expect the hosting company to do what 
you're not paying for.

-- 
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

Jerry

5/9/2008 12:56:03 AM

In article <70e2516c-e4c7-455b-9cfe-ca3d4399c2f0
@k37g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>, prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com says...
> 
> Friends, your opinions and advice, please:
> 
> I have a very simple JavaScript image-swap which works on my end but
> when uploaded to my host at http://buildit.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html
> does not work.
> 
> To rule out all possible factors, I made up a dummy page for an
> index.html to upload, along the lines of <html><head><title></title></
> head><body></body></html>.; the image-swap itself is your basic <img
> src="blah.png" onMouseOver="bleh.gif" onMouseOut="blah.png">.
> 
> All file paths are correct; all image files have been uploaded; the
> JavaScript itself, such as it is, is also correct.
> 
> That is to say, all very simple.
> 
> And still it doesn't work.
> 
> Now I contacted their customer/tech support, and only after three days
> with the third rep was it acknowledged that I had a problem which they
> ought to look into (at first they did the usual tech support thing
> and, upon seeing the keyword "JavaScript" immediately disavowed any
> responsibility for my situation, as if I was calling about third-party
> software or something like that).
> 
> After another three days of not receiving my files that they asked me
> to send, which I did via Yahoo!, they took a whole week to investigate
> the matter
> 
> This is what I was told, in relevant part:
> 
> The issue is with how the absolute and relative links are
> used, and our programmers have said (and tested) that
> if you...
> 
> 1. Upload a dummy file with all the images referenced
> separately, i.e. in separate <img src ="..."> tags
> 
> 2. Make all the links absolute before uploading
> 
> ...then what you want to achieve will be successful on
> the live page.
> 
> 
> Can someone parse that for me, please?  I don't understand what's
> being asked of me, exactly.
> 
> Am I really being asked to use absolute path-names?  Couldn't that
> prove very messy down the road should I decide to move files/pages
> around??
> 
> And, moreover, how am I supposed to use separate <img> tags for the
> two image files that are to be used for an image-swap??  How would the
> browser know to link the two in the manner of an image-swap if
> "distributed" over separate <img> tags??
> 
> And is it perhaps somehow too much for me to expect my webpages to
> upload "as is" -- or is it not unusual for a webhost to have
> particular requirements about how such things need to be??  SBI! is my
> first webhost so I really don't know what industry standards would be.
> 
It's not uncommon for a Hosting Tech Dept to walk away from a script you 
wrote, as it really isn't their problem - especially Javascript, which 
is client-side.  By responding at all, they were actually going above 
and beyond what could reasonably be expected.

SAZ

5/9/2008 2:20:13 AM

Ben C <spamspam@spam.eggs> writes:

> On 2008-05-08, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> Friends, your opinions and advice, please:
>>
>> I have a very simple JavaScript image-swap which works on my end but
>> when uploaded to my host at http://buildit.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html
>> does not work.
>>
>> To rule out all possible factors, I made up a dummy page for an
>> index.html to upload, along the lines of <html><head><title></title></
>> head><body></body></html>.; the image-swap itself is your basic <img
>> src="blah.png" onMouseOver="bleh.gif" onMouseOut="blah.png">.
>
> Doesn't onmouseover etc. have to be a script, not just the name of
> another image?

One could write a popup script that would scan the DOM in the domReady
event, and replace the image names with real event handler closures
that load the named images.

I'm doing a similar feature on a site I'm working on right now - I
include a script at the top of the page, and links that include a "rel"
attribute value are modified through the DOM to add an onClick event
that is handled by loading the target with AJAX and displaying it in a
popup div.

Since the pieces that make the page reliant on JavaScript are added by
a JavaScript event handler, on browsers that don't do JavaScript by
design or by user choice, the links will remain ordinary links. That
makes this technique a good way to build in a graceful fallback.

Perhaps Prisoner was using a script at one time that did this kind of
on the fly modification, and is now using one for which he needs to
insert a more traditional function call into the event attributes.

>> Now I contacted their customer/tech support, and only after three days
>> with the third rep was it acknowledged that I had a problem which they
>> ought to look into (at first they did the usual tech support thing
>> and, upon seeing the keyword "JavaScript" immediately disavowed any
>> responsibility for my situation, as if I was calling about third-party
>> software or something like that).
>
> It's not like the JavaScript is running on their server, so it shouldn't
> make any difference to them.

This is a free hosting service, right? They could be inserting content,
like banner ads or something, in return for free hosting. I can well
imagine a banner ad with a mouseover script. And I can well imagine a
mouseover script being packaged this way. It needs JavaScript to
function anyway, so using JS to connect the event handlers is no
additional burden. It's certainly valid HTML. And it's a bit less
error prone; end users can use it who don't know a bit of JavaScript.

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/9/2008 3:57:49 AM

Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> writes:

> The hosting company's job is to keep servers running, not troubleshoot
> our code.  I would never expect a hosting company to be knowledgeable
> about javascript or any other language.

I couldn't agree more!

Of course, having worked the phones in a "full service" hosting provider
that *did* offer that kind of support, in the full swing of the boom of
the 90s, I'm kind of biased on the subject. :-)

> And hosting it yourself is the worst thing you can do.  What happens
> if your phone line goes down?  Your power goes out?  Your server hangs
> while you are at work - or worse yet, on vacation.

That depends. If it's a hobby site, the answer to those questions may
well be, who cares. I can fix it when I get back, the line gets fixed,
or whatever. Baby pictures don't really need five nines uptime.

> Additionally, it
> may be a violation of your ISP's TOS (and they may even have port 80
> blocked for incoming requests).

I'd be far more concerned with that aspect of it that the reliability.

Also, many ISPs offer web space to their customers, many of them for
free.

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/9/2008 4:05:36 AM

nobody@nowhere.net wrote:
> On Thu, 8 May 2008 13:54:01 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War wrote:
<snip>
><img src="blah.png" onMouseOver="bleh.gif"
> onMouseOut="blah.png">.
<snip>
> bleh.gif would never be parsed as a valid function.
> By any scripting engine.
<snip>

The values of intrinsic event attributes are not parsed as functions, 
they are parsed as function bodies, and - bleh.gif - is a valid function 
body. It is a single expression statement consisting of a dot notation 
property accessor. Pointless, and unlikely to execute without error, but 
still completely valid.

Richard.

Richard

5/9/2008 6:36:15 AM

On May 8, 10:20 pm, SAZ <saz1...@nospamexcite.com> wrote:
>
>
> It's not uncommon for a Hosting Tech Dept to walk away from a script you
> wrote, as it really isn't their problem - especially Javascript, which
> is client-side.  By responding at all, they were actually going above
> and beyond what could reasonably be expected.

It may sound like it, but it actually doesn't make sense.

If I upload valid HTML, and it comes out screwy on their servers, can
they just say that they "don't do coding" and leave it at that?

Likewise with JavaScript, by the same logic: it's valid, it works
perfectly on my end, all files necessary had been uploaded, the script
is good.  Why wouldn't it work on their servers?

Now it turns out that this webhost does have a certain way of doing
things, owing to the SEO they (claim to) provide, which makes them
different and thus one can't just expect "as is" uploading sometimes.

That's my explanation, anyway: they don't really care to explain; they
just tell me this is what I have to do ("separate the images" --
which, this rep later explained upon further prompting from me, that
she'd meant, upload them separately via separate dummy html pages so
that their system "recognizes" the images -- apparently it didn't
before, when uploaded together...?!?!)....

Prisoner

5/9/2008 1:25:15 PM

On May 8, 5:37 pm, Ben C <spams...@spam.eggs> wrote:
>
>
>
> Doesn't onmouseover etc. have to be a script, not just the name of
> another image?

No, actually; it could simply be, like what I have,

<img name="image" id="image"
onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'"
onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'">

> I've never heard of this technique before and can't find it in the HTML
> spec.

Yes, well, it's not "HTML" though it does occur in an HTML tag....

> It's not like the JavaScript is running on their server, so it shouldn't
> make any difference to them.

The tech support rep said this morning that I should upload the two
images involved in the image-swap *separately* via *separate* webpages
*each*...apparently, their system isn't recognizing one of them right
now, even though they are both already on their servers!

SBI! has a proprietary way of doing things, related to the SEO
services they provide, and apparently a simple image-swap like what I
have is a consequence of their peculiar way of doing things...!

> Yes. And if they're absolute, how are you supposed to know what the root
> is?

I wonder if they mean that I should use something like

<img src="http://www.my-website.com/image-files/image.gif">

> I don't think things are supposed to be this difficult.

I don't think so either -- but I don't know enough SEO right now to
know whether I should stick around with SBI! due to their claims of
SEO success.

Prisoner

5/9/2008 1:50:28 PM

Erratum:

I had neglected the "src" attribute in my post above (though not on
the actual webpage at issue)"

<img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />

Prisoner

5/9/2008 1:59:52 PM

On May 8, 11:57 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>
> One could write a popup script that would scan the DOM in the domReady
> event, and replace the image names with real event handler closures
> that load the named images.
>
> I'm doing a similar feature on a site I'm working on right now - I
> include a script at the top of the page, and links that include a "rel"
> attribute value are modified through the DOM to add an onClick event
> that is handled by loading the target with AJAX and displaying it in a
> popup div.
>
> Since the pieces that make the page reliant on JavaScript are added by
> a JavaScript event handler, on browsers that don't do JavaScript by
> design or by user choice, the links will remain ordinary links. That
> makes this technique a good way to build in a graceful fallback.
>
> Perhaps Prisoner was using a script at one time that did this kind of
> on the fly modification, and is now using one for which he needs to
> insert a more traditional function call into the event attributes.

Interesting project you're attempting there...but actually, here's the
complete webpage I'm talking about, right here, in under 10 lines of
ASCII:

<html>
<head>
<title>test page</title>
</head>
<body>
<img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />
</body>
</html>

> This is a free hosting service, right? They could be inserting content,
> like banner ads or something, in return for free hosting. I can well
> imagine a banner ad with a mouseover script. And I can well imagine a
> mouseover script being packaged this way. It needs JavaScript to
> function anyway, so using JS to connect the event handlers is no
> additional burden. It's certainly valid HTML. And it's a bit less
> error prone; end users can use it who don't know a bit of JavaScript.

They're $300 a year!  No, no banner ads, etc.

Their claim to fame is that they have an online "module" that builds a
website for you -- you click, click, click deciding on what pre-
determined website features you want...kind of like an instant noodles
approach to site-building.

Needless to say, I don't need that and am building my own (HTML and
even intermediate CSS and basic JavaScript is easy).

However, their second claim to fame, proprietary SEO, is what I'm
interested in -- I don't know much SEO to feel confident on my own in
that regard, and I don't know enough SEO to determine whether their
SEO claims are just "common-sensical stuff" I could do on my own (like
with HTML and site-building).

Hence, my dilemma.

I was thinking of just sticking with them for the learning experience,
but this sucks if little weird things like this image-swap issue pop
up every now and then.

> sherm--
>
> --
> My blog:http://shermspace.blogspot.com
> Cocoa programming in Perl:http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Prisoner

5/9/2008 2:02:13 PM

On May 8, 7:17 pm, Kim Andr=E9 Aker=F8 <kiman...@NOSPAMbetadome.com>
wrote:
>
>
> The onmouseover and onmouseout parameters of the tag needs to refer to
> a JavaScript function, or even a small JavaScript contained inside the
> parameter text, not a reference to an image location.

Okay, here's the actual <img> tag that was used:

<img name=3D"image" id=3D"image" src=3Dpic1.gif"
onMouseOver=3D"document.getElementById('image').src=3D'pic2.gif;'"
onMouseOut=3D"document.getElementById('image').src=3D'pic1.gif;'" />

Remember, it works perfectly on *my* end.  If it were an issue of a
JavaScript error, it would not have worked.

> How to achieve such an effect is described, among other places, here:http:=
//www.hypergurl.com/rolloverimage.html

Well, sure, it's possible to do it that way, too, but it seems like an
extra step, calling up JavaScript from within the HTML tag for a
simple thing like an image-swap when using JavaScript in the HTML
right there would suffice also.

> --
> Kim Andr=E9 Aker=F8
> - kiman...@NOSPAMbetadome.com
> (remove NOSPAM to contact me directly)

Prisoner

5/9/2008 2:08:52 PM

On May 9, 2:36 am, "Richard Cornford" <Rich...@litotes.demon.co.uk>
wrote:
> nob...@nowhere.net wrote:
> > On Thu, 8 May 2008 13:54:01 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War wrote:
> <snip>
> ><img src="blah.png" onMouseOver="bleh.gif"
> > onMouseOut="blah.png">.
> <snip>
> > bleh.gif would never be parsed as a valid function.
> > By any scripting engine.
>
> <snip>
>
> The values of intrinsic event attributes are not parsed as functions,
> they are parsed as function bodies, and - bleh.gif - is a valid function
> body. It is a single expression statement consisting of a dot notation
> property accessor. Pointless, and unlikely to execute without error, but
> still completely valid.
>
> Richard.

Sorry, I was dabbling in my own short-hand; the actual HTML/JavaScript
used is

<img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />

Now I've received word again from SBI! tech/customer support, and the
instructions yesterday about "separately referencing the image files"
was meant as "upload each image file in its own dummy webpage" so that
the system recognizes the files -- apparently, even though the files
are already on the SBI! servers, they're not been seen by the system!!

Now their system is peculiar in that it's set up in some secret way
for SEO purposes...but this is a very strange consequence of that
indeed!  At least that's the best explanation I can come up with, for
why a simple image-swap occasions such weirdness on the SBI! servers
-- again, remember that it works perfectly on my end, so it's not a
matter of invalid JavaScript or something.

Prisoner

5/9/2008 2:15:08 PM

On May 8, 8:33 pm, "nob...@nowhere.net" <mygarbage2...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
>
>
> bleh.gif would never be parsed as a valid function.  By any scripting
> engine.

Remember, I'd reported that it works on my end perfectly.

> <img src="blah.png" onMouseOver="this.src='bleh.gif';"
> onMouseOut="this.src='blah.png';"> will work.

Okay, sorry, I was dabbling in a bit of my own short-hand notation
there; the actual HTML/JavaScript used was

<img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />

> Yet the support is plain clueless.  Dump'em.  Find yourself a real
> hosting service - or host it yourself, all you need is static ip from
> your 'net provider.  Even plain XP can support up to 80 concurrent
> connections - enough for an amateur site.  Need more?  Get
> Linux/Apache for free, or eMule WinServer2003 - Bill Gates surely will
> not go broke without your license fee.

Well, I do want to put a website before I delve into how to host one
myself -- if I'd ever even go that far, actually (it's interesting,
but I'd probably rather use the time to learn Photoshop or something,
you see).

Any webhosts you might recommend?  For a newbie who's growing in
knowledge and ability, yet doesn't plan on progressing beyond some
"intermediate" level of expertise in general.  I'm souring on SBI!
because of a number of reasons, this little image-swap weirdness being
one of them.

> NNN

Prisoner

5/9/2008 2:21:01 PM

On May 9, 10:15=A0am, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Sorry, I was dabbling in my own short-hand; the actual HTML/JavaScript
> used is
>
> <img name=3D"image" id=3D"image" src=3Dpic1.gif"
> onMouseOver=3D"document.getElementById('image').src=3D'pic2.gif;'"
> onMouseOut=3D"document.getElementById('image').src=3D'pic1.gif;'" />
>

Oh, my, Prisoner.  You say this works on your computer?  But..but..
all the TYPOS!!!

Can you tell the difference between what you have typed above and
this:

<img name=3D"image" id=3D"image" src=3D"pic1.gif"
onMouseOver=3D"document.getElementById('image').src=3D'pic2.gif';"
onMouseOut=3D"document.getElementById('image').src=3D'pic1.gif';" />

All quotes (double and single) are properly opened and closed, and the
semi-colons go *between* the the single/doubles.  Now THIS code works
fine on my system.

Hope it helps!

Jim

Jim

5/9/2008 2:33:49 PM

On May 8, 8:56 pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
> The hosting company's job is to keep servers running, not troubleshoot
> our code.  I would never expect a hosting company to be knowledgeable
> about javascript or any other language.

I'm not asking to "troubleshoot" my JavaScript -- I'm asking them why
perfectly valid JavaScript is getting screwed up when uploaded to
their servers.

And the thing about SBI! -- why they cost $300 a year -- is that
they're "more than just webhosting," as one of their mottos go.
They're about site-building (if you don't know HTML and CSS -- but I
do), SEO (which I really don't know much about), and general
entrepreneurship on the Net.  To those ends, their stated policy is to
excel at customer and tech support, but I have to say that so far they
seem to be only slightly better than typical tech support experiences
I have (namely, they read from a script, scan for keywords, and
basically don't get into your mind and your situation so much as,
well, like I said, work from a flowchart-like script).

> And hosting it yourself is the worst thing you can do.  What happens if
> your phone line goes down?  Your power goes out?  Your server hangs
> while you are at work - or worse yet, on vacation.  Additionally, it may
> be a violation of your ISP's TOS (and they may even have port 80 blocked
> for incoming requests).

I don't know if it's the "worst" thing possible -- it's intrigued me
before -- but certainly at this point it's just not cost-effective for
me: I have enough to learn as it is without any more "esoterica
technica" to further assimilate/grok.

> Plus you wouldn't get support for your javascript.

They don't provide "JavaScript support," and neither was I asking that
of them (though they assumed that as soon as they saw the keyword
"JavaScript," a most unfortunate demonstration of the narrow keyword-
mindset prevalent among people in general [this is why politicians say
the things they do, for example]).

> Hosting is a commodity.  But don't expect the hosting company to do what
> you're not paying for.

Please visit http://buildit.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html for their
terms of service.  I honestly was not asking of them anything they
weren't obligated to provide for $300 a year.

> --
> ==================
> Remove the "x" from my email address
> Jerry Stuckle
> JDS Computer Training Corp.
> jstuck...@attglobal.net
> ==================

Prisoner

5/9/2008 2:34:22 PM

On May 9, 10:15 am, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
> Sorry, I was dabbling in my own short-hand; the actual HTML/JavaScript
> used is
> <img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
> onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
> onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />

Oh, my, Prisoner.  You say this works on your computer?  But..but..
all the TYPOS!!!

Can you tell the difference between what you have typed above and
this:

<img name="image" id="image" src="pic1.gif"
onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif';"
onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif';" />

All quotes (double and single) are properly opened and closed, and
the
semi-colons go *between* the the single/doubles.  Now THIS code works
fine on my system.

Hope it helps!

Oh, just *what* is SEO?  I've never heard of it.

Jim

Jim

5/9/2008 2:46:03 PM

On May 9, 12:05 am, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>
>
> I couldn't agree more!

Jeez, I really don't understand how people can misunderstand me.  I
mean, I wrote it there, in plain English, right from the get-go.  I
even specifically said that I'm not requesting JavaScript help of
them, but inquiring why perfectly valid script that runs as intended
on my end does not when uploaded to them.

Now how's that asking them for JavaScript help??

This is one aspect of human nature I'm afraid I shall never
understand.  I say "A" and even go on to specifically say that I'm not
saying "B" and still people will say that I'm saying "B"!!  =(

> Of course, having worked the phones in a "full service" hosting provider
> that *did* offer that kind of support, in the full swing of the boom of
> the 90s, I'm kind of biased on the subject. :-)

SBI! was started in 1997, so they have a solid record as a business,
it seems.  Still, in less than three months I'm growing disillusioned
enough to start thinking about another webhost.  What's keeping me
around is their SEO claims and my own lack of knowledge about SEO.

> That depends. If it's a hobby site, the answer to those questions may
> well be, who cares. I can fix it when I get back, the line gets fixed,
> or whatever. Baby pictures don't really need five nines uptime.

Indeed, and I do hope to make money from my upcoming site, if not
achieve the full financial independence for which "structural
engineering" SBI! claims to offer.

> I'd be far more concerned with that aspect of it that the reliability.
>
> Also, many ISPs offer web space to their customers, many of them for
> free.

Despite my growing though still fairly slight disillusionment, I was
thinking about just sticking with SBI! for another year or even two to
keep learning (particularly about SEO) and see what happens -- but
silly stuff like this simple image-swap weirdness makes me really
question them....

> sherm--
>
> --
> My blog:http://shermspace.blogspot.com
> Cocoa programming in Perl:http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Prisoner

5/9/2008 2:47:20 PM

On May 9, 10:46 am, Jim <j_gree...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Oh, my, Prisoner.  You say this works on your computer?  But..but..
> all the TYPOS!!!

Sorry!!  I'm actually working from memory here, 'cause I don't have
access to my actual webpages right now, and...agggrrhh, long
story...!  But typos aside, please just for the sake of argument
believe me that yes it really does work perfectly on my laptop!  When
I work on my site again this weekend I'll post the 100% exact code
(right now, typos aside, what I'd provided so far is 99.9% the
same)....

> Can you tell the difference between what you have typed above and
> this:
>
> <img name="image" id="image" src="pic1.gif"
> onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif';"
> onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif';" />
>
> All quotes (double and single) are properly opened and closed, and
> the
> semi-colons go *between* the the single/doubles.  Now THIS code works
> fine on my system.

Well, yes, that's precisely my predicament -- it's valid code and
works, but not on their servers!

This morning I received further word that what I should do is upload
each image separately on their own webpages -- though the SBI! server
has these images already, apparently it's not able to recognize them
unless they're uploaded separately!

I should explain that SBI! has a weird convoluted way of doing many
simple things, owing to the proprietary "database-design" they use for
purposes of SEO, and so you don't just upload each necessary image,
you can only upload them as a part of a webpage that specifically
calls for them!  IOW, I can't just decide to upload "pic1.gif" if no
webpage asks for a "pic1.gif"...weird, but that's how they say they
have to do things in order for their database, which is designed for
SEO, to "pick them up"....

Now what they're telling me is that even though my page had called for
the two images of an image-swap, and that those two images were
uploaded, their system just doesn't see those images and therefore I
now have to create two separate dummy webpages, each calling for only
one of the two images, so that they may be re-uploaded and, hopefully,
seen by the SBI! system!!

JFC...this nuttiness makes me wonder if they really can do any SEO
(their other claim to fame)....

> Hope it helps!
>
> Oh, just *what* is SEO?  I've never heard of it.

Search Engine Optimization -- inducing, as much as possible, the
search engines, particular Big Brother Google, to actually know about
your webpage and list it and list it very (extremely) highly, no less
than first 30 results...otherwise, great as your site may be, very few
people know about it and hence you're not making money....

I am sorely tempted to quit SBI! right now, but three things are
keeping me around for a little bit longer: SEO, their private forums
which are full of business ideas and such, and the lack of a similar
webhost ("similar" being one that takes SEO as its mission -- "above
and beyond webhosting," as SBI! likes to say)....

> Jim

Prisoner

5/9/2008 3:03:17 PM

Since no one has stated the obvious I'll give it a try...

Prisoner at War wrote:
> Okay, here's the actual <img> tag that was used:
> 
> <img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
> onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
> onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />

You have a syntax error there. You're setting src to 'pic2.gif;' and 
back to 'pic1.gif;'. Notice the extra ";" - it doesn't belong there.

Perhaps you meant to write - 
onmouseover="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif';" - but you 
may as well omit the ";" all together.

Better yet, use - onmouseover="this.src='pic2.gif'".

> Remember, it works perfectly on *my* end.  If it were an issue of a
> JavaScript error, it would not have worked.

I find it very hard to believe that your code above could have worked in 
any browser.

-- 
Joose Niemi

Joose

5/9/2008 3:14:23 PM


Prisoner at War wrote:

> On May 9, 10:46 am, Jim <j_gree...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Oh, my, Prisoner.  You say this works on your computer?  But..but..
> > all the TYPOS!!!
>
> Sorry!!  I'm actually working from memory here, 'cause I don't have
> access to my actual webpages right now, and...agggrrhh, long
> story...!  But typos aside, please just for the sake of argument
> believe me that yes it really does work perfectly on my laptop!  When
> I work on my site again this weekend I'll post the 100% exact code
> (right now, typos aside, what I'd provided so far is 99.9% the
> same)....
>
> > Can you tell the difference between what you have typed above and
> > this:
> >
> > <img name="image" id="image" src="pic1.gif"
> > onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif';"
> > onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif';" />
> >
> > All quotes (double and single) are properly opened and closed, and
> > the
> > semi-colons go *between* the the single/doubles.  Now THIS code works
> > fine on my system.
>
> Well, yes, that's precisely my predicament -- it's valid code and
> works, but not on their servers!
>
> This morning I received further word that what I should do is upload
> each image separately on their own webpages -- though the SBI! server
> has these images already, apparently it's not able to recognize them
> unless they're uploaded separately!
>
> I should explain that SBI! has a weird convoluted way of doing many
> simple things, owing to the proprietary "database-design" they use for
> purposes of SEO, and so you don't just upload each necessary image,
> you can only upload them as a part of a webpage that specifically
> calls for them!  IOW, I can't just decide to upload "pic1.gif" if no
> webpage asks for a "pic1.gif"...weird, but that's how they say they
> have to do things in order for their database, which is designed for
> SEO, to "pick them up"....
>
> Now what they're telling me is that even though my page had called for
> the two images of an image-swap, and that those two images were
> uploaded, their system just doesn't see those images and therefore I
> now have to create two separate dummy webpages, each calling for only
> one of the two images, so that they may be re-uploaded and, hopefully,
> seen by the SBI! system!!
>
> JFC...this nuttiness makes me wonder if they really can do any SEO
> (their other claim to fame)....
>
> > Hope it helps!
> >
> > Oh, just *what* is SEO?  I've never heard of it.
>
> Search Engine Optimization -- inducing, as much as possible, the
> search engines, particular Big Brother Google, to actually know about
> your webpage and list it and list it very (extremely) highly, no less
> than first 30 results...otherwise, great as your site may be, very few
> people know about it and hence you're not making money....
>
> I am sorely tempted to quit SBI! right now, but three things are
> keeping me around for a little bit longer: SEO, their private forums
> which are full of business ideas and such, and the lack of a similar
> webhost ("similar" being one that takes SEO as its mission -- "above
> and beyond webhosting," as SBI! likes to say)....
>
> > Jim
They do not seam to have a clue of what they are doing. If you want a
good web host go with Server Grade.
http://www.servergrade.com.au/
I have been wih them for 6 months and have not had any major issues.
They have quite good tech support as well and if they don't support a
feature they tell you strate away.
--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesignonline.org

Chaddy2222

5/9/2008 3:20:10 PM

Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> writes:

> They're $300 a year!  No, no banner ads, etc.
>
> Their claim to fame is that they have an online "module" that builds a
> website for you -- you click, click, click deciding on what pre-
> determined website features you want...kind of like an instant noodles
> approach to site-building.

Run away. Don't walk - run. You said you can get a prorated refund? Get
it. For one thing, web hosting can be found for half what you're paying
or less.

> However, their second claim to fame, proprietary SEO, is what I'm
> interested in -- I don't know much SEO to feel confident on my own in
> that regard

SEO is pure, 100% snake oil. People write illegible content and publish
pages with 800 HTML errors each, and wonder why Google can't index their
mess. SEO hucksters then try to sell them on the idea of adding a bunch
of meta gibberish, hiding keywords in comments or absolutely positioned
way off to the right of the visible page, etc.

Correct HTML with relevant text doesn't need to be "optimized" for search
engines - they're optimized for it.

> I was thinking of just sticking with them for the learning experience

You've gotten overcharged and ripped off by a huckster. That's enough
learning experiences for now, I think. :-)

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/9/2008 4:27:29 PM

Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> writes:

> On May 8, 11:57 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>>
>> One could write a popup script that would scan the DOM in the domReady
>> event, and replace the image names with real event handler closures
>> that load the named images.
>>
>> I'm doing a similar feature on a site I'm working on right now
>
> Interesting project you're attempting there

I didn't say "attempting," I said "doing." :-)

I'm not trying to be snooty or anything, I understand that what I'm
talking about here would be hard for a newbie. I'm just saying, I'm not
a newbie, nor am I describing something I mean to attempt and hope will
work - I'm talking from experience about a working site.

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/9/2008 4:36:53 PM

Prisoner at War wrote:
> Now their system is peculiar in that it's set up in some secret way
> for SEO purposes...but this is a very strange consequence of that
> indeed!  At least that's the best explanation I can come up with, for
> why a simple image-swap occasions such weirdness on the SBI! servers
> -- again, remember that it works perfectly on my end, so it's not a
> matter of invalid JavaScript or something.

Couple of things to check:

1.   Make sure that the web page that you upload matches the one that's
served by your host.  If their secret sauce changes the HTML or JavaScript
before serving the file, that could be what's breaking your example page.

2.  Try doing what they say.  It's entirely possible that their secret sauce
includes some weird web server that scans a directory, and refuses to serve
images that aren't referenced from an "<img src="blah.gif"> tag.

-- 
Dave

Dave

5/9/2008 4:53:50 PM

In article <2647e79c-32f9-4d93-a780-
1c6c9cc2a04d@c58g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>, prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com 
says...
> On May 8, 10:20 pm, SAZ <saz1...@nospamexcite.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > It's not uncommon for a Hosting Tech Dept to walk away from a script you
> > wrote, as it really isn't their problem - especially Javascript, which
> > is client-side.  By responding at all, they were actually going above
> > and beyond what could reasonably be expected.
> 
> It may sound like it, but it actually doesn't make sense.
> 
> If I upload valid HTML, and it comes out screwy on their servers, can
> they just say that they "don't do coding" and leave it at that?
> 
> Likewise with JavaScript, by the same logic: it's valid, it works
> perfectly on my end, all files necessary had been uploaded, the script
> is good.  Why wouldn't it work on their servers?
> 
> Now it turns out that this webhost does have a certain way of doing
> things, owing to the SEO they (claim to) provide, which makes them
> different and thus one can't just expect "as is" uploading sometimes.
> 
> That's my explanation, anyway: they don't really care to explain; they
> just tell me this is what I have to do ("separate the images" --
> which, this rep later explained upon further prompting from me, that
> she'd meant, upload them separately via separate dummy html pages so
> that their system "recognizes" the images -- apparently it didn't
> before, when uploaded together...?!?!)....
> 
> 
It sounds like you need a new web hosting company.

SAZ

5/9/2008 5:17:49 PM

On May 9, 12:27 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>
>
> Run away. Don't walk - run. You said you can get a prorated refund? Get
> it. For one thing, web hosting can be found for half what you're paying
> or less.

Indeed, I did know that -- but, like I said, the three benefits of
SBI! are "near-instant-noodle site-building," SEO, and private forums
concerning entrepreneurship (for example, I found through one of those
forums a company in NYC that makes copies of your DVDs [with keep-case
and cover and even a paper insert) *and* drop-ships them for US$2
each, with no minimum order -- you make a how-to DVD and sell it for
$15, $20, or $30).

> SEO is pure, 100% snake oil.

Eh?  100%??  I know it's got a bad rap -- the way DHTML and even
JavaScript had received -- but faulty implementation isn't the same as
a wholly ridiculous idea in the first place!  Do you mean to say
something like, nobody does SEO well, or do you mean to say that
there's no such thing as SEO???

> People write illegible content and publish
> pages with 800 HTML errors each, and wonder why Google can't index their
> mess. SEO hucksters then try to sell them on the idea of adding a bunch
> of meta gibberish, hiding keywords in comments or absolutely positioned
> way off to the right of the visible page, etc.

Actually, SBI! is almost anti-SEO in that regard; they advise against
playing SEO games.  I introduced that term "SEO" in describing one of
their services because that's how it would appear to an outsider, as a
kind of SEO, but SBI! actually speaks against SEOing.

> Correct HTML with relevant text doesn't need to be "optimized" for search
> engines - they're optimized for it.

Well, no one knows the algorithms used to determine relevancy for any
given set of keywords, so it's hard to say what works (and to what
degree)...part of my reluctance to leave SBI! is because they do seem
to know more than me when it comes to "SEO" -- that is, getting picked
up by the search engines.

For example, my natural inclination as a writer would be to use so-
called clever turns of phrase, etc. -- but the very ambiguous and
double-entendre nature of such rhetoric is precisely what confounds
search engines, since they do not parse so much as pick up on keywords
(and backlinks and so forth)...so, anyway, I need to keep that stuff
in mind, you see, which I didn't even realize had existed...SBI! has
been a learning experience for me in that regard.

> You've gotten overcharged and ripped off by a huckster. That's enough
> learning experiences for now, I think. :-)

Hehe, learn from the best, I say!  ;-)

Seriously, I know they're "marketoids," but that doesn't mean I can't
learn from them.  However, just getting a simple image-swap to work
has been a frustrating experience -- an image-swap that's perfectly
all right, mind you; it's their proprietary system that's choking up
on it for some reason.

UPDATE: SBI! tech just e-mailed me and it seems that being "live" on
the web is okay but previewing it on their server isn't -- ?!?! --
even though it should be okay either way!

Here, check out this test page I made for them to demonstrate my
problem: www.ego-management.org/test.html -- see the simple image-
swap?  Well, it works now as intended -- live on the web -- but
***previewing*** that page on their server (not "live" on the web and
publicly accessible) screws it all up!

The problem's not necessarily solved, though...SBI! tech is advising
that I use absolute path names for all my <img src="">...WTF?!?!?!?!

> sherm--
>
> --
> My blog:http://shermspace.blogspot.com
> Cocoa programming in Perl:http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Prisoner

5/9/2008 8:12:25 PM

On May 9, 12:36 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>
>
> I'm not trying to be snooty or anything, I understand that what I'm
> talking about here would be hard for a newbie. I'm just saying, I'm not
> a newbie, nor am I describing something I mean to attempt and hope will
> work - I'm talking from experience about a working site.

Ah, um, didn't mean "attempting" in a literal sense.

So who's your webhost??

> sherm--
>
> --
> My blog:http://shermspace.blogspot.com
> Cocoa programming in Perl:http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Prisoner

5/9/2008 8:14:17 PM

On May 9, 11:20 am, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> They do not seam to have a clue of what they are doing.

They seem to be good at what they do: several of the sites they host
are top-ranked (and that would reflect on them since these sites all
adopt an "SBI! Approach" to things), as seen on http://results.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html
-- now because I'm not up on SEO, I can't tell whether that's genuine
or what...I do know that what SBI! offers in terms of "site mechanics"
I can handle on my own with all the books I've been reading (not to
mention ***these fine newsgroups!!***), but I don't know whether their
SEO claim is equally something I could learn or whether it truly is,
as they claim, to be the result of their proprietary database way of
webhosting....

But this image-swap craziness, and some other less serious issues, has
me seriously bummed out for the time being....

> If you want a
> good web host go with Server Grade.http://www.servergrade.com.au/
> I have been wih them for 6 months and have not had any major issues.
> They have quite good tech support as well and if they don't support a
> feature they tell you strate away.

Hmmm, Australia??  I know this is the web, but I'd never considered a
company that celebrates Christmas in summer!  ;-)

Thanks for the recommendation -- I'll check it out...but why should I
use them as opposed to the Big Boys like Yahoo! or 1&1 or Dreamhost or
Monster, etc.??

> --
> Regards Chad.http://freewebdesignonline.org

Prisoner

5/9/2008 8:25:08 PM

On May 9, 1:17 pm, SAZ <saz1...@nospamexcite.com> wrote:
>
>
> It sounds like you need a new web hosting company.

Any you might recommend?

The thing with SBI! is that they're the only ones who even claim to
have some kind of "SEO secret" (not their phrase; I'm paraphrasing
them with that) which helps propel a site to top spots on SERPs.  I
don't know enough about SEO and such matters to gauge whether their
claims are reliable or whether the sites they showcase on
http://results.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html would have succeeded anyway.

Prisoner

5/9/2008 8:28:53 PM

On Fri, 9 May 2008 13:28:53 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War put finger to
keyboard and typed:

>On May 9, 1:17 pm, SAZ <saz1...@nospamexcite.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> It sounds like you need a new web hosting company.
>
>
>Any you might recommend?
>
>The thing with SBI! is that they're the only ones who even claim to
>have some kind of "SEO secret" (not their phrase; I'm paraphrasing
>them with that) which helps propel a site to top spots on SERPs. 

No, they're not. *All* the SEO snake oil salesmen claim to have "the
secret" that no-one else knows. 

It's pretty much the surefire sign that they are selling snake-oil,
since, in reality, the only reliable methods of getting to the top of
the rankings are already very widely known

> I
>don't know enough about SEO and such matters to gauge whether their
>claims are reliable or whether the sites they showcase on
>http://results.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html would have succeeded anyway.

There's nothing special about those Alexa rankings. It may sound
impressive to say that they're in the "top 1%" of websites, but pretty
much any active site can acheive that. The web has a very long tail -
every semi-comatose or unmaintained site is still listed by Alexa,
despite only getting maybe one hit a month. You can get into the top
1% of Alexa rankings with only a handful of visitors (one of which
will obviously be yourself) using the site regularly. 

Mark
-- 
Stuff, some of it good, at http://www.good-stuff.co.uk 
"Take me or leave me, don't have to believe me"

Mark

5/9/2008 9:19:54 PM

In article <f7ef5706-8959-4897-80b4-2705e0960f60
@j22g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>, prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com says...
> On May 9, 1:17 pm, SAZ <saz1...@nospamexcite.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > It sounds like you need a new web hosting company.
> 
> 
> Any you might recommend?
> 
> The thing with SBI! is that they're the only ones who even claim to
> have some kind of "SEO secret" (not their phrase; I'm paraphrasing
> them with that) which helps propel a site to top spots on SERPs.  I
> don't know enough about SEO and such matters to gauge whether their
> claims are reliable or whether the sites they showcase on
> http://results.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html would have succeeded anyway.
> 

The vast majority of these sites are over 500,000 in Alexa.  Frankly, 
I'm shocked they're even advertising these numbers and actimg like it's 
something special.

I have a VPS with ServInt, been very happy for the past 18 months.  You 
may not need a VPS, but it's nice to have complete control over 
everything.

SAZ

5/9/2008 9:41:37 PM

Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> writes:

> On May 9, 12:36 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I'm not trying to be snooty or anything, I understand that what I'm
>> talking about here would be hard for a newbie. I'm just saying, I'm not
>> a newbie, nor am I describing something I mean to attempt and hope will
>> work - I'm talking from experience about a working site.
>
> Ah, um, didn't mean "attempting" in a literal sense.

Sorry, I misunderstood.

> So who's your webhost??

I use DreamHost - $120/year, more space and transfer than any ten sites of
mine will need, and FastCGI support. The latter is a very nice feature if
your vocabulary includes the words Rails or Catalyst, and it's unusual to
find at that price.

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/9/2008 10:22:15 PM

On Fri, 9 May 2008 07:21:01 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War
<prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On May 8, 8:33 pm, "nob...@nowhere.net" <mygarbage2...@hotmail.com>
>wrote:
>>
>>
>> bleh.gif would never be parsed as a valid function.  By any scripting
>> engine.
>
>Remember, I'd reported that it works on my end perfectly.
>
>> <img src="blah.png" onMouseOver="this.src='bleh.gif';"
>> onMouseOut="this.src='blah.png';"> will work.
>
>Okay, sorry, I was dabbling in a bit of my own short-hand notation
>there; the actual HTML/JavaScript used was
>
><img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
>onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
>onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />
>
>> Yet the support is plain clueless.  Dump'em.  Find yourself a real
>> hosting service - or host it yourself, all you need is static ip from
>> your 'net provider.  Even plain XP can support up to 80 concurrent
>> connections - enough for an amateur site.  Need more?  Get
>> Linux/Apache for free, or eMule WinServer2003 - Bill Gates surely will
>> not go broke without your license fee.
>
>Well, I do want to put a website before I delve into how to host one
>myself -- if I'd ever even go that far, actually (it's interesting,
>but I'd probably rather use the time to learn Photoshop or something,
>you see).
>
>Any webhosts you might recommend?  For a newbie who's growing in
>knowledge and ability, yet doesn't plan on progressing beyond some
>"intermediate" level of expertise in general.  I'm souring on SBI!
>because of a number of reasons, this little image-swap weirdness being
>one of them.
>
Dunno...  The sites I worked on are mostly hosted on corporate
intranets.  The only one open to Internet was also hosted by a big
corp - that was their online ordering system.  And I still have not
found time to put together my own private site.

NNN

nobody

5/9/2008 10:57:33 PM

On May 9, 5:41 pm, SAZ <saz1...@nospamexcite.com> wrote:
>
>
> The vast majority of these sites are over 500,000 in Alexa.  Frankly,
> I'm shocked they're even advertising these numbers and actimg like it's
> something special.

Huh?  I'm talking about http://results.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html --
like half are *under* 500K Alexa...now my sense is that you can't make
much money until you're 100K Alexa (and no "financial independence"
without ranking below ~45K)...correct me if I'm wrong...but at least
showing up on Alexa, low-res metric though they are, is a good
start....

> I have a VPS with ServInt, been very happy for the past 18 months.  You
> may not need a VPS, but it's nice to have complete control over
> everything.

Whoa, I don't even have any idea what you mean.  What kind of control?

Is there a good place where I can learn about webhosting matters?  I
don't mean a technical manual or "white paper" reference; I mean, as a
would-be webmaster, where can I start to get my bearings in this
world??  I really did learn a lot with SBI! in these three months, but
I'm not sure how much more there is to learn...I may just stick it out
for the year just to leave no stone unturned over there, I dunno, but
I still see it as a case of me "outgrowing" them than them selling
junk.  It's not a matter of personal pride; I really feel like I've
learned a lot.  SBI! has given me a sort of conceptual framework to
tie things together...imagine buying a car and getting driving lessons
along with it, instead just buying a car and that's it...SBI! has been
holding this newbie's hand, and that's something I may yet need when
it comes to SEO....

What do *you* do for SEO, may I ask?  Just curious.  After all, a tree
falling in the forest empty of humans to hear it....

Prisoner

5/10/2008 5:00:25 AM

On May 9, 5:19 pm, Mark Goodge <use...@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk>
wrote:
>
>
> No, they're not. *All* the SEO snake oil salesmen claim to have "the
> secret" that no-one else knows.

Indeed -- and let me be fair to them: "SEO" is actually not something
they claim to deal in; not as such...I use the term "SEO" because they
do claim to help with SERP matters, but they are actually anti-SEO and
decry the SEO mindset.  They actively advise against keyword games and
basically anything that pisses off a search engine (link farms, etc.).

I'd used the term "SEO" to describe their claim to fame because it's a
familiar term but they themselves describe it much more mystically as
"The Tao of SBI!" -- I kid you not.  Though meant with a tongue-in-
cheek affection, they claim to out-SEO the SEOers by "keeping it
real"...what they emphasize is honest-to-goodness content generation
in conjunction with the proprietary set-up they have...again, I simply
don't know enough about SEO to gauge whether what SBI! does is
something I could actually do on my own (without gross
inefficiencies)...I find it hard to believe that all SEO is junk, as
you seem to suggest...after all, search engines do have their
mysterious ways, and certain SEO principles seem valid enough in a
common sense way....

> It's pretty much the surefire sign that they are selling snake-oil,
> since, in reality, the only reliable methods of getting to the top of
> the rankings are already very widely known

What are they, please?

They can't be that widely known since Google is supposed to be
changing their algorithms every so often to throw off SEOers.  I'm
curious where you get your anti-SEO attitude from.  SBI! is actually
very anti-SEO themselves, and they actually advise against SEO -- I
use the SEO term to describe one of their claims to fame because
insofar as they help with SERP matters, they're doing SEO in effect if
not in intent...but they claim to out-SEO the professional SEOers by
"keeping it real" with quality relevant content, in conjunction with
their proprietary database system that tracks SEO matters (who's
visiting, from where, how many, how often, etc.)....

> There's nothing special about those Alexa rankings. It may sound
> impressive to say that they're in the "top 1%" of websites, but pretty
> much any active site can acheive that.

Top 1% out of ~56 million sites means ranking, what, within a half
million of Alexa, which sounds impressive indeed proportionally but in
terms of making real money I have the suspicion that one needs to be
under 100K of Alexa -- and as for "financial independence" (which is
what SBI! sells) probably less than top 50K, likely even as low as
15K....

So, yeah, in a sense it's not really impressive if you know what the
numbers mean (and, low-res metric that Alexa is, it still gives an
useful idea)...but I don't know how you claim that "pretty much any
active site can achieve that"....

> The web has a very long tail -
> every semi-comatose or unmaintained site is still listed by Alexa,
> despite only getting maybe one hit a month.

Yeah, but we're talking about the ranking on their list, not simply
being listed at all.

> You can get into the top
> 1% of Alexa rankings with only a handful of visitors (one of which
> will obviously be yourself) using the site regularly.

I find that hard to believe, even while agreeing that "Top 1% Alexa"
covers a lot of territory, so much so that it could almost be
meaningless, depending on what one's trying to evaluate, exactly...in
terms of monetization potential, one would need much more than a
handful of visitors a month -- they say the Google Adsense click-
through rates are only like 3%, or $1 per hundred visitors....

So what would be the "secrets to website success," then?

> Mark
> --
> Stuff, some of it good, athttp://www.good-stuff.co.uk
> "Take me or leave me, don't have to believe me"

Prisoner

5/10/2008 5:27:36 AM

On Fri, 9 May 2008 22:27:36 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War put finger to
keyboard and typed:

>On May 9, 5:19 pm, Mark Goodge <use...@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk>
>wrote:
>
>> It's pretty much the surefire sign that they are selling snake-oil,
>> since, in reality, the only reliable methods of getting to the top of
>> the rankings are already very widely known
>
>What are they, please?

Good, well structured original content that search engines find easy
to index and users find attractive to use.

>They can't be that widely known since Google is supposed to be
>changing their algorithms every so often to throw off SEOers.

That's why none of the "secret" methods are reliable.

>  I'm
>curious where you get your anti-SEO attitude from.  

I'm not anti-SEO in the sense that I don't think it's worth
structuring your site to make it easy for Google et al to index. There
are a lot of sites out there with otherwise good content that don't
get well indexed because they are badly designed and structured. If
you've got a site which has good, original content but is badly
structured, then you may well benefit from hiring someone to sort out
the mess and put it into a more search engine friendly structure.

I'm anti-SEO in the sense often used by so-called "SEO Consultancies"
which give the impression that you can get a site to the top of the
listings by means which are not fundamentally based on having good,
well structured original content. If you don't have good, original
content, then there are no legitimate or reliable ways to get to the
top of the listings.

>> There's nothing special about those Alexa rankings. It may sound
>> impressive to say that they're in the "top 1%" of websites, but pretty
>> much any active site can acheive that.
>
>Top 1% out of ~56 million sites means ranking, what, within a half
>million of Alexa, which sounds impressive indeed proportionally but in
>terms of making real money I have the suspicion that one needs to be
>under 100K of Alexa -- and as for "financial independence" (which is
>what SBI! sells) probably less than top 50K, likely even as low as
>15K....
>
>So, yeah, in a sense it's not really impressive if you know what the
>numbers mean (and, low-res metric that Alexa is, it still gives an
>useful idea)...but I don't know how you claim that "pretty much any
>active site can achieve that"....

From checking my own logs, I know how many visitors have the Alexa
toolbar installed, and I know where those sites feature in the
rankings. Typically, regular visits from just a handful of users with
the toolbar will put a site into the top 500,000.

>> You can get into the top
>> 1% of Alexa rankings with only a handful of visitors (one of which
>> will obviously be yourself) using the site regularly.
>
>I find that hard to believe, even while agreeing that "Top 1% Alexa"
>covers a lot of territory, so much so that it could almost be
>meaningless, depending on what one's trying to evaluate, exactly.

Even your own usage, if you have the toolbar installed, will affect
it. I can see that very clearly on my own sites. Take, for example,
these three:

http://www.britishsurnames.co.uk
http://www.motorwayservices.info
http://www.good-stuff.co.uk

Of those three, the top two get an order of magnitude more visitors
than the last one - that's easy to see both from my own logs, Google
Analytics and from Adsense pageviews. And yet the last one has the
higher Alexa ranking. Why? The reason is simple - that domain also
contains my own private pages which hold my bookmarks, admin control
panel, etc and therefore I use it repeatedly every day. I only visit
the other sites every now and then to check that they're working OK.
It's my *own* visits to my own site, with an Alexa-enable browser,
that is making it appear to Alexa to be more popular than two other
sites which, in reality, get ten times the number of visitors.

>..in
>terms of monetization potential, one would need much more than a
>handful of visitors a month -- they say the Google Adsense click-
>through rates are only like 3%, or $1 per hundred visitors....
>
>So what would be the "secrets to website success," then?

That depends on your definition of "success". To me, as an individual
creating the sites I mentioned above, it means creating websites that
I find enjoyable to create, that other people find enjoyable to use,
and that generate enough Adsense income to cover their hosting costs
so I can pursue my hobby at no cost to me. In these cases, success is
measured in how much I enjoy creating and maintaining the sites. When
I was employed as a web author, "success" meant, in one case, creating
an ecommerce site that was easy to use and turned visitors into paying
customers, thus generating income from product sales. In that case,
success was measured in terms of turnover and profit. In another case,
it meant improving an existing dating site in order to convert more
trial memberships into paying subscriptions. There, success was
measured in conversion rates. And in another situation, it meant
creating a website for a radio station which enabled listeners to
interact with the station and its presenters as well as giving
information about the organisation and its activities. Here, success
was measured in how useable and informative the site was. I've never
won awards for any of my sites, but for other people awards can be a
measure of success.

All of these sites are, I hope, successful, but success is measured in
different ways. It can be personal pleasure, it can be income and
profit, it can be usability and content. But the one thing that
success is almost never measured in is traffic. Traffic can be a means
to success (particularly for sites with derive a significant
proportion of their income from advertising), but hits alone don't do
anything other than eat up cpu cycles. Equally, Google page rank and
Alexa rankings are not a measure of success - they may reflect (albeit
imperfectly) what people are doing, but it's the people who will make
your site successful or not, not the rankings. The big mistake made by
most SEO companies, and their customers, is to make increased traffic
levels, page rank, Alexa rank, etc a goal in themselves. In reality,
they are a either a side-effect of a site that is acheiving its true
goals or a means to achieving those goals.

Mark
-- 
Pointless waffle (again) at http://mark.x.tc
"I scare myself to death, that's why I keep on running"

Mark

5/10/2008 9:17:25 AM

On Fri, 9 May 2008 22:00:25 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War put finger to
keyboard and typed:

>On May 9, 5:41 pm, SAZ <saz1...@nospamexcite.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The vast majority of these sites are over 500,000 in Alexa.  Frankly,
>> I'm shocked they're even advertising these numbers and actimg like it's
>> something special.
>
>Huh?  I'm talking about http://results.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html --
>like half are *under* 500K Alexa...now my sense is that you can't make
>much money until you're 100K Alexa (and no "financial independence"
>without ranking below ~45K).

That may be true if your only income is from advertising, although it
depends on what you mean by "much money" - I've helped create an
ad-supported website which is currently ranked around 500,000 by Alexa
and generates around $250 a month in Google Adsense earnings. That's
not a huge amount, but it covers the costs of hosting it with plenty
to spare and it's a useful second income for the owner (who isn't me,
by the way; this isn't one of my sites that I've mentioned in other
posts to this group).

It's certainly not true if you're selling an actual product or
service. I've worked on a site which has an Alexa ranking in the
300,000 range that earns enough to support several full-time employees
and a bunch of contractors.

Mark
-- 
Miscellaneous remarks at http://Mark.Goodge.co.uk
"Look at the stars; look how they shine for you"

Mark

5/10/2008 9:27:22 AM

Sherman Pendley wrote:
> Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> writes:
>> On May 9, 12:36 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>>> I'm not trying to be snooty or anything, I understand that what I'm
>>> talking about here would be hard for a newbie. I'm just saying, I'm not
>>> a newbie, nor am I describing something I mean to attempt and hope will
>>> work - I'm talking from experience about a working site.
>> Ah, um, didn't mean "attempting" in a literal sense.
> 
> Sorry, I misunderstood.
> 
>> So who's your webhost??
> 
> I use DreamHost - $120/year, more space and transfer than any ten sites of
> mine will need, and FastCGI support. The latter is a very nice feature if
> your vocabulary includes the words Rails or Catalyst, and it's unusual to
> find at that price.

You are *off-topic* in comp.lang.javascript and
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html.  Will you please
stop this mindless crossposting without Followup-To.


F'up2 misc.consumers

PointedEars
-- 
    realism:    HTML 4.01 Strict
    evangelism: XHTML 1.0 Strict
    madness:    XHTML 1.1 as application/xhtml+xml
                                                    -- Bjoern Hoehrmann

Thomas

5/10/2008 9:31:51 AM

Mark Goodge wrote:
> On Fri, 9 May 2008 22:00:25 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War put finger to
> keyboard and typed:
> 
>> On May 9, 5:41 pm, SAZ <saz1...@nospamexcite.com> wrote:
>>> The vast majority of these sites are over 500,000 in Alexa.  Frankly,
>>> I'm shocked they're even advertising these numbers and actimg like it's
>>> something special.
>> Huh?  I'm talking about http://results.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html --
>> like half are *under* 500K Alexa...now my sense is that you can't make
>> much money until you're 100K Alexa (and no "financial independence"
>> without ranking below ~45K).
> 
> That may be true if your only income is from advertising, although it
> depends on what you mean by "much money" - I've helped create an
> ad-supported website which is currently ranked around 500,000 by Alexa
> and generates around $250 a month in Google Adsense earnings. That's
> not a huge amount, but it covers the costs of hosting it with plenty
> to spare and it's a useful second income for the owner (who isn't me,
> by the way; this isn't one of my sites that I've mentioned in other
> posts to this group).
> 
> It's certainly not true if you're selling an actual product or
> service. I've worked on a site which has an Alexa ranking in the
> 300,000 range that earns enough to support several full-time employees
> and a bunch of contractors.

This has nothing to do with ECMAScript implementations or HTML.  Go away.


F'up2 misc.consumers

PointedEars
-- 
var bugRiddenCrashPronePieceOfJunk = (
    navigator.userAgent.indexOf('MSIE 5') != -1
    && navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mac') != -1
)  // Plone, register_function.js:16

Thomas

5/10/2008 9:33:36 AM

Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> writes:

> On May 9, 5:41 pm, SAZ <saz1...@nospamexcite.com> wrote:
>>
>> I have a VPS with ServInt, been very happy for the past 18 months.  You
>> may not need a VPS, but it's nice to have complete control over
>> everything.
>
> Whoa, I don't even have any idea what you mean.  What kind of control?

The kind where you have to screw your pages up yourself, instead of your
hosting provider doing it for you. :-)

> What do *you* do for SEO, may I ask?  Just curious.  After all, a tree
> falling in the forest empty of humans to hear it....

Nothing. Seriously. No meta tags, no rearranging divs, no hidden content,
none of the usual voodoo. Just valid, symantically-correct HTML and
correctly-spelled content. My CamelBones site has a Google page rank of 6
out of 10 - for a highly-specialized site with a small audience, that's
not bad - and it's top ranked in any relevant search I've tried.

The thing about SEO is this: It's a band-aid. People use WYSIWYG tools to
create pages that output a horrible mess of invalid HTML. Then along come
the search engines. They look, think "I can't grok that mess" and move on.
The "solution" for this problem, as promoted by the SEO crowd, is to jump
through a bunch of additional hoops to compensate, adding meta element,
hidden text, and all kinds of other nonsense to the page.

And let's talk about his term "optimize" for a moment. To optimize is to
take something that works, and improve it. When a page's HTML is so bad
that a search engine isn't able to index it, I don't call that something
that's working. So we're not talking about optimizing, we're actually
talking about fixing something that's broken. SEO doesn't actually fix
anything; it's just clumsy workarounds.

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/10/2008 4:16:22 PM

Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> writes:

> Sherman Pendley wrote:
>> Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> writes:
>>> On May 9, 12:36 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>>>> I'm not trying to be snooty or anything, I understand that what I'm
>>>> talking about here would be hard for a newbie. I'm just saying, I'm not
>>>> a newbie, nor am I describing something I mean to attempt and hope will
>>>> work - I'm talking from experience about a working site.
>>> Ah, um, didn't mean "attempting" in a literal sense.
>> 
>> Sorry, I misunderstood.
>> 
>>> So who's your webhost??
>> 
>> I use DreamHost - $120/year, more space and transfer than any ten sites of
>> mine will need, and FastCGI support. The latter is a very nice feature if
>> your vocabulary includes the words Rails or Catalyst, and it's unusual to
>> find at that price.
>
> You are *off-topic* in comp.lang.javascript and
> comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html.  Will you please
> stop this mindless crossposting without Followup-To.

If you'd asked nicely, I might have.

> F'up2 misc.consumers

Stuff it. I know how to operate my news reader.

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/10/2008 4:18:58 PM

Sherman Pendley wrote:
> Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> writes:
>> Sherman Pendley wrote:
>>> Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> On May 9, 12:36 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>>>>> I'm not trying to be snooty or anything, I understand that what I'm
>>>>> talking about here would be hard for a newbie. I'm just saying, I'm not
>>>>> a newbie, nor am I describing something I mean to attempt and hope will
>>>>> work - I'm talking from experience about a working site.
>>>> Ah, um, didn't mean "attempting" in a literal sense.
>>> Sorry, I misunderstood.
>>>
>>>> So who's your webhost??
>>> I use DreamHost - $120/year, more space and transfer than any ten sites of
>>> mine will need, and FastCGI support. The latter is a very nice feature if
>>> your vocabulary includes the words Rails or Catalyst, and it's unusual to
>>> find at that price.
>> You are *off-topic* in comp.lang.javascript and
>> comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html.  Will you please
>> stop this mindless crossposting without Followup-To.
> 
> If you'd asked nicely, I might have.

No, you wouldn't.  For I asked nicely already, and you did not.

>> F'up2 misc.consumers
> 
> Stuff it. I know how to operate my news reader.

So much for your capabilities regarding courtesy towards other people.


Score adjusted, F'up2 poster

PointedEars
-- 
Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on
a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web,
when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another
computer, another word processor, or another network. -- Tim Berners-Lee

Thomas

5/10/2008 6:26:49 PM

On 05/09/08 07:08 am, Prisoner at War wrote:
> 
> Okay, here's the actual <img> tag that was used:
> 
> <img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
> onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
> onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />
> 
  You have images named <pic2.gif;> and <pic1.gif;>? (Note the semicolon.)

-- 
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

Jim

5/10/2008 7:32:29 PM

On May 10, 3:32 pm, Jim Moe <jmm-list.AXSPA...@sohnen-moe.com> wrote:
>
>
>   You have images named <pic2.gif;> and <pic1.gif;>? (Note the semicolon.)

Sorry, typo -- was working from memory there.

Here's the test page set up for SBI! to diagnose my problem:

http://www.ego-management.org/test.html

This weekend, they tell me that image-swaps require absolute path
names in order to preview right....

You know, at this point I'm just sick of them.  I've almost just about
decided to cancel my subscription with them.  I'm just going to hang
around for another few days to see if there's anything about them
that's redeeming.  I'm not saying they suck or anything -- but I just
don't like one little weird thing after another.  I'm about three
months with them now and it's just been one small thing after another,
really inconsequential by themselves but altogether give me a feeling
of awkwardness...yes, that's it: using them feels awkward.  I mean,
WTF, they don't support .ani and .cur files, and no reason why not?!
Now this, requiring an absolute path name for an image-swap to work
(either in preview mode on their server or live on the web -- not even
sure if they're aware of the distinction yet).

That's all on top of some other matters unrelated to actual
webhosting....

> --
> jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
> (Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

Prisoner

5/11/2008 2:29:37 AM

Prisoner at War wrote:
> On May 10, 3:32 pm, Jim Moe <jmm-list.AXSPA...@sohnen-moe.com> wrote:
>>
>>   You have images named <pic2.gif;> and <pic1.gif;>? (Note the semicolon.)
> 
> Sorry, typo -- was working from memory there.
> 
> Here's the test page set up for SBI! to diagnose my problem:
> 
> http://www.ego-management.org/test.html
> 
> This weekend, they tell me that image-swaps require absolute path
> names in order to preview right....
> 
> You know, at this point I'm just sick of them.  I've almost just about
> decided to cancel my subscription with them.  I'm just going to hang
> around for another few days to see if there's anything about them
> that's redeeming.  I'm not saying they suck or anything -- but I just
> don't like one little weird thing after another.  I'm about three
> months with them now and it's just been one small thing after another,
> really inconsequential by themselves but altogether give me a feeling
> of awkwardness...yes, that's it: using them feels awkward.  I mean,
> WTF, they don't support .ani and .cur files, and no reason why not?!
> Now this, requiring an absolute path name for an image-swap to work
> (either in preview mode on their server or live on the web -- not even
> sure if they're aware of the distinction yet).
> 
> That's all on top of some other matters unrelated to actual
> webhosting....
> 
>> --
>> jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
>> (Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)
> 
> 

Well, that's what you get when you ask something outside of the hosting 
area.  They are there to keep the servers up, not troubleshoot your 
javascript.

At least they're trying to help - even though it isn't their job.  The 
fact they even gave you their best guess answer is more than most 
hosting companies will do.

And BTW - they aren't *completely* wrong.

-- 
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

Jerry

5/11/2008 2:47:21 AM

On May 10, 12:16 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>
>
> The kind where you have to screw your pages up yourself, instead of your
> hosting provider doing it for you. :-)

LOL -- get this, SBI! tech support wrote again (and it's the fourth
rep in two weeks now!), and finally informs me that the images of an
image-swap need absolute path names..."just how SBI! works"...I'm
pretty much fed-up with this lot...nothing major, but silly little
things which precisely because they're so petty you wonder why a multi-
million-dollar webhosting company would work that way -- and they
don't explain it any further.

> Nothing. Seriously. No meta tags, no rearranging divs, no hidden content,
> none of the usual voodoo. Just valid, symantically-correct HTML and
> correctly-spelled content. My CamelBones site has a Google page rank of 6
> out of 10 - for a highly-specialized site with a small audience, that's
> not bad - and it's top ranked in any relevant search I've tried.

Ah, well, yeah, so-called "long tail" stuff will be easier to
rank...but how to compete for the more popular keywords?  It's too bad
SEO has gotten such a bad reputation -- same as with DHTML and
JavaScript -- but I do think that many general principles apply...I
mean, search engines are human, they're not directories but search
engines and their spiders only churn text strings through various
algorithms...I mean, if your site is full of wordplay like double-
entendres you would need to know how search engines operate in order
to make sure that they're not blind to the true meaning of your
site....

> The thing about SEO is this: It's a band-aid. People use WYSIWYG tools to
> create pages that output a horrible mess of invalid HTML. Then along come
> the search engines. They look, think "I can't grok that mess" and move on.
> The "solution" for this problem, as promoted by the SEO crowd, is to jump
> through a bunch of additional hoops to compensate, adding meta element,
> hidden text, and all kinds of other nonsense to the page.

I think that was in the bad old days, wasn't it?  Tricks like hidden
text are recognized by search engines now and delisted, for example.

Moreover, we may have differing definitions of SEO -- I certainly
don't think of SEO as a fix, and I don't think it could serve as one.
The point of SEO is to get the search engine's notice -- but with poor
or irrelevant content, as measured by visitors quickly clicking away
back to the search engine, well, site ranking goes down and no amount
of SEO will salvage such a situation (again, SEO is not meant to be a
fix, but a "calling card" for search engines).

> And let's talk about his term "optimize" for a moment. To optimize is to
> take something that works, and improve it. When a page's HTML is so bad
> that a search engine isn't able to index it, I don't call that something
> that's working. So we're not talking about optimizing, we're actually
> talking about fixing something that's broken. SEO doesn't actually fix
> anything; it's just clumsy workarounds.

Again, "SEO" is my term for what SBI! purports to do on behalf of
their subscribers -- they themselves are adamantly anti-SEO and would
not want the association.  But I use the term because it does describe
the effect of their mission: to get the search engines to notice and
rank highly.

To that end they have various proprietary online widgets which track
traffic, analyze keyword density, keyword popularity (they use Word
Tracker for that), etc.  Now I could go subscribe to Word Tracker
myself and scrounge around for various substitutes for their widgets,
but it could be more expensive (an annual Word Tracker subscription
could be as much as SBI! itself for a year) and just not as convenient
as having one place for all such needs.

However, I've been getting more and more annoyed by them this past
month, nothing mission critical to be sure but giving me a feeling of
*awkwardness*...it's *really* strange but SBI! has been like meeting
an interesting person at a cocktail party who, half-way through an
interesting conversation starts picking his nose...I'm getting that
weird awkward feeling with these people and yet it's not for anything
mission critical -- yet...but for $300 a year I don't want to feel
like there may be a string of little weird issues like this image-swap
matter and their not supporting certain common file formats...I'm
about to cancel and cash-out on their pro-rated refund guarantee, but
I'm going to think it over for a few days before I make a final
decision....

> sherm--
>
> --
> My blog:http://shermspace.blogspot.com
> Cocoa programming in Perl:http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Prisoner

5/11/2008 2:55:31 AM

On May 10, 5:27 am, Mark Goodge <use...@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk>
wrote:
>
>
> That may be true if your only income is from advertising,

Yeah, my monetization will be Adsense and affiliate programs for some
time to come, until I can produce my own hard-product like a self-
published book or self-produced DVD, which I don't expect to have time
for until after a year of content creation to make sure that the site
is as "complete" as it could be.

> although it
> depends on what you mean by "much money" - I've helped create an
> ad-supported website which is currently ranked around 500,000 by Alexa
> and generates around $250 a month in Google Adsense earnings. That's
> not a huge amount, but it covers the costs of hosting it with plenty
> to spare and it's a useful second income for the owner (who isn't me,
> by the way; this isn't one of my sites that I've mentioned in other
> posts to this group).

Well, paying for itself is the least of it for me; it's got to be of
value to a great many people...which means traffic, which means ad-
clicks....

> It's certainly not true if you're selling an actual product or
> service. I've worked on a site which has an Alexa ranking in the
> 300,000 range that earns enough to support several full-time employees
> and a bunch of contractors.

Indeed.  I'm sorry; I should have noted that my site will be a sort of
"lifestyle resource"...it's niche content is what it is.  My concerns
right now are content, and -- for lack of a better term -- SEO.
That's why SBI! is driving me batty with one little weirdness after
another!  And they won't say why, except that that's just how they
work...presumably meaning that their proprietary database of a server
needs just this current set-up in order to do its SEO magic....

I'm pretty annoyed with them, though -- it's two weeks to the day
today between four different reps for them to finally tell me that
images used in an image-swap need to bear absolute path names for
their server to see them...?!?!  Sounds like a friggin' server bug to
me, but they claim it's "just how SBI! works"...yeah, right; how come
you didn't tell me so right away?

I'm so annoyed with them but I fear that I would be annoyed with any
other webhost, as I really don't know what's industry standard in
terms of service and maybe there exist other webhosts out there with
weird stipulations like images-in-an-image-swap-must-bear-absolute-
path-names....

> Mark
> --
> Miscellaneous remarks athttp://Mark.Goodge.co.uk
> "Look at the stars; look how they shine for you"

Prisoner

5/11/2008 3:08:23 AM

On May 10, 5:17 am, Mark Goodge <use...@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk>
wrote:
>
>
> Good, well structured original content that search engines find easy
> to index and users find attractive to use.

Ah, but that just begs the question -- what makes it easy for search
engines to index a website??  That's SEO -- so-called "white hat" SEO,
anyway....

> That's why none of the "secret" methods are reliable.

Again, SBI! itself states most emphatically that it is against
SEOing...I'm only using that term because it seems descriptive enough
to me of the **effects** of what they say their unique proprietary
business model provides their subscribers...they themselves decry SEO
and the SEO mindset.

What they claim to do is offer tools like traffic tracking, etc.,
which help a webmaster determine various site metrics (for purposes
of, as **I** say, SEO)...my fear is that they could actually be useful
to me on that score; all the tools I'd need in one place, as opposed
to scrounging around myself for them.

For example, if I didn't know HTML and the bit of CSS and JavaScript I
do, SBI! actually has a widget thinggy that does my website for me, in
terms of its structure...just click, click, click...nothing too fancy
but for a newbie certainly useful, you see...that's why I'm still a
bit hesitant to quit them immediately, since their other claim to fame
is "SEO" (again, not their word for what they do) and there are "SEO
tools" which I don't know how to substitute for on my own with another
webhost (though I'm sure most if not all webhosts offer basic traffic
tracking abilities, SBI! claims to be most comprehensive, and I just
haven't any way of gauging these matters)....

> I'm not anti-SEO in the sense that I don't think it's worth
> structuring your site to make it easy for Google et al to index.

Ah, well, we're on the same page, then -- and SBI! is given to the
same philosophy as well.  Again, I don't want to misrepresent them,
for all my annoyance with them right now: "SEO" is not their term for
what they do; I use it as a kind of short-hand for "proprietary-
database-centric-webhosting-so-that-Google-notices-your-site-and-ranks-
it-highly"...now whether SBI! actually does this, and to what degree,
that's what I have no way of knowing....

> There
> are a lot of sites out there with otherwise good content that don't
> get well indexed because they are badly designed and structured.

Ah, my greatest fear!!!!

What makes for bad design and structure?

I don't mean one of these tripod.com vanity sites with broken code and
blinking and scrolling text, of course -- nothing so obvious...but
just why do some get picked up and others do not??

One thing SBI! stresses is to stay on-message; don't do a bodybuilding
site, for example, that's also about picking up girls on a Friday
night...apparently, search engines get confused by that kind of a
"diluted message" -- ?!  Now to my mind, and IME, many who get into
bodybuilding do so in great part because of girls (i.e., what they
*think* girls want, to be precise), so the two seem most complementary
subjects.

> If
> you've got a site which has good, original content but is badly
> structured, then you may well benefit from hiring someone to sort out
> the mess and put it into a more search engine friendly structure.

If you could be me examples of (or links to!) what is bad structure
vis-a-vis otherwise good original content, I'd be much obliged!

> I'm anti-SEO in the sense often used by so-called "SEO Consultancies"
> which give the impression that you can get a site to the top of the
> listings by means which are not fundamentally based on having good,
> well structured original content. If you don't have good, original
> content, then there are no legitimate or reliable ways to get to the
> top of the listings.

SBI! agrees with you 100% there.  Again, my apologies for having
helped to create the misimpression otherwise.

> From checking my own logs, I know how many visitors have the Alexa
> toolbar installed, and I know where those sites feature in the
> rankings. Typically, regular visits from just a handful of users with
> the toolbar will put a site into the top 500,000.

Hmm, interesting.  I know Alexa is much maligned, but I figured a
fuzzy or jagged "100 dpi image" was still marginally useful...if you
are right, it's practically worthless -- and SBI's marketing hype
misleading at best!

> Even your own usage, if you have the toolbar installed, will affect
> it. I can see that very clearly on my own sites. Take, for example,
> these three:
>
> http://www.britishsurnames.co.ukhttp://www.motorwayservices.infohttp://www.good-stuff.co.uk
>
> Of those three, the top two get an order of magnitude more visitors
> than the last one - that's easy to see both from my own logs, Google
> Analytics and from Adsense pageviews. And yet the last one has the
> higher Alexa ranking. Why? The reason is simple - that domain also
> contains my own private pages which hold my bookmarks, admin control
> panel, etc and therefore I use it repeatedly every day. I only visit
> the other sites every now and then to check that they're working OK.
> It's my *own* visits to my own site, with an Alexa-enable browser,
> that is making it appear to Alexa to be more popular than two other
> sites which, in reality, get ten times the number of visitors.

Good grief, SBI! is intentionally misleading!  I mean, I had thought
that Alexa rankings were at worst still somewhat useful, but it sounds
like they're worthless, as they could very easily be puffed up by
webmasters themselves!!

> That depends on your definition of "success". To me, as an individual
> creating the sites I mentioned above, it means creating websites that
> I find enjoyable to create, that other people find enjoyable to use,
> and that generate enough Adsense income to cover their hosting costs
> so I can pursue my hobby at no cost to me.

Well, as with all other things in life it seems, there is a
continuum...for me, what you just described would be the minimum
definition of website success -- one that pays its own way...I mean,
heck, *I* pay my own way in this world, don't take no government hand-
outs, ain't living off some girlfriend or parent...but I'm afraid
that's not quite "success," is it!  (Oddly enough, I do enjoy my life
right now, yes, thank you!)

> In these cases, success is
> measured in how much I enjoy creating and maintaining the sites.

I certainly enjoy learning, and this fellowship of learning on these
newsgroups.  Yes, I should say that *this* is the "minimum level" of
success...which, if I may wax philosophical again, is also the maximum
level, too, if success is conceived as a circle, a cycle, a process
than a result, a being rather than a state....

> When
> I was employed as a web author, "success" meant, in one case, creating
> an ecommerce site that was easy to use and turned visitors into paying
> customers, thus generating income from product sales. In that case,
> success was measured in terms of turnover and profit. In another case,
> it meant improving an existing dating site in order to convert more
> trial memberships into paying subscriptions. There, success was
> measured in conversion rates. And in another situation, it meant
> creating a website for a radio station which enabled listeners to
> interact with the station and its presenters as well as giving
> information about the organisation and its activities. Here, success
> was measured in how useable and informative the site was. I've never
> won awards for any of my sites, but for other people awards can be a
> measure of success.

To me, all that would be separate requirements for success, but not
success itself.  Of course, obviously I have a different goal in
mind....

> All of these sites are, I hope, successful, but success is measured in
> different ways. It can be personal pleasure, it can be income and
> profit, it can be usability and content. But the one thing that
> success is almost never measured in is traffic. Traffic can be a means
> to success (particularly for sites with derive a significant
> proportion of their income from advertising),

My monetization model for the first year or two....

> but hits alone don't do
> anything other than eat up cpu cycles. Equally, Google page rank and
> Alexa rankings are not a measure of success - they may reflect (albeit
> imperfectly) what people are doing, but it's the people who will make
> your site successful or not, not the rankings. The big mistake made by
> most SEO companies, and their customers, is to make increased traffic
> levels, page rank, Alexa rank, etc a goal in themselves.

I think it was Lenin himself who said, remarking on Russian
capabilities in WWI (they turned out to be quite the paper tiger),
that at a certain level of critical mass, quantity becomes a quality
all its own.

I do believe I understand your skepticism of "popular SEO"...but I'm
afraid that numbers don't lie: high-traffic sites will make more money
than low-traffic sites (where "traffic" is defined in terms of "unique
IP addy" -- not a perfect metric there either but likely the closest
there can be on the web).

Consistently high SERP rank means, all else being equal, high traffic.

> In reality,
> they are a either a side-effect of a site that is acheiving its true
> goals or a means to achieving those goals.

That's certainly the SBI! philosophy -- they even call it "The Tao of
SBI!" -- and it's certainly my Number One Priority, too; valuable
(meaning also "original") content.

But, again, a tree falling in the forest....

Hence, my SEO concerns.  And my dilemma over whether to quit SBI! over
some minor but annoying little issues that's been cropping up...SBI!
feels more and more awkward, like finding out over a series of dates
that your beloved has unusual habits like communing with crystals or
feeding off sunlight (no joke, there are people who really believe
that sunlight is literally food itself)...I mean, their Tech Support
just told me, after two weeks and four reps, that images used in an
image-swap need to bear absolute file paths -- ?!

Weird as that is (they do have a proprietary database-centric way of
doing things, allegedly for SEO [again, not their term but the same
promise]), what's even more weird is that they couldn't have told me
that right from the beginning!

Then if I should ever want to host a forum, it's an extra $100 for
SBI! -- and another ~$100 for another webhost to host that forum,
since the way SBI! is set up no subdomain would be allowed...?!?!
(Again, that proprietary database for SEO purposes....)

Just little things like that, you know, keep popping up...nothing
mission-critical in itself, but it feels more and more like instead of
them revolving around me, the customer, it's me revolving around them
-- and I'm paying them for the privilege of working around them!!

But -- sigh! -- the issue, again, is the claim of SEO...which I just
cannot gauge...they are the way they are because of SEO...and it had
seemed they had the sites to back up that claim -- until you informed
me that Alexa is basically worthless!

> Mark
> --
> Pointless waffle (again) athttp://mark.x.tc
> "I scare myself to death, that's why I keep on running"

Prisoner

5/11/2008 3:53:45 AM

On 05/10/08 07:29 pm, Prisoner at War wrote:
> 
> Here's the test page set up for SBI! to diagnose my problem:
> 
> http://www.ego-management.org/test.html
> 
> This weekend, they tell me that image-swaps require absolute path
> names to preview right....
> 
  It works fine here. Seamonkey v1.1.9. (After I turned JS on.)

-- 
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

Jim

5/11/2008 5:43:59 AM

On May 10, 6:25=A0am, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On May 9, 11:20 am, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
>
> sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> > They do not seam to have a clue of what they are doing.
>
> They seem to be good at what they do: several of the sites they host
> are top-ranked (and that would reflect on them since these sites all
> adopt an "SBI! Approach" to things), as seen onhttp://results.sitesell.com=
/sunnyside.html
> -- now because I'm not up on SEO, I can't tell whether that's genuine
> or what...I do know that what SBI! offers in terms of "site mechanics"
> I can handle on my own with all the books I've been reading (not to
> mention ***these fine newsgroups!!***), but I don't know whether their
> SEO claim is equally something I could learn or whether it truly is,
> as they claim, to be the result of their proprietary database way of
> webhosting....
>
> But this image-swap craziness, and some other less serious issues, has
> me seriously bummed out for the time being....
>
> > If you want a
> > good web host go with Server Grade.http://www.servergrade.com.au/
> > I have been wih them for 6 months and have not had any major issues.
> > They have quite good tech support as well and if they don't support a
> > feature they tell you strate away.
>
> Hmmm, Australia?? =A0I know this is the web, but I'd never considered a
> company that celebrates Christmas in summer! =A0;-)
>
> Thanks for the recommendation -- I'll check it out...but why should I
> use them as opposed to the Big Boys like Yahoo! or 1&1 or Dreamhost or
> Monster, etc.??
>
You only need to read back through the older posts from this and other
NG's to get an idea of some of the larger hosts. Mind you ServerGrade
only do support by email so you may or may not like that. I don't mind
that as it is easier then getting support on the phone. I also have a
reasonable grounding on what I need to do to get a site set-up so I
like having my site always online.
Also ServerGrade linit the amount of sites on their servers, my server
has 34 sites on it. Other hosts such as Yahoo place up to 300 or more
sites on the one server.
--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesignonline.org

>
>

Chaddy2222

5/11/2008 6:49:47 AM

Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> writes:

> No, you wouldn't.  For I asked nicely already, and you did not.

Calling someone "mindless" is not nice.

> Score adjusted, F'up2 poster

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/11/2008 2:54:54 PM

On May 10, 10:47 pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
> Well, that's what you get when you ask something outside of the hosting
> area.  They are there to keep the servers up, not troubleshoot your
> javascript.

But it's not about the JavaScript!  My JavaScript is perfectly fine!
If my perfectly fine HTML doesn't come out right on their servers,
would that be "my problem" too or would it be *their* problem insofar
as the point of webhosting would be to support HTML, the language of
webpages??

I'm not asking them for help with troubleshooting JavaScript that's
not working; I'm asking them why JavaScript that *does* work on my end
does not on theirs!

UPDATE: the issue is now resolved.  For some (unspecified, of course,
even when prompted) reason, this webshot requires images of an image-
swap to bear absolute file path names.  All other images -- that is,
not used for an image-swap -- may be in the standard relative file
path name format, but image-swap images must use absolute file path
names.

Nowhere was this documented in their upload instructions,
however...apparently, mine was a special case, and not once since
their founding in 1997 has someone else tried to upload images of an
image-swap using relative file path names -- ?!?!

This seems like a gross programming bug to me, and instead of fixing
their system to accommodate standard practices they're asking me to
accommodate them!

All in the name of SEO...which makes me seriously question whether
these people can actually do any SEO worthy of the name, if their SEO
causes their server to somehow not see image files of an image-swap if
they're not referred to with absolute path names!

> At least they're trying to help - even though it isn't their job.

I really find this very odd that many people have noted that "it's not
their job" to investigate why perfectly fine -- and brain-dead
simple!  We're talking about <img src="pic1.gif"
onMouseOver="this.src='pic2.gif;'"> -- JavaScript doesn't work on
their server.

Seriously, if your car doesn't run, do you think it's not the
dealership's job to answer why not?  Oh, they just sell cars, they
don't actually make them -- ?!?!

> The
> fact they even gave you their best guess answer is more than most
> hosting companies will do.

The fact that it wasn't until the third rep that they finally
acknowledged my case was something they had a responsibility to
investigate means that they were doing what "most hosting companies
will do."

We all have computers, obviously -- and tech support SOP is to deny
responsibility for anything outside of the script.  It's really
unfortunate but many people seem to behave no more intelligently than
a simple keyword-focused search engine, and so it took until the third
rep that SBI! actually understood the problem.

So much for another of their claims to fame, friendly helpful customer/
tech support.

I can live without their site-building templates, since I know HTML
and enough CSS and JavaScript for my own purposes; I can even live
without their customer support since no one can care about your
problems as much as you do; I've even given up on their private
forums, which is probably the most useful thing about them on account
of all the interesting business talk that goes on there, but which are
patrolled by the "mindless positive thinking police" -- the only
reason I have now to stick with them is their SEO claims...which I'm
beginning to doubt....

> And BTW - they aren't *completely* wrong.

About what are they not completely wrong??  Where are they "right"???
You wouldn't happen to be one of their SBI! Rapid Response Group
volunteers, would you??  (I kid you not; they actually have a
volunteer "force" of subscribers who bring anti-SBI! posts to the
company's attention, and then these volunteers show up to rebut the
negative claims.  This most recently happened on
associateprograms.com's forums.)

> --
> ==================
> Remove the "x" from my email address
> Jerry Stuckle
> JDS Computer Training Corp.
> jstuck...@attglobal.net
> ==================

Prisoner

5/11/2008 4:02:13 PM

Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> writes:

> Ah, well, yeah, so-called "long tail" stuff will be easier to
> rank...but how to compete for the more popular keywords?

Personally - I don't. :-) I'm no business major, but my thinking is this:
When one has a very limited marketing budget, it's pointless to waste it in
markets where so much is already being spent that one's own small effort will
be drowned out in the noise. So I look for opportunities in the long tail,
where a little effort might go a long way in an under-served market segment.

> algorithms...I mean, if your site is full of wordplay like double-
> entendres you would need to know how search engines operate in order
> to make sure that they're not blind to the true meaning of your
> site....

Trying to make your site rank high for common, generic words is just a waste
of time, and here's why: Search engine *users* know about common words too.

A parent researching child discipline methods would probably not search for
"spanking" - he or she tried that search once and got very mixed results. He
or she would search for "corporal punishment", probably even including the
quotes to search for the exact phrase.

So, if I'm developing a parenting site, I wouldn't suggest spending any time
trying to "optimize" for the word "spanking." It was hijacked as a useful
search term long ago, and your audience knows that and won't be using it to
find what your site's about anyway.

> I think that was in the bad old days, wasn't it?  Tricks like hidden
> text are recognized by search engines now and delisted, for example.

It's an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse. The search engines start delisting a
given trick, the SEO con artists come up with new ones.

> Moreover, we may have differing definitions of SEO -- I certainly
> don't think of SEO as a fix, and I don't think it could serve as one.
> The point of SEO is to get the search engine's notice

No, that's not SEO at all. That's just a form on Google. In my experience,
it's not necessary to do more than register with the top two or three search
engines. The others will pick up on larger engines' listings anyway. I've also
found that search engines need about as much help noticing web page changes as
a cat needs noticing mice.

SEO is when the engines know about your site, and you're trying to make your
site appear earlier in the search results.

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/11/2008 4:06:56 PM

On May 11, 1:43 am, Jim Moe <jmm-list.AXSPA...@sohnen-moe.com> wrote:
> On 05/10/08 07:29 pm, Prisoner at War wrote:
>
> > Here's the test page set up for SBI! to diagnose my problem:
>
> >http://www.ego-management.org/test.html
>
> > This weekend, they tell me that image-swaps require absolute path
> > names to preview right....
>
>   It works fine here. Seamonkey v1.1.9. (After I turned JS on.)
>
> --
> jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
> (Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

Yep, it works fine *now* -- now that an absolute file path was
specified in the first "src" attribute of the <img> tag (curiously,
the image-swap src attributes remain in relative file path format).

*That* was the problem.

A problem for which at first they denied any responsibility.

Which now seems to never have occurred to anyone else in all the years
since their founding in 1997, as there is no documentation on this
issue: indeed, their specific instructions about uploading webpages is
to use relative file path names!

SBI! is feeling extremely awkward at this point.  It's just one weird
situation after another...nothing mission-critical, of course, but a
series of them has me wondering "what next??"

Prisoner

5/11/2008 4:07:19 PM

On May 11, 2:49 am, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> You only need to read back through the older posts from this and other
> NG's to get an idea of some of the larger hosts.

Yeah, but nothing like timely information!  Perhaps policies have
since changed, etc. -- I myself was all bullish on SBI! only last
month, but then a series of weird incidents like this little image-
swap mystery has given me an "awkward feeling" towards them....

> Mind you ServerGrade
> only do support by email so you may or may not like that. I don't mind
> that as it is easier then getting support on the phone.

I prefer e-mail since everything's in writing and I can't be accused
of miscommunication -- though, of course, communication is a two-way
street, and if someone just isn't paying attention then it doesn't
even matter much that I put things in writing; they will still
misinterpret it!

> I also have a
> reasonable grounding on what I need to do to get a site set-up so I
> like having my site always online.
> Also ServerGrade linit the amount of sites on their servers, my server
> has 34 sites on it. Other hosts such as Yahoo place up to 300 or more
> sites on the one server.

Yeah, looks like I'm going to have to google up some how-to-choose-a-
webhost guides...in the meantime, please continue to share any new
thoughts you may have on the matter.  I was hoping to learn with SBI!
but it's turning out to be like having to drop a college course 'cause
the professor has a strange and possibly unhelpful pedagogy and
instead of learning I'm dealing with weird minutiae....

> --
> Regards Chad.http://freewebdesignonline.org
>
>

Prisoner

5/11/2008 4:13:08 PM

On May 11, 12:06 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>
>
> Personally - I don't. :-) I'm no business major, but my thinking is this:
> When one has a very limited marketing budget, it's pointless to waste it in
> markets where so much is already being spent that one's own small effort will
> be drowned out in the noise. So I look for opportunities in the long tail,
> where a little effort might go a long way in an under-served market segment.

Indeed, that's the SBI! take on it, too: market to the long-tail
keywords, and through the viral magic of backlinks and such (since the
www is by definition interconnected) you may well wind up winning the
market for the popular ones!

> Trying to make your site rank high for common, generic words is just a waste
> of time, and here's why: Search engine *users* know about common words too.
>
> A parent researching child discipline methods would probably not search for
> "spanking" - he or she tried that search once and got very mixed results. He
> or she would search for "corporal punishment", probably even including the
> quotes to search for the exact phrase.
>
> So, if I'm developing a parenting site, I wouldn't suggest spending any time
> trying to "optimize" for the word "spanking." It was hijacked as a useful
> search term long ago, and your audience knows that and won't be using it to
> find what your site's about anyway.

Hmm, I guess your assumption is that the audience isn't a bunch of
newbies, whereas mine had been just that...since I am a newbie
myself!  And so when I use search engines I type in newbie-like
general keywords...hmmm...I know that it's "better to be a king in
hell than a pauper in heaven" ("big fish in a small pond than a small
fish in a big one"), but then again, 5% of a million is better than
99% of a hundred...I guess I'm trying to figure out niche long-tail
keywords versus popular common ones....

> It's an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse. The search engines start delisting a
> given trick, the SEO con artists come up with new ones.

Yes, and SBI! was supposed to take care of that with their proprietary
way of hosting websites...but now that's in serious doubt because of
the awkward feeling I'm getting from all the little weird incidents
like this image-swap mystery.

> No, that's not SEO at all. That's just a form on Google. In my experience,
> it's not necessary to do more than register with the top two or three search
> engines. The others will pick up on larger engines' listings anyway. I've also
> found that search engines need about as much help noticing web page changes as
> a cat needs noticing mice.
>
> SEO is when the engines know about your site, and you're trying to make your
> site appear earlier in the search results.

Indeed, I didn't mean "notice" in the sense of simply being indexed
somewhere on SERP 397...just submitting your site to the engine lets
it know that it exists, okay, but no big deal.

SBI! was supposed to have some way of improving PR...providing the
good original content is there to begin with so that PR is not lost
over time due to users quickly clicking back to the SERP on account of
irrelevant or low-value material....

How is/are your site(s) doing in terms of traffic and keyword SERP?

Unless you really believe in a kind of "built it and they will come"
web-mysticism, it seems that SEO has to be a part of business
strategy...and yes I'm hoping to make money from my site, not just
enough so that it pays its own way, but that it pays for me to
continue devoting ever-increasing time and thought to it, since that
would be a good sign that what I'm providing is of real value to
many.  But they've got to know it exists in the first place!

> sherm--
>
> --
> My blog:http://shermspace.blogspot.com
> Cocoa programming in Perl:http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Prisoner

5/11/2008 4:35:34 PM

Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> writes:

> At least they're trying to help - even though it isn't their job.  The
> fact they even gave you their best guess answer is more than most
> hosting companies will do.

I think you've missed a key difference here. They're not just bare hosting.
He publishes his pages through a CMS they've written, that "optimizes" his
pages for search engines. They're modifying his pages, and he's asking them
about the JS they're adding - do you still think they're not obliged to
answer him?

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/11/2008 5:21:05 PM

Prisoner at War wrote:
> On May 10, 10:47 pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>> Well, that's what you get when you ask something outside of the hosting
>> area.  They are there to keep the servers up, not troubleshoot your
>> javascript.
> 
> But it's not about the JavaScript!  My JavaScript is perfectly fine!
> If my perfectly fine HTML doesn't come out right on their servers,
> would that be "my problem" too or would it be *their* problem insofar
> as the point of webhosting would be to support HTML, the language of
> webpages??
>

That's what you don't get.  IT IS ALL ABOUT JAVASCRIPT!  Your javascript 
IS NOT FINE.

> I'm not asking them for help with troubleshooting JavaScript that's
> not working; I'm asking them why JavaScript that *does* work on my end
> does not on theirs!
> 

You are asking them to do this.

> UPDATE: the issue is now resolved.  For some (unspecified, of course,
> even when prompted) reason, this webshot requires images of an image-
> swap to bear absolute file path names.  All other images -- that is,
> not used for an image-swap -- may be in the standard relative file
> path name format, but image-swap images must use absolute file path
> names.
>

Which is JAVASCRIPT.

> Nowhere was this documented in their upload instructions,
> however...apparently, mine was a special case, and not once since
> their founding in 1997 has someone else tried to upload images of an
> image-swap using relative file path names -- ?!?!
> 


> This seems like a gross programming bug to me, and instead of fixing
> their system to accommodate standard practices they're asking me to
> accommodate them!
>

The only programming bug is between your hears.


> All in the name of SEO...which makes me seriously question whether
> these people can actually do any SEO worthy of the name, if their SEO
> causes their server to somehow not see image files of an image-swap if
> they're not referred to with absolute path names!
>

The problem is NOT with them.

>> At least they're trying to help - even though it isn't their job.
> 
> I really find this very odd that many people have noted that "it's not
> their job" to investigate why perfectly fine -- and brain-dead
> simple!  We're talking about <img src="pic1.gif"
> onMouseOver="this.src='pic2.gif;'"> -- JavaScript doesn't work on
> their server.
> 

That's right.  Troubleshooting your code IS NOT THEIR JOB.

> Seriously, if your car doesn't run, do you think it's not the
> dealership's job to answer why not?  Oh, they just sell cars, they
> don't actually make them -- ?!?!
> 

Not if it's out of gas, it isn't.

But a more accurate comparison.  If your car doesn't run, it it the 
responsibility of the lot where you parked your car to tell you why it 
isn't running?  No.  It's their job to paint the lines, fill the 
potholes and plow the snow in the winter - so you have a place to park.

That's a MUCH better comparison.


>> The
>> fact they even gave you their best guess answer is more than most
>> hosting companies will do.
> 
> The fact that it wasn't until the third rep that they finally
> acknowledged my case was something they had a responsibility to
> investigate means that they were doing what "most hosting companies
> will do."
>

Which means you got someone sympathetic with you.

> We all have computers, obviously -- and tech support SOP is to deny
> responsibility for anything outside of the script.  It's really
> unfortunate but many people seem to behave no more intelligently than
> a simple keyword-focused search engine, and so it took until the third
> rep that SBI! actually understood the problem.
> 

Yea, it seems it's hard for you to behave intelligently.

> So much for another of their claims to fame, friendly helpful customer/
> tech support.
>

Not at all.  I think they acted mostly appropriately - at least until 
the third rep.

> I can live without their site-building templates, since I know HTML
> and enough CSS and JavaScript for my own purposes; I can even live
> without their customer support since no one can care about your
> problems as much as you do; I've even given up on their private
> forums, which is probably the most useful thing about them on account
> of all the interesting business talk that goes on there, but which are
> patrolled by the "mindless positive thinking police" -- the only
> reason I have now to stick with them is their SEO claims...which I'm
> beginning to doubt....
> 

Fine.  Just don't come back here whining about more problems.  Quire 
frankly, no one here gives a damn.

>> And BTW - they aren't *completely* wrong.
> 
> About what are they not completely wrong??  Where are they "right"???
> You wouldn't happen to be one of their SBI! Rapid Response Group
> volunteers, would you??  (I kid you not; they actually have a
> volunteer "force" of subscribers who bring anti-SBI! posts to the
> company's attention, and then these volunteers show up to rebut the
> negative claims.  This most recently happened on
> associateprograms.com's forums.)
>

Absolute paths are generally the best way to go when referencing images.

But you've already proven you're too thick-headed to understand that.

-- 
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

Jerry

5/11/2008 7:53:39 PM

Sherman Pendley wrote:
> Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> writes:
> 
>> At least they're trying to help - even though it isn't their job.  The
>> fact they even gave you their best guess answer is more than most
>> hosting companies will do.
> 
> I think you've missed a key difference here. They're not just bare hosting.
> He publishes his pages through a CMS they've written, that "optimizes" his
> pages for search engines. They're modifying his pages, and he's asking them
> about the JS they're adding - do you still think they're not obliged to
> answer him?
> 
> sherm--
> 

Nope.  Nothing I've seen indicates they are changing the javascript. 
And if they were, he could easily look at it in his browser source.

Rather, he's blowing smoke in a vain attempt to cover his incompetence.

-- 
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

Jerry

5/11/2008 7:54:52 PM

Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> writes:

> How is/are your site(s) doing in terms of traffic and keyword SERP?

I don't know, and actually don't much care. The thing is, my site isn't
intended to generate revenue from traffic, and hosting at sourceforge
is free for open-source projects.

Don't get me wrong - if ad-click revenue were paying my rent, I'd care
quite a lot about traffic. :-)

> Unless you really believe in a kind of "built it and they will come"
> web-mysticism, it seems that SEO has to be a part of business
> strategy...

Not SEO as such, just common sense. Search engines are not an advertising
medium. Their business model is based, in part, on a credible reputation
as an impartial resource. They can and do sell "premium listings," but
those are clearly marked as such. They work very hard to discourage any
kind of attempt by sites to bias their own standings. (By "bias," I mean
to try to affect the standings in a way that the ordinarily-indexible text
wouldn't warrant.)

None of this is especially mysterious - keywords found in HTML headings
rank higher than those found in body text, for instance. So do those found
in link text, on sites that link to yours - the idea being that link text
is often descriptive in nature.

Google tries to rank highly the sites that are considered authoritative
or are otherwise well-thought-of by their peers. In short, sites with more
links leading to them from other sites that also match a keyword, will rank
higher. That's why Wikipedia turns up at the top of damn near everything
from Google lately - everybody + uncle is linking to it.

Ensuring that you can be found with any relevant search is really quite
easy, and nothing to do with what sounds like your real goal:

> But they've got to know it exists in the first place!

Hate to say it, but - spend some money. What you need is just plain old
advertising, not search engine tweaks. The job of the search engines is
simply to ensure that someone who knows your brand (a unique keyword)
can easily find information about it (your site). Getting the word out
about your brand isn't a search engine's job.

I would advise talking to the other end of Google, and buying some Adwords.
That's where you'll want to use broad terms - Adwords uses the same key-
word database, and they'll put your ads on sites that match the keywords
you supply, so more generic terms will reach more people.

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/11/2008 8:20:43 PM

In article <m1iqxky4mc.fsf@dot-app.org>,
 Sherman Pendley <spamtrap@dot-app.org> wrote:

> 
> Hate to say it, but - spend some money. What you need is just plain old
> advertising, not search engine tweaks. The job of the search engines is
> simply to ensure that someone who knows your brand (a unique keyword)
> can easily find information about it (your site). Getting the word out
> about your brand isn't a search engine's job.
> 
> I would advise talking to the other end of Google, and buying some Adwords.
> That's where you'll want to use broad terms - Adwords uses the same key-
> word database, and they'll put your ads on sites that match the keywords
> you supply, so more generic terms will reach more people.

A friend of mine has told me that his website hits and sales go up in 
direct proportion to the amount of he spends at Google.

-- 
dorayme

dorayme

5/11/2008 10:32:29 PM

On May 11, 4:20 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>
>
> I don't know, and actually don't much care. The thing is, my site isn't
> intended to generate revenue from traffic, and hosting at sourceforge
> is free for open-source projects.
>
> Don't get me wrong - if ad-click revenue were paying my rent, I'd care
> quite a lot about traffic. :-)

Well, it could be -- or that's the claim, anyway.  The few sites I
know that are making money seem to be sites about making money!  Like
johnchow.com, etc.  But that's not what I'm looking to do, so I
wonder....

> Not SEO as such, just common sense. Search engines are not an advertising
> medium.

Eh???  My impression is that search engines make their money from
advertisers!!

> Their business model is based, in part, on a credible reputation
> as an impartial resource. They can and do sell "premium listings," but
> those are clearly marked as such. They work very hard to discourage any
> kind of attempt by sites to bias their own standings. (By "bias," I mean
> to try to affect the standings in a way that the ordinarily-indexible text
> wouldn't warrant.)

Ah, well, yes, true...but google gets its AdWords money by matching
advertisers with relevant websites, and that depends on know how to
measure "relevancy"...which turns to thoughts of SEO for those who
want to be "most" relevant in terms of SERPs and PRs....

> None of this is especially mysterious - keywords found in HTML headings
> rank higher than those found in body text, for instance. So do those found
> in link text, on sites that link to yours - the idea being that link text
> is often descriptive in nature.

Sure, the concept is simple, but obviously ranking will always exist
-- so the question is, why, exactly?  It's more than just keywords in
the <meta> tag....

> Google tries to rank highly the sites that are considered authoritative
> or are otherwise well-thought-of by their peers. In short, sites with more
> links leading to them from other sites that also match a keyword, will rank
> higher. That's why Wikipedia turns up at the top of damn near everything
> from Google lately - everybody + uncle is linking to it.

Indeed.  So it appears that backlinks carry the most weight with
google.  Google's relying on backlinks to measure content quality, and
using keywords for after-the-fact confirmation...?

> Ensuring that you can be found with any relevant search is really quite
> easy, and nothing to do with what sounds like your real goal:

"Really quite easy"???  Let's not forget what "being found" means to
me: Top 5 listing, ideally, if not Top Ten or even first SERP...I'm
not talking about simply being indexed somewhere on SERP 94,006,331
now...even SERP 2 would be far from ideal....

And what do you mean by my "real goal"?  Do you mean my ultimate
objective of making money?  It seems that there's no way I even have a
shot at doing so without people finding my site first -- and finding
it means Top 5, 10, 20, or even 30 ranking, since almost nobody spends
much time sifting through different results....

> Hate to say it, but - spend some money. What you need is just plain old
> advertising, not search engine tweaks. The job of the search engines is
> simply to ensure that someone who knows your brand (a unique keyword)
> can easily find information about it (your site). Getting the word out
> about your brand isn't a search engine's job.

Oh, true, it's not their job -- but SEO is about making it their job,
isn't it; or, perhaps better put, "piggy-backing" on what *is* their
job (highly relevant results) to help yourself -- a symbiotic
relationship....

> I would advise talking to the other end of Google, and buying some Adwords.
> That's where you'll want to use broad terms - Adwords uses the same key-
> word database, and they'll put your ads on sites that match the keywords
> you supply, so more generic terms will reach more people.

Yes, but not practical for a "lifestyle resource" such as I plan to
create...the site needs to pay for itself first before I can take on
any more financial commitments!  And really, it seems silly to pay for
AdWords when what I have is a niche content site and not some hard-
goods store.  Yes, my revenue model, consisting solely of mainly
Adsense and affiliate programs like Amazon Associates in the
beginning, suggests that paying for advertising wouldn't be
productive.  I plan on promoting my site through forum participation,
in a short and unobtrusive .sig line, but in terms of SEO I wonder if
there's anything I could do...which, it seems, I really can't...which,
in a way, does make sense...but I have to ask!  =)

> sherm--
>
> --
> My blog:http://shermspace.blogspot.com
> Cocoa programming in Perl:http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Prisoner

5/11/2008 10:49:00 PM

On May 11, 3:53 pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
> That's what you don't get.  IT IS ALL ABOUT JAVASCRIPT!  Your javascript
> IS NOT FINE.

Huh???  What was wrong with my JavaScript??

Here, take a look at it: http://www.ego-management.org/test.html and
tell me what's wrong with

<img name="dog" id="dog" src="image-files/awww4.png"
onmouseover="document.getElementById('dog').src='image-files/
awww.gif';" onmouseout="document.getElementById('dog').src='image-
files/awww4.png';">

> You are asking them to do this.

I don't know how you say that.  I'm not asking them about code that
doesn't work -- "gee, can you help me with this code, I'm trying to
get it to do 'x' and it keeps doing 'y'" -- I'm asking them why **code
that works** on my end **doesn't on theirs** even though **all
necessary files** have been uploaded.

I just don't understand how you keep insisting that I'm asking for
programming help when most emphatically I am not.  It's like you buy a
car and when you get home it stops working and the dealership tells
you, "sorry, we don't give driving lessons"...total non sequitur....

> Which is JAVASCRIPT.

NO -- it's not about the JavaScript, it's about their servers not
seeing a relative file path when an image-swap is attempted.  The
issue is how their server handles relative and absolute file paths.
It's got nothing to do with JavaScript.

Honestly, are you one of them SBI! Rapid Response Group cyber-
militiamen?  They send those people around rebutting negative SBI!
reviews, and you're just insisting on "JavaScript" when **even SBI!**
now admits it's not about "JavaScript" but "just how SBI! works"....

> The only programming bug is between your hears.

That's "ears" -- or did your mother not upload the firmware update?

> The problem is NOT with them.

Ah, despite their stipulation that absolute path names must be used in
the case of an image-swap, but *only* in the case of an image-swap,
the problem is "not with them."

Wow, who's your webhost, BTW?  Wouldn't happen to be SBI! would it?

I'm new to all this so maybe it's very common or at least not unusual
for webhosts to demand that perfectly valid code be tweaked a little
to work on their servers -- I don't know -- but that's the only case
where "the problem [would not be] with them"....

> That's right.  Troubleshooting your code IS NOT THEIR JOB.

But I'm not asking them to troubleshoot my code.  Why do you insist on
continuing to grossly misrepresent the situation?

> Not if it's out of gas, it isn't.

But it's not out of gas.  The tires aren't flat.  And it isn't upside
down at the bottom of a thousand-foot cliff.

> But a more accurate comparison.  If your car doesn't run, it it the
> responsibility of the lot where you parked your car to tell you why it
> isn't running?

Yes, that's why they have lemon laws.

You know, I used to be amazed that this country, with its car culture,
could have gone through *decades* without any lemon laws...until now,
when I consider that people like you for some reason think consumers
have very limited rights.

>  No.  It's their job to paint the lines, fill the
> potholes and plow the snow in the winter - so you have a place to park.
>
> That's a MUCH better comparison.

Ah, yes, sarcasm...the response of the intellectually lazy.

> Which means you got someone sympathetic with you.

Ah, I see: when they tried to ignore me, they were well within their
rights.  Now that they acknowledge my problem, they're doing me a
favor.

Reminds me a bit of people who like to say "all glory be to God" but
claim that war and famine and disease are not the responsibility of an
all-loving all-powerful all-knowing God.

Honestly, are you from the SBI! Rapid Response Group, sent by the
company to rebut me?  'Cause you're not doing a good job of it, man.

> Yea, it seems it's hard for you to behave intelligently.

Ah, you with your ad hominem attacks is the epitome of evolutionary
success, whereas my questions about a service I paid $300 for that
can't even handle a standard image-swap is my behaving
unintelligently....

Jerry Stuckle, I don't know why you feel so antagonistic towards me,
but you are totally wrong in your behavior and your logic.

> Not at all.  I think they acted mostly appropriately - at least until
> the third rep.

Jerry, it doesn't matter what you think at this point -- you've
demonstrated that you're just not a reasonable person.

> Fine.  Just don't come back here whining about more problems.  Quire
> frankly, no one here gives a damn.

Which is why you've taken the time to make a fool out of yourself,
showing everyone how illogical and ill-behaved you are over something
that has nothing to do with you.

> Absolute paths are generally the best way to go when referencing images.

Their instructions specifically stated to use *relative* paths.  But
of course you choose to ignore that, while blaming me for being
puzzled over their system.

> But you've already proven you're too thick-headed to understand that.

Too thick-headed??  I'm not the one angry over nothing like you,
Jerry.

> --
> ==================
> Remove the "x" from my email address
> Jerry Stuckle
> JDS Computer Training Corp.
> jstuck...@attglobal.net
> ==================

Prisoner

5/11/2008 11:17:52 PM

<img name="dog" id="dog" src="http://www.ego-management.org/image-
files/awww4.png" alt="moo" title="meow"
onmouseover="document.getElementById('dog').src='image-files/
awww.gif';" onmouseout="document.getElementById('dog').src='image-
files/awww4.png';">

They used an absolute file path in the first src attribute.  Somehow
that got it to work (http://www.ego-management.org/test.html) --
though the other two src attributes remain relative, as I'd had them
originally.

Just what is your problem, Jerry Stuckle?  Why do you insist on
proving yourself a liar??

Come on, come out with -- are you an SBI! affiliate?  Work for them?
Or just another SBI! cult-member, with their Rapid Response Group of
cyber-militiamen??  I'm serious.  You have a personal animus here
that's way beyond the facts at hand.

You have an ulterior motive in using personal attacks against me over
-- what, a customer service issue!

On May 11, 3:54 pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
> Nope.  Nothing I've seen indicates they are changing the javascript.
> And if they were, he could easily look at it in his browser source.
>
> Rather, he's blowing smoke in a vain attempt to cover his incompetence.
>
> --
> ==================
> Remove the "x" from my email address
> Jerry Stuckle
> JDS Computer Training Corp.
> jstuck...@attglobal.net
> ==================

Prisoner

5/11/2008 11:21:20 PM

On May 11, 6:32 pm, dorayme <doraymeRidT...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> A friend of mine has told me that his website hits and sales go up in
> direct proportion to the amount of he spends at Google.

Hmmm, you wouldn't suppose that "saintly" google somehow favors its
clients, would you??  Many on the SBI! private forums have reported
being indexed by google almost right away once they signed on with
google Adsense.

> --
> dorayme

Prisoner

5/11/2008 11:29:47 PM

On May 11, 1:21 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>
>
> I think you've missed a key difference here. They're not just bare hosting.
> He publishes his pages through a CMS they've written, that "optimizes" his
> pages for search engines. They're modifying his pages, and he's asking them
> about the JS they're adding - do you still think they're not obliged to
> answer him?

More to the point: they didn't add to my JavaScript until I brought
the image-swap mystery to their attention.

Indeed, this almost certainly has nothing to do with JavaScript, it
now turns out!  It's about how their servers "see" a file when that
file is used as part of an image-swap...apparently, when called as an
image-swap, image files must use absolute paths or else the server
doesn't see them.  Sounds like a programming bug to me, but they don't
want to declare it one -- and thus assume responsibility for a minor
matter, so it's simply up to me to deal with how they are.

My only fear is that down the road there should be many more little
oddities like this...already they don't allow me to use .ani or .cur
files, which are the only formats which MSIE 7 would utilize for
custom cursor graphics...no idea why, but they don't and that's that.

Not only do they sound like any other company out there with that kind
of an attitude, but they are in fact somewhat less than other webhosts
in having bizarre little oddities like this image-swap business.

I'm very sad to leave them, as they had been such an interesting
resource for me -- yes, *resource* -- but I really don't want to deal
with any more weird little "surprises" down the road, so I'm going to
cancel my subscription...I hope there aren't any weird surprises with
that as well!  Though I shouldn't be too surprised if there were...I
can't find any cancellation info on their website!  I'm going to have
to ask customer/tech support again....

> sherm--
>
> --
> My blog:http://shermspace.blogspot.com
> Cocoa programming in Perl:http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Prisoner

5/12/2008 12:00:39 AM

Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> writes:

> Oh, true, it's not their job -- but SEO is about making it their job,
> isn't it; or, perhaps better put, "piggy-backing" on what *is* their
> job (highly relevant results) to help yourself -- a symbiotic
> relationship....

No, SEO is about cheating. Gaming the system to rank higher than your
content would rate on its own. If you're talking about something else,
please stop calling it SEO - calling it that only serves to confuse the
issue.

> Yes, but not practical for a "lifestyle resource" such as I plan to
> create...the site needs to pay for itself first before I can take on
> any more financial commitments!

LOL! I haven't heard such grandiose plans since the crash. Lots of luck
with that - and don't quit your day job.

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/12/2008 12:13:13 AM

In article 
<6f9fbe7c-18ae-45c0-88a2-62232fd7761e@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com>,
 Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On May 11, 6:32 pm, dorayme <doraymeRidT...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> >
> >
> > A friend of mine has told me that his website hits and sales go up in
> > direct proportion to the amount of he spends at Google.
> 
> Hmmm, you wouldn't suppose that "saintly" google somehow favors its
> clients, would you??  Many on the SBI! private forums have reported
> being indexed by google almost right away once they signed on with
> google Adsense.
> 

Know nothing about it, I just relay what I was told by a very successful 
businessman who maintains his own website (Joomla based and boy o boy 
does it break at larger font-sizes... sssshhhh! I know, it is not 
Joomla's fault.)

Me, I just like to make client websites with good and truthful content, 
clear words and leave it to the gods... but I suppose I should look to 
this ranking business more...

One severe character here could not fathom it when I suggested once that 
not all websites are in this race, that great bookmarking and search 
engine findability are not everyone's priorities.

-- 
dorayme

dorayme

5/12/2008 12:17:49 AM

On May 11, 8:17 pm, dorayme <doraymeRidT...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> Know nothing about it, I just relay what I was told by a very successful
> businessman who maintains his own website (Joomla based and boy o boy
> does it break at larger font-sizes... sssshhhh! I know, it is not
> Joomla's fault.)

Well, it certainly stands to reason: benefits google, benefits
advertisers, benefits webmasters -- win-win-win situation all-around!

> Me, I just like to make client websites with good and truthful content,
> clear words and leave it to the gods... but I suppose I should look to
> this ranking business more...

There's a difference between content and SEO, in my estimation anyway,
even though SEO means nothing without the valuable original content to
back it up and keep it up high on the SERPs.

I'm not an SEO hobbyist, mind you; just wondering, trying to determine
what I should know about it.  That's the thing about SBI! -- they are
the only webhost I know of who emphasize SEO, even though they don't
actually use that somewhat disreputable term to describe their
services.

> One severe character here could not fathom it when I suggested once that
> not all websites are in this race, that great bookmarking and search
> engine findability are not everyone's priorities.

True, those are so-called "hobby sites" and there's nothing wrong with
them.

I wouldn't pull the plug on my upcoming website even if it were a
money-loser, because I really believe in what I have to offer (it's a
"philosophy of mind" and "lifestyle resource" site).

But I really would like to make lots of money on it because that would
mean that lots of people find my site very valuable, which is my
intent all along: to put something out there that I don't think is
being covered by anyone else on the web -- certainly not in the way I
envision (again, "philosophy of mind" and "lifestyle
resource"...intrigued yet??  ;-))...and "SEO" or "getting-picked-up-
and-indexed-super-duper-highly-by-the-search-engines" is going to be a
key component.

> --
> dorayme

Prisoner

5/12/2008 12:34:22 AM

On May 11, 8:13 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>
>
> No, SEO is about cheating. Gaming the system to rank higher than your
> content would rate on its own. If you're talking about something else,
> please stop calling it SEO - calling it that only serves to confuse the
> issue.

Well then, it is as I've said: we do have different definitions of
"SEO!"  I'm taking the term literally, as in optimizing search engine
results vis-a-vis one's own website.  You have in mind the admittedly
poor snake-oil history of that term.  But hey just 'cause military
power is almost always used for great evil doesn't mean that having a
military is a bad idea, right?  Likewise with SEO.  I don't think it
has to be about "cheating" or even "gaming" the system.

To me, SEO is trying to "compensate" for the inherent stupidity of
current Artificial Intelligence efforts.  It's not about somehow
masking my site about hamsters into something that turns up on keyword
searches for "true love" and "get rich quick" and "perfect body
now"...to me SEO is about helping those stupid but powerful spiders
realize that my site exists and that it's the best hamster site out
there....

> LOL! I haven't heard such grandiose plans since the crash. Lots of luck
> with that - and don't quit your day job.

Grandiose plans???  I say I want the site to pay for itself first
before I would consider spending more money on advertising and that's
somehow grandiose???

> sherm--
>
> --
> My blog:http://shermspace.blogspot.com
> Cocoa programming in Perl:http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Prisoner

5/12/2008 12:41:10 AM

Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> writes:

> On May 11, 8:13 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>>
>> No, SEO is about cheating. Gaming the system to rank higher than your
>> content would rate on its own. If you're talking about something else,
>> please stop calling it SEO - calling it that only serves to confuse the
>> issue.
>
> Well then, it is as I've said: we do have different definitions of
> "SEO!"  I'm taking the term literally, as in optimizing search engine
> results

Whether the literal sense of the term has that meaning or not, the term
"SEO" in popular usage is used to refer to the snake-oil variety.

>> LOL! I haven't heard such grandiose plans since the crash. Lots of luck
>> with that - and don't quit your day job.
>
> Grandiose plans???  I say I want the site to pay for itself first
> before I would consider spending more money on advertising and that's
> somehow grandiose?

Yes, in fact it is. Would you expect a non-web business to break even
without spending a dime on advertising? Why would you expect a web site
to be different? I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but the
notion that the internet is a license to print money died along with the
tech bubble.

sherm--

-- 
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Sherman

5/12/2008 8:06:33 AM


Prisoner at War wrote:

> On May 11, 2:49 am, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
> sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> >
> >
> > You only need to read back through the older posts from this and other
> > NG's to get an idea of some of the larger hosts.
>
> Yeah, but nothing like timely information!  Perhaps policies have
> since changed, etc. -- I myself was all bullish on SBI! only last
> month, but then a series of weird incidents like this little image-
> swap mystery has given me an "awkward feeling" towards them....
>
> > Mind you ServerGrade
> > only do support by email so you may or may not like that. I don't mind
> > that as it is easier then getting support on the phone.
>
> I prefer e-mail since everything's in writing and I can't be accused
> of miscommunication -- though, of course, communication is a two-way
> street, and if someone just isn't paying attention then it doesn't
> even matter much that I put things in writing; they will still
> misinterpret it!
>
> > I also have a
> > reasonable grounding on what I need to do to get a site set-up so I
> > like having my site always online.
> > Also ServerGrade linit the amount of sites on their servers, my server
> > has 34 sites on it. Other hosts such as Yahoo place up to 300 or more
> > sites on the one server.
>
> Yeah, looks like I'm going to have to google up some how-to-choose-a-
> webhost guides...in the meantime, please continue to share any new
> thoughts you may have on the matter.  I was hoping to learn with SBI!
> but it's turning out to be like having to drop a college course 'cause
> the professor has a strange and possibly unhelpful pedagogy and
> instead of learning I'm dealing with weird minutiae....
>
Well as for ServerGrade. Just try them out. Have a look through the
site if you have not done so already though.
But as for learning you might not be able to learn much from the web
host because as Jerry said it is not the Job of the host to teach you
this stuff. You need to learn from sites such as http://www.htmldog.com
or even better buy a book.
But you can also read the large amount of stuff the is on sites such
as http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com
--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesignonline.org

Chaddy2222

5/12/2008 8:23:28 AM

On 9 May, 15:47, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> This is one aspect of human nature I'm afraid I shall never
> understand.  I say "A" and even go on to specifically say that I'm not
> saying "B" and still people will say that I'm saying "B"!!  =(

It's because you're saying B, and you only _think_ that you're saying
A

Ditch this hosting company. Although do it gracefully, because they
even talked to you about an issue that no hosting company with any
sense would even answer the phone over - _YOUR_ script bugs.

Secondly, find a basic HTML tutorial ("Head First HTML with CSS &
XHTML", as a recommendation), or else contract out the development
work. I doubt you can afford to waste "three days" or whatever over
simple beginner's errors like this one.

Andy

5/12/2008 3:53:02 PM

Prisoner at War wrote:
> On May 11, 3:53 pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>> That's what you don't get.  IT IS ALL ABOUT JAVASCRIPT!  Your javascript
>> IS NOT FINE.
> 
> Huh???  What was wrong with my JavaScript??
> 
> Here, take a look at it: http://www.ego-management.org/test.html and
> tell me what's wrong with
> 
> <img name="dog" id="dog" src="image-files/awww4.png"
> onmouseover="document.getElementById('dog').src='image-files/
> awww.gif';" onmouseout="document.getElementById('dog').src='image-
> files/awww4.png';">
> 
>> You are asking them to do this.
> 
> I don't know how you say that.  I'm not asking them about code that
> doesn't work -- "gee, can you help me with this code, I'm trying to
> get it to do 'x' and it keeps doing 'y'" -- I'm asking them why **code
> that works** on my end **doesn't on theirs** even though **all
> necessary files** have been uploaded.
> 
> I just don't understand how you keep insisting that I'm asking for
> programming help when most emphatically I am not.  It's like you buy a
> car and when you get home it stops working and the dealership tells
> you, "sorry, we don't give driving lessons"...total non sequitur....
> 
>> Which is JAVASCRIPT.
> 
> NO -- it's not about the JavaScript, it's about their servers not
> seeing a relative file path when an image-swap is attempted.  The
> issue is how their server handles relative and absolute file paths.
> It's got nothing to do with JavaScript.
> 
> Honestly, are you one of them SBI! Rapid Response Group cyber-
> militiamen?  They send those people around rebutting negative SBI!
> reviews, and you're just insisting on "JavaScript" when **even SBI!**
> now admits it's not about "JavaScript" but "just how SBI! works"....
> 
>> The only programming bug is between your hears.
> 
> That's "ears" -- or did your mother not upload the firmware update?
> 
>> The problem is NOT with them.
> 
> Ah, despite their stipulation that absolute path names must be used in
> the case of an image-swap, but *only* in the case of an image-swap,
> the problem is "not with them."
> 
> Wow, who's your webhost, BTW?  Wouldn't happen to be SBI! would it?
> 
> I'm new to all this so maybe it's very common or at least not unusual
> for webhosts to demand that perfectly valid code be tweaked a little
> to work on their servers -- I don't know -- but that's the only case
> where "the problem [would not be] with them"....
> 
>> That's right.  Troubleshooting your code IS NOT THEIR JOB.
> 
> But I'm not asking them to troubleshoot my code.  Why do you insist on
> continuing to grossly misrepresent the situation?
> 
>> Not if it's out of gas, it isn't.
> 
> But it's not out of gas.  The tires aren't flat.  And it isn't upside
> down at the bottom of a thousand-foot cliff.
> 
>> But a more accurate comparison.  If your car doesn't run, it it the
>> responsibility of the lot where you parked your car to tell you why it
>> isn't running?
> 
> Yes, that's why they have lemon laws.
> 
> You know, I used to be amazed that this country, with its car culture,
> could have gone through *decades* without any lemon laws...until now,
> when I consider that people like you for some reason think consumers
> have very limited rights.
> 
>>  No.  It's their job to paint the lines, fill the
>> potholes and plow the snow in the winter - so you have a place to park.
>>
>> That's a MUCH better comparison.
> 
> Ah, yes, sarcasm...the response of the intellectually lazy.
> 
>> Which means you got someone sympathetic with you.
> 
> Ah, I see: when they tried to ignore me, they were well within their
> rights.  Now that they acknowledge my problem, they're doing me a
> favor.
> 
> Reminds me a bit of people who like to say "all glory be to God" but
> claim that war and famine and disease are not the responsibility of an
> all-loving all-powerful all-knowing God.
> 
> Honestly, are you from the SBI! Rapid Response Group, sent by the
> company to rebut me?  'Cause you're not doing a good job of it, man.
> 
>> Yea, it seems it's hard for you to behave intelligently.
> 
> Ah, you with your ad hominem attacks is the epitome of evolutionary
> success, whereas my questions about a service I paid $300 for that
> can't even handle a standard image-swap is my behaving
> unintelligently....
> 
> Jerry Stuckle, I don't know why you feel so antagonistic towards me,
> but you are totally wrong in your behavior and your logic.
> 
>> Not at all.  I think they acted mostly appropriately - at least until
>> the third rep.
> 
> Jerry, it doesn't matter what you think at this point -- you've
> demonstrated that you're just not a reasonable person.
> 
>> Fine.  Just don't come back here whining about more problems.  Quire
>> frankly, no one here gives a damn.
> 
> Which is why you've taken the time to make a fool out of yourself,
> showing everyone how illogical and ill-behaved you are over something
> that has nothing to do with you.
> 
>> Absolute paths are generally the best way to go when referencing images.
> 
> Their instructions specifically stated to use *relative* paths.  But
> of course you choose to ignore that, while blaming me for being
> puzzled over their system.
> 
>> But you've already proven you're too thick-headed to understand that.
> 
> Too thick-headed??  I'm not the one angry over nothing like you,
> Jerry.
> 
>> --
>> ==================
>> Remove the "x" from my email address
>> Jerry Stuckle
>> JDS Computer Training Corp.
>> jstuck...@attglobal.net
>> ==================
> 
> 

I suggest you find another line of work.  You are obviously too dense to 
understand what it takes to be a web developer.

-- 
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

Jerry

5/12/2008 4:50:24 PM

Prisoner at War wrote:
> <img name="dog" id="dog" src="http://www.ego-management.org/image-
> files/awww4.png" alt="moo" title="meow"
> onmouseover="document.getElementById('dog').src='image-files/
> awww.gif';" onmouseout="document.getElementById('dog').src='image-
> files/awww4.png';">
> 
> They used an absolute file path in the first src attribute.  Somehow
> that got it to work (http://www.ego-management.org/test.html) --
> though the other two src attributes remain relative, as I'd had them
> originally.
> 
> Just what is your problem, Jerry Stuckle?  Why do you insist on
> proving yourself a liar??
> 
> Come on, come out with -- are you an SBI! affiliate?  Work for them?
> Or just another SBI! cult-member, with their Rapid Response Group of
> cyber-militiamen??  I'm serious.  You have a personal animus here
> that's way beyond the facts at hand.
> 
> You have an ulterior motive in using personal attacks against me over
> -- what, a customer service issue!
> 
> 
> On May 11, 3:54 pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>> Nope.  Nothing I've seen indicates they are changing the javascript.
>> And if they were, he could easily look at it in his browser source.
>>
>> Rather, he's blowing smoke in a vain attempt to cover his incompetence.
>>
>> --
>> ==================
>> Remove the "x" from my email address
>> Jerry Stuckle
>> JDS Computer Training Corp.
>> jstuck...@attglobal.net
>> ==================
> 
> 

I have never even heard of SBI! until you came on board.  But you are 
obviously too dense to understand simple English.  I'm not the only one 
who has told you what you're expecting is not their job.

I suggest you find another line of work.

-- 
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

Jerry

5/12/2008 4:51:50 PM

Prisoner at War wrote:
> On May 11, 1:21 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>>
>> I think you've missed a key difference here. They're not just bare hosting.
>> He publishes his pages through a CMS they've written, that "optimizes" his
>> pages for search engines. They're modifying his pages, and he's asking them
>> about the JS they're adding - do you still think they're not obliged to
>> answer him?
> 
> More to the point: they didn't add to my JavaScript until I brought
> the image-swap mystery to their attention.
> 
> Indeed, this almost certainly has nothing to do with JavaScript, it
> now turns out!  It's about how their servers "see" a file when that
> file is used as part of an image-swap...apparently, when called as an
> image-swap, image files must use absolute paths or else the server
> doesn't see them.  Sounds like a programming bug to me, but they don't
> want to declare it one -- and thus assume responsibility for a minor
> matter, so it's simply up to me to deal with how they are.
> 
> My only fear is that down the road there should be many more little
> oddities like this...already they don't allow me to use .ani or .cur
> files, which are the only formats which MSIE 7 would utilize for
> custom cursor graphics...no idea why, but they don't and that's that.
> 
> Not only do they sound like any other company out there with that kind
> of an attitude, but they are in fact somewhat less than other webhosts
> in having bizarre little oddities like this image-swap business.
> 
> I'm very sad to leave them, as they had been such an interesting
> resource for me -- yes, *resource* -- but I really don't want to deal
> with any more weird little "surprises" down the road, so I'm going to
> cancel my subscription...I hope there aren't any weird surprises with
> that as well!  Though I shouldn't be too surprised if there were...I
> can't find any cancellation info on their website!  I'm going to have
> to ask customer/tech support again....
> 
>> sherm--
>>
>> --
>> My blog:http://shermspace.blogspot.com
>> Cocoa programming in Perl:http://camelbones.sourceforge.net
> 
> 

No, it's all about how you can't understand basic programming.

-- 
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

Jerry

5/12/2008 4:52:20 PM

On 11 May, 03:29, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> http://www.ego-management.org/test.html

The rollover image file is 100k, which isn't small.

Now AFAICS, this works, but not well. It does roll-over, but it takes
a long time about doing so. So I think your problem could be as simple
as poor response from their server, coupled with a fairly large image.

First of all, rollovers look naff. If you want a site that looks like
1997, just go over the top with cutesy rollovers.

In terms of getting them to work, then do it with CSS (in general).
This works. It generally works better than JavaScript too. You'll have
to use <a> all over the place to keep IE happy, and you can't do it
for foreground images, so it won't print well either.

If you do it with JS, then pre-load the rollover images when the page
is loaded. That way the user doesn't have to wait when they first roll-
over.

Andy

5/12/2008 5:43:20 PM

On May 12, 4:23 am, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> Well as for ServerGrade. Just try them out. Have a look through the
> site if you have not done so already though.
> But as for learning you might not be able to learn much from the web
> host because as Jerry said it is not the Job of the host to teach you
> this stuff.

Jerry has no idea what he's talking about.  I wasn't asking for help
with JavaScript; I was asking why they didn't seem to support
JavaScript since the code worked on my end but not on theirs.  Big
difference, but for some reason the distinction remains lost on him.

As for my "learning with SBI!" comment, learning indeed is what SBI!
purports to do; as a matter of fact, one of their sales pages lists
colleges and universities using them for e-commerce instruction,
fairly famous places like the University of Arizona and even The
Citadel!

> You need to learn from sites such ashttp://www.htmldog.com
> or even better buy a book.
> But you can also read the large amount of stuff the is on sites such
> ashttp://www.webpagesthatsuck.com

LOL, yeah, I came across that last one!  But thanks for the refs; yes,
I was hoping that SBI! would be a "centralized place" where I could
learn this stuff (not necessarily "all" of it but a lot, certainly --
and I suppose I have, though I should have liked more), but it looks
like it's back to just googling the web and tickling the library
books!

> --
> Regards Chad.http://freewebdesignonline.org

Prisoner

5/12/2008 7:12:11 PM

On May 12, 4:06 am, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@dot-app.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> Whether the literal sense of the term has that meaning or not, the term
> "SEO" in popular usage is used to refer to the snake-oil variety.

Yes, I did realize that, which is why I kept stipulating that we had
different definitions and therefore were conducting different, though
related, conversations!

Hey, "DHTML" and even "JavaScript" has/had a bad rep, owing to mass
misuse of their power, but we shouldn't conflate the technology itself
with the application thereof -- and likewise, SEO.  There's obviously
a place for SEO principles.  Indeed, SEO helps search engines, dumb
bots that they are, recognize the reality they purport to seek out and
index.

> Yes, in fact it is. Would you expect a non-web business to break even
> without spending a dime on advertising? Why would you expect a web site
> to be different? I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but the
> notion that the internet is a license to print money died along with the
> tech bubble.

Hey, I've enjoyed "Dot Com" and "E-Dreams" and own the DVDs, too...but
that's not what I'm talking about here.

I'm talking niche content, even blogs...there's been many who at the
very least broke even on their sites without advertising **since** the
great Dot Bomb years.  Some even make a living from it, and a very
good one at that.

But all I'd said there was that I want my site to be able to pay for
itself before thinking about purchasing AdWords advertising, etc.  I
just can't agree that that's somehow "grandiose" at all...though I
concur with you regarding the power of advertising, I also think that
not every type of business needs it -- my local pizzeria certainly
doesn't: its market is the neighborhood around it, whose citizens
already know of it.  While it would welcome visitors from afar, it
certainly needn't advertise to them.

And on the web -- this much I've learned from SBI! (and thus for such
reasons it does pain me to have to decide to leave them already) --
it's much better to try to leverage the search engines first before
spending even more money.  You see, there's no offline analogue to
something like the web and its search engines and Craig's List and so
forth.  That's all free advertising, in effect.  And I intend to
maximize their potential before venturing into any more "capital
expenditure"...hardly grandiose -- if anything, most conservative!

> sherm--
>
> --
> My blog:http://shermspace.blogspot.com
> Cocoa programming in Perl:http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Prisoner

5/12/2008 7:27:15 PM

Just admit that you were angry over nothing, Jerry.  Just admit that
you're wrong.  As a matter of fact, take an anger-management course
before you decide to make a fool out of yourself again.

Usenet is not a pissing contest.  If you can't help, don't hinder,
either.

On May 12, 12:50 pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
> I suggest you find another line of work.  You are obviously too dense to
> understand what it takes to be a web developer.
>
> --
> ==================
> Remove the "x" from my email address
> Jerry Stuckle
> JDS Computer Training Corp.
> jstuck...@attglobal.net
> ==================

Prisoner

5/12/2008 8:01:05 PM

Neither am I the only one to tell you that I'm not expecting
programming help from them.  I'm asking why a script that runs on my
end doesn't on theirs, when all necessary files have been uploaded.

I'm sorry you can't comprehend the distinction, but then again you
seem to have no notion of "responsibility" either -- such as, your
responsibility to behave responsibly and not engage in silly ad
hominem diatribe.

I would wonder what you enjoy so much about insulting someone in the
midst of a customer service issue, but it's clear now that your
neurosis speaks for itself.

On May 12, 12:51 pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
> I have never even heard of SBI! until you came on board.  But you are
> obviously too dense to understand simple English.  I'm not the only one
> who has told you what you're expecting is not their job.
>
> I suggest you find another line of work.
>
> --
> ==================
> Remove the "x" from my email address
> Jerry Stuckle
> JDS Computer Training Corp.
> jstuck...@attglobal.net
> ==================

Prisoner

5/12/2008 8:06:51 PM

For all your accusations of an error in my simple image-swap code,
you've yet to point out exactly what the problem was, despite repeated
challenges to do so.

On May 12, 12:52 pm, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
> No, it's all about how you can't understand basic programming.
>
> --
> ==================
> Remove the "x" from my email address
> Jerry Stuckle
> JDS Computer Training Corp.
> jstuck...@attglobal.net
> ==================

Prisoner

5/12/2008 8:09:27 PM

Prisoner at War wrote:
> On May 12, 4:23 am, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
> sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>>
>> Well as for ServerGrade. Just try them out. Have a look through the
>> site if you have not done so already though.
>> But as for learning you might not be able to learn much from the web
>> host because as Jerry said it is not the Job of the host to teach you
>> this stuff.
> 
> Jerry has no idea what he's talking about.  I wasn't asking for help
> with JavaScript; I was asking why they didn't seem to support
> JavaScript since the code worked on my end but not on theirs.  Big
> difference, but for some reason the distinction remains lost on him.

If it is client-side JavaScript the webserver has nothing to do with it, 
other than properly server the content type for external JS files. 
Client-side JavaScript is processed within the browser. Your JavaScript 
problems have nothing to do with your hosting company.

-- 
Take care,
 
Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Jonathan

5/12/2008 8:14:47 PM

On May 12, 11:53 am, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
>
>
> It's because you're saying B, and you only _think_ that you're saying
> A

Well, how was I saying "A," then?

From the get-go I've said that my code works perfectly on my end.  Yet
it doesn't on theirs.  Is it asking them for "programming help" if
perfect programming doesn't work with them?  Or is it not, as I keep
saying, simply asking them why they don't support standard code?

And as it turns out, they say the issue is having to use an absolute
path name when attempting an image-swap.  That's got nothing to do
with "programming" at all.  For some reason, their CMS just won't
accept relative file paths when an image-swap is involved.

Now that's a figgin' **B*U*G** but human nature loves to blame the
victim and so there's the tendency to blame my "programming" -- even
though it's got nothing to do with programming, but simply how their
CMS sees files!

> Ditch this hosting company. Although do it gracefully, because they
> even talked to you about an issue that no hosting company with any
> sense would even answer the phone over - _YOUR_ script bugs.

Repeating a lie doesn't make it true -- though, yes, it's worked for
Goebbels and Stalin and Madison Avenue.

Now where's my script bugs, please?  No one's pointed it out in all
this time.  It's another curious property of human nature that people
should be so eager to cast blame but cannot be bothered to point out
what the alleged error is supposed to be.

> Secondly, find a basic HTML tutorial ("Head First HTML with CSS &
> XHTML", as a recommendation),

Already got it!  Very nice book, I really dig it -- though curiously
it's in color whereas the later-issued "Head First JavaScript"
isn't....

> or else contract out the development
> work. I doubt you can afford to waste "three days" or whatever over
> simple beginner's errors like this one.

Yeah, and what was that "simple beginner's error," exactly?

Why do you people keep saying there's an error and yet can't be
bothered to point it out??

Prisoner

5/12/2008 8:23:27 PM

On May 12, 4:14 pm, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net> wrote:
>
>
> If it is client-side JavaScript the webserver has nothing to do with it,
> other than properly server the content type for external JS files.
> Client-side JavaScript is processed within the browser. Your JavaScript
> problems have nothing to do with your hosting company.

The image-swap **works** when loading the page from my hard drive into
my web browser.

The **same exact** page, when uploaded to their servers, does not work
when viewed on my web browser.

Explain how that's "client-side JavaScript."

Explain how that's "my JavaScript problems."

Please explain.  I hear a lot of accusations, but no one's yet to
explain the charges.

It's easy to only *say* that someone's wrong.

Prove it.

Tell me where in HTML/JavaScript it's stipulated that the first src
attribute of an image-swap needs to bear an absolute file path name in
order for the image-swap to work.

That's what was preventing the image-swap from working.  The webhost
needed the first src attribute involved in an image-swap to be in
absolute path format.

Now tell me how that's "my JavaScript" or "client-side."

> --
> Take care,
>
> Jonathan
> -------------------
> LITTLE WORKS STUDIOhttp://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Prisoner

5/12/2008 8:33:55 PM

On May 12, 1:43 pm, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
>
>
> The rollover image file is 100k, which isn't small.

You know, I was wondering about that...with DSL and whatnot these
days, what's the general consensus on file sizes?  How much ought a
single webpage to weigh?  (Say, in terms of text-to-kilobyte
proportions or some-such.)  How big should "minor" graphics be?  How
small should "main" pictures be?  Etc.

> Now AFAICS, this works, but not well. It does roll-over, but it takes
> a long time about doing so.

Well, I could preload the image -- but test.html was created
specifically to eliminate all other possible factors (you see it's a
very simple <html><head><title></title></head><body><img /></body></
html> of a page).

> So I think your problem could be as simple
> as poor response from their server, coupled with a fairly large image.

Hmmm, their server choking over a 100K image??

Actually, I don't know if you've been following the other posts in
this thread, but I've announced several times now that their tech
support has finally resolved the problem: they need the first scr
attribute in the <img> of an image-swap to be in *absolute* file path
format!!

Strange as that is, they themselves did not know this (it took 'em two
weeks to diagnose, after all) -- as if I'm the only one since the
company's founding in 1997 to have ever attempted an image-swap?!?!?

> First of all, rollovers look naff. If you want a site that looks like
> 1997, just go over the top with cutesy rollovers.

I know, I know...but it's not over-the-top, really it's not.  I know
they have a bad rep worse than plaid suits, but hey...the thing about
fashion is that it's always changing -- and coming around again.
Visit that domain again next year and you won't mind it too much on
that account!

> In terms of getting them to work, then do it with CSS (in general).

Yeah, I just saw that on like page 200-something of Simon Collison's
book.  Cool!  But his particular technique requires a bit of work in
an image editor first, to make sure the image is set up right to
effect a purely CSS image-swap....

> This works. It generally works better than JavaScript too. You'll have
> to use <a> all over the place to keep IE happy, and you can't do it
> for foreground images, so it won't print well either.

Hmm, sounds like you have another CSS image-swap technique in mind
than what Simon Collison's book details??

> If you do it with JS, then pre-load the rollover images when the page
> is loaded. That way the user doesn't have to wait when they first roll-
> over.

Yes, I'll be preloading it for sure.  Again, just wanted to simplify
things for tech support to diagnose.

Prisoner

5/12/2008 8:53:24 PM

On May 12, 9:33=A0pm, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On May 12, 4:14 pm, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net> wrote:

> > If it is client-side JavaScript the webserver has nothing to do with it,=

> > other than properly server the content type for external JS files.
> > Client-side JavaScript is processed within the browser. Your JavaScript
> > problems have nothing to do with your hosting company.
>
> The image-swap **works** when loading the page from my hard drive into
> my web browser.
>
> The **same exact** page, when uploaded to their servers, does not work
> when viewed on my web browser.
>
> Explain how that's "client-side JavaScript."

JavaScript is always client side. 100%.

So either, your host is changing your JavaScript code after you upload
it, or their peculiar hosting environment is moving images around and
fixing paths in HTML but not in JavaScript.

Question, how do you upload images to your server?

> Tell me where in HTML/JavaScript it's stipulated that the first src
> attribute of an image-swap needs to bear an absolute file path name in
> order for the image-swap to work.

It isn't.

> That's what was preventing the image-swap from working. =A0The webhost
> needed the first src attribute involved in an image-swap to be in
> absolute path format.

But no other host does. Your host is doing something to your code.

Your host shouldn't need to know anything about your JavaScript. Web
servers do nothing at all with JavaScript. The fact that your script
needed to be rewritten in a certain way means that your host is
mucking about with your code behind the scenes. This is very, very
odd.

> Now tell me how that's "my JavaScript" or "client-side."

All JavaScript is client side. The fact that your host is rewriting
your JavaScript, or moving your images, in such a way that when sent
to the browser it no longer works is not at all normal. But this is
the host creating a client side problem, not a server side problem.

   Steve

Steve

5/12/2008 10:18:31 PM

On Mon, 12 May 2008 13:53:24 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War
<prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I've announced several times now that their tech
>support has finally resolved the problem: they need the first scr
>attribute in the <img> of an image-swap to be in *absolute* file path
>format!!

Announce it again, it'll still be wrong. 

That is _not_ the problem, The amount of perverse mis-configuration
they'd have to do to achieve this is beyond a host dumb enough to get
involved in fixing users' content for them.

Andy

5/12/2008 10:33:30 PM

On Mon, 12 May 2008 13:23:27 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War
<prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Yeah, and what was that "simple beginner's error," exactly?

<img src="blah.png" onMouseOver="bleh.gif" onMouseOut="blah.png">.

You're confusing URI resources like src with JavaScript(sic) event
handlers like onmouseover & onmouseout

Andy

5/12/2008 10:34:51 PM

On May 12, 6:18 pm, Steve Pugh <steve.gru...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> JavaScript is always client side. 100%.

Indeed -- but my antecedent there, "that," was not referring to
JavaScript but to the fact that something which displays right in my
browser when on my hard drive *doesn't* when on their server.  Same
code, same browser, same everything, except in one case it's on my
hard drive and in another it's on their server.

One would naturally consult *them*, then.

> So either, your host is changing your JavaScript code after you upload
> it, or their peculiar hosting environment is moving images around and
> fixing paths in HTML but not in JavaScript.
>
> Question, how do you upload images to your server?

Great question!

I'd not wanted to speak of it earlier, for fear of making my post seem
even more convoluted, but to upload to SBI! requires going through a
certain webpage of theirs...it has to do, again, with their
"proprietary way" of doing things...they have a "database-centric"
structure for purposes of SEO (which, incidentally, means no CGI
stuff, either -- but then again, they're not exactly marketing
themselves to power users and DIYers either) and so files can't simply
be FTPed up (at least not the first time -- that much I do know for
sure) and must be uploaded as part of an .html document that
specifically calls for them.

Okay, whatever, right?  I mean, however it's uploaded, HTML is still
HTML, right?  Ditto JavaScript and CSS.  A src attribute is a src
attribute, right?

Well, not with them it isn't!

And they didn't even know of it until I raised the matter.

Which is doubly-odd due to the implication that since their founding
in 1997, nobody's ever attempted an image-swap, such that this problem
was unknown until now???

Just too many weird little curiosities like this, and it makes me want
to cancel my subscription -- which, speaking of canceling and
oddities, there's no information on their website about how to
cancel!!!

Absolutely none whatsoever!!!

So I ask the rep (the latest one, anyway; I've been passed back and
forth between four reps in slightly over two weeks now) about their
cancellation policies and, get this, he tells me to contact support!!!

I suppose he meant, "start a new support request," but it's just funny
how they word things (this isn't the first time)....

I'm telling you, SBI! is friggin' weird.  Ever step into a New York
neighborhood pizzeria where the owner has a shrug and a take-it-or-
leave-it attitude when you tell him there's a fly in your cheese??

> It isn't.

Thank you!!!  I'm calling it a bug in their CMS and they say "it's
just how SBI! works"...well, if that's "just" how it works, why didn't
you know about it until now??

They're one weird webhost.  Not evil, I don't think, and it was an
interesting learning experience which I don't regret -- like a weird
girlfriend you will laugh over for years to come -- but I'm certainly
disappointed that they just shrug these things off as if I'm making
extraordinary demands of them.

> But no other host does. Your host is doing something to your code.

The thing is, they don't even pretend to give an explanation.  It just
makes me feel like things "just happen," you know what I mean?  That
"oh well shit happens" kind of attitude.  Not for $300 a year am I
gonna put up with that!  I mean, what next??

> Your host shouldn't need to know anything about your JavaScript. Web
> servers do nothing at all with JavaScript. The fact that your script
> needed to be rewritten in a certain way means that your host is
> mucking about with your code behind the scenes. This is very, very
> odd.

Okay, that's what I was thinking!  But since I'm a newbie to all this
(I only learned about "CMS" through this thread, actually!), I had to
ask on usenet...it would have been better if SBI! had tried to give me
a sense of why things are how they are with them instead of making me
feel like I'm supposed to work around *them.*

> All JavaScript is client side. The fact that your host is rewriting
> your JavaScript, or moving your images, in such a way that when sent
> to the browser it no longer works is not at all normal. But this is
> the host creating a client side problem, not a server side problem.

Okay, to be super exact about it, yes -- not literally server-side as
in something to do with their server hardware or software...thanks for
clarifying that point, which I'd overlooked even though I now
understand it to be something due to their CMS.

>    Steve

Prisoner

5/12/2008 11:09:27 PM

On May 12, 6:34 pm, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 12 May 2008 13:23:27 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War
>
> <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >Yeah, and what was that "simple beginner's error," exactly?
>
> <img src="blah.png" onMouseOver="bleh.gif" onMouseOut="blah.png">.
>
> You're confusing URI resources like src with JavaScript(sic) event
> handlers like onmouseover & onmouseout

Yes, I'm sorry I'm not more articulate with the technical terms
involved...but that's not what caused the image-swap to not work when
their server served it to my web browser, even though the same exact
code does work when my hard drive serves it to the same web browser.

It turns out that they needed an absolute file path for the first src
attribute for some reason ("it's just how SBI! works" -- even though
it took them two weeks to find that out for themselves!)...oddly
enough, the other src attributes can remain in relative format.

Looking forward, I guess this is a good lesson in itself, too; to ask
of my next webhost very detailed questions about what they can do and
how they would do it...all along I'm just assuming that what works on
my end should seamless work on theirs (that is, no distinction between
being sent up by my hard drive or by their server, save for speed due
to internet connections)....

Prisoner

5/12/2008 11:17:04 PM

On May 12, 6:33 pm, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 12 May 2008 13:53:24 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War
>
> <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I've announced several times now that their tech
> >support has finally resolved the problem: they need the first scr
> >attribute in the <img> of an image-swap to be in *absolute* file path
> >format!!
>
> Announce it again, it'll still be wrong.

*What* is "wrong"???  *What*, exactly???

The image-swap now works when served through the web from their
servers to my browser -- *after* they set the first src attribute to
absolute path format (while curiously leaving the other two
relative!).

> That is _not_ the problem, The amount of perverse mis-configuration
> they'd have to do to achieve this is beyond a host dumb enough to get
> involved in fixing users' content for them.

What "perverse misconfiguration" are you talking about???

All they did was set the first src attribute to absolute path format!

The issue is why any webhost would need to do that.

What is there to "fix"??

Tell me where the code is wrong.

You keep making these groundless accusations like Jerry Stuckle, and
yet just like him you have yet to point out exactly what was "wrong"
with my "code" -- when it's clearly not even a coding issue!

Good God, is there a semanticist in the house??  Talk about three men
in a dark room with an elephant....

Prisoner

5/12/2008 11:23:37 PM


Prisoner at War wrote:

> On May 12, 4:23 am, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
> sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Well as for ServerGrade. Just try them out. Have a look through the
> > site if you have not done so already though.
> > But as for learning you might not be able to learn much from the web
> > host because as Jerry said it is not the Job of the host to teach you
> > this stuff.
>
> Jerry has no idea what he's talking about.  I wasn't asking for help
> with JavaScript; I was asking why they didn't seem to support
> JavaScript since the code worked on my end but not on theirs.  Big
> difference, but for some reason the distinction remains lost on him.
But you don't even understand baysic things like how to size images
properly for the web which is baysic stuff.

>
> As for my "learning with SBI!" comment, learning indeed is what SBI!
> purports to do; as a matter of fact, one of their sales pages lists
> colleges and universities using them for e-commerce instruction,
> fairly famous places like the University of Arizona and even The
> Citadel!
>
> > You need to learn from sites such ashttp://www.htmldog.com
> > or even better buy a book.
> > But you can also read the large amount of stuff the is on sites such
> > ashttp://www.webpagesthatsuck.com
>
> LOL, yeah, I came across that last one!  But thanks for the refs; yes,
> I was hoping that SBI! would be a "centralized place" where I could
> learn this stuff (not necessarily "all" of it but a lot, certainly --
> and I suppose I have, though I should have liked more), but it looks
> like it's back to just googling the web and tickling the library
> books!
>
--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesignonline.org

Chaddy2222

5/13/2008 2:07:04 AM

This whole thread is either somebody's desire to waste developer's
time, or an attempt to discredit the host. This lil tangent has gone
too far. I thought this was a group devoted to JavaScript.

shawn

5/13/2008 2:32:46 AM

"shawn" <javaforhire@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:9661d2ab-adc2-4fe9-b3c3-3d2c997b62d3@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
> This whole thread is either somebody's desire to waste developer's
> time, or an attempt to discredit the host. This lil tangent has gone
> too far. I thought this was a group devoted to JavaScript.

Which group do you mean?

You have posted to FIVE groups.
-- 

Andrew

UK Residents:
STOP THE "10p Tax Ripoff"
Sign the petition to stop the government stealing from the
very poorest tell your friends about this petition:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/10penceband/

Andrew

5/13/2008 2:41:56 AM

Prisoner at War wrote:
> On May 12, 4:14 pm, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net> wrote:
>>
>> If it is client-side JavaScript the webserver has nothing to do with it,
>> other than properly server the content type for external JS files.
>> Client-side JavaScript is processed within the browser. Your JavaScript
>> problems have nothing to do with your hosting company.
> 
> The image-swap **works** when loading the page from my hard drive into
> my web browser.
> 
> The **same exact** page, when uploaded to their servers, does not work
> when viewed on my web browser.
> 
> Explain how that's "client-side JavaScript."
> 
> Explain how that's "my JavaScript problems."
> 
> Please explain.  I hear a lot of accusations, but no one's yet to
> explain the charges.
> 
> It's easy to only *say* that someone's wrong.
> 
> Prove it.
> 
> Tell me where in HTML/JavaScript it's stipulated that the first src
> attribute of an image-swap needs to bear an absolute file path name in
> order for the image-swap to work.
> 
> That's what was preventing the image-swap from working.  The webhost
> needed the first src attribute involved in an image-swap to be in
> absolute path format.

No, but you have to have your relative paths correct...
> 
> Now tell me how that's "my JavaScript" or "client-side."

<snipped signature YOU SHOULD BE DOING THIS >

Okay are you sure the uploaded images are not corrupted? Upload as ASCII 
and not BINARY can do it. In a different path. Case error on filename, a 
common Windows user error. On local Windows drive example.jpg, 
ExAmPlE.JpG and example.JPG are all the same, but no on a live 
webserver. If the images are of significant size  and a slow connection 
or server you may not see the change when to crudely place the image 
load in a  onMouseOver onMouseOut attribute, Far better to preload. Let 
me see, been a while since I have fiddle with JavaScript image swaps

<script type="text/javascript">

var pix as new Object;

pix['imageID1']=new Array;
pix['imageID1'][0]=new Image;
pix['imageID1'][0].src='someimageoff.gif';
pix['imageID1'][1]=new Image;
pix['imageID1'][1].src='someimageon.gif';
// next image
pix['imageID2']=new Array;
pix['imageID2'][0]=new Image;
....

function swap(id,state){
   var target=document.getElementById(id);
   target.src=pix[id][state].src;
}
</script>

In HTML:

<img id="imageID1" src="someimageoff.gif' alt="the target image">

....

<some_element onmouseover="swap('imageID1',1);" 
onmouseout="swap('imageID1',0);" ... >

-- 
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Jonathan

5/13/2008 3:41:42 AM

On May 10, 1:02 am, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> ...but actually, here's the
> complete webpage I'm talking about, right here, in under 10 lines of
> ASCII:
>
> <html>
> <head>
> <title>test page</title>
> </head>
> <body>
> <img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
> onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
> onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />
> </body>
> </html>
>



Not sure if you have resolved this, but I initially saw that you are
missing a double-quote...

This... src=pic1.gif"
.... should be this... src="pic1.gif"

Disco

5/13/2008 5:45:08 AM

On May 13, 4:45 pm, Disco Octopus <di...@discooctopus.com> wrote:
> On May 10, 1:02 am, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > ...but actually, here's the
> > complete webpage I'm talking about, right here, in under 10 lines of
> > ASCII:
>
> > <html>
> > <head>
> > <title>test page</title>
> > </head>
> > <body>
> > <img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
> > onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
> > onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />
> > </body>
> > </html>
>
> Not sure if you have resolved this, but I initially saw that you are
> missing a double-quote...
>
> This... src=pic1.gif"
> ... should be this... src="pic1.gif"

.... and...

you file name for the images end with a ";" when they shouldn't.

....this...
 <img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />
....should be this...

<img name="image" id="image" src="pic1.gif"
onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif'"
onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif'" />

Disco

5/13/2008 5:56:18 AM

On 12 May, 21:33, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Please explain.

The simplest explanation, and this is backed up by long empirical
studies conducted by _anyone_ who has supported users, is that what
you're describing to us doesn't bear too much relation to the actual
reality. That's the first lesson of supporting users, and just one
reason why you don't touch such issues with a bargepole unless you can
get your _own_ hands on the same code, in the same context.

In your last reply to me you claimed that setting an onmouseover event
to a URL for an image somehow "works", so long as it's on your
machine, or it's on the host's (and uses an absolute path). Despite
this clearly _not_ being what your example does. Now if this _is_
true, that's news to the W3C: this stuff just doesn't work quite that
way. So my only conclusion has to be that there's some vagueness
creeping in between the code that's failing to work, and the code
you're reporting to us for diagnosis. No one is "wrong" here, it's
just like trying to work at too long range, wearing thick gloves and
dark glasses.

This is also why most posters here insist on URLs, rather than posted
fragments.

Andy

5/13/2008 10:32:40 AM

On 12 May, 20:27, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hey, I've enjoyed "Dot Com" and "E-Dreams"

> And on the web -- this much I've learned from SBI!

Wasn't it something like "Cronin's 14th Law of Dotcom" that you should
never trust a dot-com company that uses exclamation marks in their
company name?

Andy

5/13/2008 10:37:38 AM

On 13 May, 00:09, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Indeed -- but my antecedent there, "that," was not referring to
> JavaScript but to the fact that something which displays right in my
> browser when on my hard drive *doesn't* when on their server.

You know what that's caused by?  Case issues in filenames. Sometimes "
" space characters in filenames not being encoded correctly in URLs
(although browsers usually compensate for that).

Your desktop is almost certainly Windows (case-insensitive filenames).
Your web server filesystem is almost certainly Unix (case-sensitive
filenames). Your web server is probably (unless they deliberately
change this) also case-sensitive in URLs.

So when you test with a local filename that has the wrong case, your
Windows system doesn't care and it all works.

You upload this to the server (now case-sensitive) and it fails.

You talk to tech support, and you both talk yourself into this cargo-
cult that it's using an absolute path that's the trick. You get this
absolute path by browsing to the directory with the files in (through
the web server), seeing a list of file URLs (generated by the server,
so the case is correct) and you then copy and paste one of these.

Two things have happened: you've switched from relative to absolute
(obvious, but unimportant) and you've also corrected the case of the
filename in the URL (easily ignored but crucial).  _That's_ why "it
started working when you went to absolute paths".

Andy

5/13/2008 1:22:40 PM

Disco Octopus wrote:
> On May 13, 4:45 pm, Disco Octopus <di...@discooctopus.com> wrote:
>> On May 10, 1:02 am, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>

> you file name for the images end with a ";" when they shouldn't.
> 
> ...this...
>  <img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
> onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
> onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />
> ...should be this...
> 
> <img name="image" id="image" src="pic1.gif"
> onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif'"
> onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif'" />
> 

Correct, the ';' can go at the *end* of a JavaScript statement so

onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif';"

would also be valid. NOTE location of ';' but as I mentioned elsewhere 
in the thread, very clumsy to use whole JavaScript statements inline, 
better to create a function AND preload the images.

-- 
Take care,
 
Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Jonathan

5/13/2008 2:41:38 PM

shawn wrote:
> This whole thread is either somebody's desire to waste developer's
> time, or an attempt to discredit the host. This lil tangent has gone
> too far. I thought this was a group devoted to JavaScript.
> 

Yea, unfortunately, the idiot crossposted to a bunch of other irrelevant 
newsgroups.

With everything else in the thread - enough said.

-- 
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

Jerry

5/13/2008 3:52:54 PM

On May 13, 1:45 am, Disco Octopus <di...@discooctopus.com> wrote:
>
>
> Not sure if you have resolved this, but I initially saw that you are
> missing a double-quote...
>
> This... src=pic1.gif"
> ... should be this... src="pic1.gif"

Thanks very much; yes, I made typos there in my post but the actual
code that had been used was perfectly fine; it turns out that my
webhost's CMS has a bug that requires the first src attribute to be in
absolute file path name format -- but only when involved in an image-
swap!  All other src attributes, including the others involved in an
image-swap, may bear relative paths.

I'm most likely going to cancel my subscription...little oddities like
this are annoying (it's taken two weeks to diagnose this) and make me
wonder what else might lay in wait!

Prisoner

5/13/2008 3:55:21 PM

On May 13, 1:56 am, Disco Octopus <di...@discooctopus.com> wrote:
>
>
> ... and...
>
> you file name for the images end with a ";" when they shouldn't.
>
> ...this...
>  <img name="image" id="image" src=pic1.gif"
> onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif;'"
> onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif;'" />
> ...should be this...
>
> <img name="image" id="image" src="pic1.gif"
> onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif'"
> onMouseOut="document.getElementById('image').src='pic1.gif'" />

Actually, I believe the semi-colon to be proper, though possibly
unnecessary, syntax (anyone else know?)...what was a typo on my part,
though, was writing

src='pic2.gif;'"

when it should be

src='pic2.gif';"

with the semi-colon in-between the single-quote and the double-quote.

However, that was just a typo in my post to this thread, not the
actual code that had been uploaded to my webhost (I was recreating the
code from memory and slipped over the keyboard.)

It turns out now that SBI! has a bug in their CMS which requires the
first src attribute of an <img> tag involved in an image-swap to use
the absolute file path name format, while everything else can remain
relative.

Prisoner

5/13/2008 4:01:20 PM

On May 13, 10:41 am, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net> wrote:
>
>
> Correct, the ';' can go at the *end* of a JavaScript statement so
>
> onMouseOver="document.getElementById('image').src='pic2.gif';"
>
> would also be valid. NOTE location of ';' but as I mentioned elsewhere
> in the thread, very clumsy to use whole JavaScript statements inline,
> better to create a function AND preload the images.

Yes, yes -- that bit of code was just to simplify things for tech
support to diagnose (instead of them having to check out whether it
was all the other JavaScript screwing things up).  The issue turned
out to be a bug in their CMS which just didn't see the first src
attribute in an <img> tag involved in image-swaps.

Weird!!!  And I'm quitting SBI! over what seems a small thing because
I don't know what other "small things" might pop up in the future
taking two weeks to resolve.

> --
> Take care,
>
> Jonathan
> -------------------
> LITTLE WORKS STUDIOhttp://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Prisoner

5/13/2008 4:03:32 PM

On May 13, 9:22 am, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
>
>
> You know what that's caused by?  Case issues in filenames. Sometimes "
> " space characters in filenames not being encoded correctly in URLs
> (although browsers usually compensate for that).
>
> Your desktop is almost certainly Windows (case-insensitive filenames).
> Your web server filesystem is almost certainly Unix (case-sensitive
> filenames). Your web server is probably (unless they deliberately
> change this) also case-sensitive in URLs.
>
> So when you test with a local filename that has the wrong case, your
> Windows system doesn't care and it all works.
>
> You upload this to the server (now case-sensitive) and it fails.

Huh?  Sorry, but case-sensitivity does not appear to be the issue
here.  It's an interesting point you raise, which I note for my future
reference, thank you kindly, but I don't see how it applies to my
situation, since my file names are all lower-case, as was every
reference to them in my src attributes...and besides, surely a webhost
should have provided for such matters anyway.

> You talk to tech support, and you both talk yourself into this cargo-
> cult

LOL -- SBI! as a cargo-cult!  It's more true than not, yes...I was
actually thinking of that Heaven's Gate cult of suicidal UFO-believing
website designers from the '90s....

>that it's using an absolute path that's the trick. You get this
> absolute path by browsing to the directory with the files in (through
> the web server), seeing a list of file URLs (generated by the server,
> so the case is correct) and you then copy and paste one of these.

????

> Two things have happened: you've switched from relative to absolute
> (obvious, but unimportant) and you've also corrected the case of the
> filename in the URL (easily ignored but crucial).  _That's_ why "it
> started working when you went to absolute paths".

I apologize, Andy, but I know nothing about servers, so I'm not able
to place your remarks in a useful context vis-a-vis my situation...if
you don't mind, would you please do a step-by-step "chronology" of the
chain of events?  I honestly don't know how to "parse" your
statements; I don't know how servers work and it sounds like you're
referring to how they work....

Prisoner

5/13/2008 4:12:30 PM

On May 12, 11:41 pm, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net> wrote:
>
>
> No, but you have to have your relative paths correct...

Look, look at this: http://ego-management.org/test.html -- look at the
HTML/JavaScript.

Notice that my image-swap now works?

The **only** thing that's different now from when it didn't work is
that the first src attribute in the <img> tag has an absolute file
path name.

It's got nothing to do with whether my path names were correct -- they
were; they just were in relative format, whereas due to a bug in their
CMS they need the first one to be in absolute format when used as an
image-swap.

> <snipped signature YOU SHOULD BE DOING THIS >

Huh?

> Okay are you sure the uploaded images are not corrupted? Upload as ASCII
> and not BINARY can do it. In a different path. Case error on filename, a
> common Windows user error. On local Windows drive example.jpg,
> ExAmPlE.JpG and example.JPG are all the same, but no on a live
> webserver.

No, none of that was the reason.  It was "simply" their CMS not seeing
the first src attribute unless that first src attribute was in
absolute file path format.

> If the images are of significant size  and a slow connection
> or server you may not see the change when to crudely place the image
> load in a  onMouseOver onMouseOut attribute, Far better to preload. Let
> me see, been a while since I have fiddle with JavaScript image swaps

I took out preloading, timed animation, cursor graphics changes, etc.,
because I wanted to help clarify the issue for tech support.  That's
why http://ego-management.org/test.html is called "test," and why it's
a very simple <html><head><title></title></head><body><img /></body></
html> affair.

> <script type="text/javascript">
>
> var pix as new Object;
>
> pix['imageID1']=new Array;
> pix['imageID1'][0]=new Image;
> pix['imageID1'][0].src='someimageoff.gif';
> pix['imageID1'][1]=new Image;
> pix['imageID1'][1].src='someimageon.gif';
> // next image
> pix['imageID2']=new Array;
> pix['imageID2'][0]=new Image;
> ...
>
> function swap(id,state){
>    var target=document.getElementById(id);
>    target.src=pix[id][state].src;}
>
> </script>
>
> In HTML:
>
> <img id="imageID1" src="someimageoff.gif' alt="the target image">
>
> ...
>
> <some_element onmouseover="swap('imageID1',1);"
> onmouseout="swap('imageID1',0);" ... >

Uh...thanks, but that would certainly have confused tech support.
Remember that they (and even you people!) kept thinking I was asking
for programming help!

I'm not.

I'm asking why a program that works from off my hard drive doesn't
work from off their server.

But for some reason when people see code they just assume the problem
is due to the code -- as opposed to however the CMS or whatever is
parsing that code.

It turns out that their CMS has a bug which causes it to ignore the
first src attribute of an image-swap, thus killing the image-swap,
unless that src attribute is in absolute file path name format.

And that's just the final straw for me.

I don't want to maybe spend more time figuring out any other strange
little things particular to them, later on.

I'm still almost sorry to have to cancel them, as they are good in
other ways, but as a webhost...nahh, just too much one thing after
another (unless you just turn off your brain and use their cookie-
cutter webpage maker widget).

> --
> Take care,
>
> Jonathan
> -------------------
> LITTLE WORKS STUDIOhttp://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Prisoner

5/13/2008 4:27:49 PM

On May 13, 6:32 am, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
>
>
> The simplest explanation, and this is backed up by long empirical
> studies conducted by _anyone_ who has supported users, is that what
> you're describing to us doesn't bear too much relation to the actual
> reality. That's the first lesson of supporting users, and just one
> reason why you don't touch such issues with a bargepole unless you can
> get your _own_ hands on the same code, in the same context.

IOW, the so-called "availability heuristic" -- assessing the
individual situation at hand based on the examples that come most
readily to mind.

Stereotyping, in short.  The pre-conceptions you've brought made you
see things that weren't there.  Just like how the SBI! CMS has certain
"pre-conceptions" programmed into it that made it not see things that
*are* there.

Why their CMS needs to see absolute file paths is strange -- but
stranger still is why it's only the first src that needs it; moreover,
only in the case of an image-swap -- everything else in standard
relative path format works!

For $300 a year, this is just too silly for me to deal with,
especially since it's taken two weeks to diagnose.  What next?  No
blue text in a <h3>??

> In your last reply to me you claimed that setting an onmouseover event
> to a URL for an image somehow "works", so long as it's on your
> machine, or it's on the host's (and uses an absolute path). Despite
> this clearly _not_ being what your example does.

Uhhh...I guess we're stumbling over semantics, then.

Look at the code for http://www.ego-management.org/test.html and tell
me what is wrong with it.  I don't mean from a "good practices" POV;
merely what would cause it to not work.

It works, doesn't it?

Yet the ***only*** thing that's different from what hadn't worked
before was that the first src attribute of the <img> tag was in
relative file path format -- like the other src attributes still are,
incidentally.

What's your explanation for that?  Why does the same exact code work
now, only with an absolute file path -- and only on that first src
attribute?

> Now if this _is_
> true, that's news to the W3C: this stuff just doesn't work quite that
> way. So my only conclusion has to be that there's some vagueness
> creeping in between the code that's failing to work, and the code
> you're reporting to us for diagnosis. No one is "wrong" here, it's
> just like trying to work at too long range, wearing thick gloves and
> dark glasses.

What I was aghast over was people's attitude that the issue was not
something my webhost had a responsibility to resolve -- their own
attitude initially, too -- despite my repeated declarations that the
situation is not about programming help for invalid code, but why
valid code (strict W3C "good practices" aside) should work off my hard
drive but not off their servers.

> This is also why most posters here insist on URLs, rather than posted
> fragments.

I've given a URL: http://ego-management.org/test.html -- see how it's
as simple as I've said all along, isn't it: notice how the first src
attribute is in absolute file path format, but not the others?

That URL wasn't working until that one change was made -- that's all;
just that one little thing.

Sorry, SBI! -- I'd loved you, but you just keep getting more and more
weird on me!

Prisoner

5/13/2008 4:43:43 PM

On May 12, 10:07 pm, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> But you don't even understand baysic things like how to size images
> properly for the web which is baysic stuff.

Huh???

Wow, what a nit-picking non sequitur...should I point out your poor
spelling as a reason to discount what you have to say??

And just what is it you have to say?  How have you added to the
conversation??

It's precisely because I do not know that I've come to ask for advice.

If you have something relevant to the matter at hand, please share it.

Prisoner

5/13/2008 4:50:26 PM

On May 12, 10:32 pm, shawn <javaforh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This whole thread is either somebody's desire to waste developer's
> time, or an attempt to discredit the host. This lil tangent has gone
> too far. I thought this was a group devoted to JavaScript.

I posted to CLJ originally because my situation seemed to involve
JavaScript -- at least that's what the webhost was initially saying,
that it was my invalid code and not something the matter with how they
host websites.  So I posted to CLP to see if someone might find that
there was indeed something the matter with my code.

Turns out it's something to do with their CMS.  That it's taken two
weeks for them to determine that is but another fact speaking for
itself.  If my review of the webhost is negative, it is due to the
accumulation of such facts.

Prisoner

5/13/2008 4:58:31 PM

On May 12, 10:41 pm, "Andrew Heenan" <andr...@heenan.net> wrote:
>
>
> Which group do you mean?
>
> You have posted to FIVE groups.

=)

Look, everyone, I'm sorry that it seems my thread and the problem it
documents is taking up some much bandwidth (or whatever) -- I was
hoping to solicit a wide range of opinions, as well as establish a
"public record" where it would seem relevant to do so.  Please
consider all this as just a public-service kind of consumer advisory.

> --
>
> Andrew
>
> UK Residents:
> STOP THE "10p Tax Ripoff"
> Sign the petition to stop the government stealing from the
> very poorest tell your friends about this petition:http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/10penceband/

Prisoner

5/13/2008 5:01:47 PM


Prisoner at War wrote:

> On May 12, 10:07 pm, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
> sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> >
> >
> > But you don't even understand baysic things like how to size images
> > properly for the web which is baysic stuff.
>
> Huh???
>
> Wow, what a nit-picking non sequitur...should I point out your poor
> spelling as a reason to discount what you have to say??
>
> And just what is it you have to say?  How have you added to the
> conversation??
>
> It's precisely because I do not know that I've come to ask for advice.
>
Yep, I do understand that. Mind you I think what I am trying to say is
that you should do a bit more reading on baysic web design issues.
Such as not adding things to your pages that do not need to be there.
Mind you it is all a learning thing and with the way that the web is
changeing all the time it can be hard to stay on top of things. But
the simple stuff does not change that much.
--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesignonline.org

Chaddy2222

5/13/2008 5:05:09 PM

I'm an idiot, and yet you do exactly as I do and cross-post in your
turn.

What a hypocrite to boot!

These newsgroups are not "irrelevant"...the only thing irrelevant is
your constant bitching over my consumer complaint.  I had to come to
usenet 'cause I couldn't trust that SBI! knew what the hell they're
talking about anymore.  I don't know why that should upset you, unless
"Jerry Stuckle" is just JavaScript for
onLoad="document.head.setAttribute('stupid')"....

This thread concerns webhosts (thus, AP and AWW), consumers (MC),
website development (CIWAH), and originally maybe JavaScript (CLP).

If you can't be bothered to help, please just do yourself a favor and
stop following this thread.

On May 13, 11:52 am, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
> Yea, unfortunately, the idiot crossposted to a bunch of other irrelevant
> newsgroups.
>
> With everything else in the thread - enough said.
>
> --
> ==================
> Remove the "x" from my email address
> Jerry Stuckle
> JDS Computer Training Corp.
> jstuck...@attglobal.net
> ==================

Prisoner

5/13/2008 5:10:26 PM

On May 13, 6:37 am, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
>
>
> Wasn't it something like "Cronin's 14th Law of Dotcom" that you should
> never trust a dot-com company that uses exclamation marks in their
> company name?

If only it were limited to their name!  Their whole branding strategy
seems to involve exclamation points...they have online modules
("widgets") called SearchIt!, FindIt!, BrainstormIt!, FastUploadIt!,
SiteBlogIt!, BuildIt!, FormBuildIt!....

I know it's all very hokey and late-night-TV-infomercial-y but hey I'm
a newbie and it seemed as good as any place to start...their citing
the University of Arizona and The Citadel as being among their
subscribers meant a lot to me, and their money-back guarantee seemed
fair, even generous, and safe....

I'd still recommend them, but only for people who don't really care
how their website looks and have absolutely no interest in "web
development mechanics"...they're not turn-key automation, though they
try to suggest that, but they are probably as close as could be come
to that short of hiring someone to do it for you.

Part of the reason why I'm being public about all this is that you
can't find an honest review of them on the web.  They're not a bad
company, AFAIK, but it's very strange how you can't find a single
negative review of them (not on either side of 30 SERPs, anyway),
either, so hopefully this thread will prove of some future use in a
sea of sales landing pages.

Prisoner

5/13/2008 5:21:27 PM

On May 13, 1:05 pm, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> Yep, I do understand that. Mind you I think what I am trying to say is
> that you should do a bit more reading on baysic web design issues.
> Such as not adding things to your pages that do not need to be there.

That's my life-philosophy, my Weltanschauung, even; I don't even have
a phone (none whatsoever) 'cause I don't really need it.  "Minimalism"
and "less is more" are personal ideals to live by!

But this situation has nothing to do with those issues.  I'm not
asking for aesthetic judgments on whether an '90s-style image-swap is
advisable; I was asking how could valid code that works off my hard
drive not work off the webhost's server.  I had no "intellectual
framework" in which to imagine such a possibility until, thanks to
this thread, I learned about something called Content Management
Software....

> Mind you it is all a learning thing and with the way that the web is
> changeing all the time it can be hard to stay on top of things. But
> the simple stuff does not change that much.

I just got "DOM Scripting" last week and I'm almost halfway through it
(though digestion and actual grokking will be considerably longer, of
course).

> --
> Regards Chad.http://freewebdesignonline.org

Prisoner

5/13/2008 5:35:06 PM

Prisoner at War wrote:
> On May 12, 11:41 pm, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net> wrote:
>>
>> No, but you have to have your relative paths correct...
> 
> Look, look at this: http://ego-management.org/test.html -- look at the
> HTML/JavaScript.
> 
> Notice that my image-swap now works?
> 
> The **only** thing that's different now from when it didn't work is
> that the first src attribute in the <img> tag has an absolute file
> path name.
> 
> It's got nothing to do with whether my path names were correct -- they
> were; they just were in relative format, whereas due to a bug in their
> CMS they need the first one to be in absolute format when used as an
> image-swap.

That make no sense at all. If you properly use a relative path to your 
Document Root (which on a webserver you have, but on a local file system 
you don't) is will work. With your page, if the image is in the folder 
"image-files" off of your document root and the webpage is in your 
document root then:

http://www.ego-management.org/image-files/awww4.png
image-files/awww4.png
../image-files/awww4.png
/image-files/awww4.png

would all display the image. Don't believe me? Create a file 
"test2.html" in your document root and paste this code.

<html><head><title>4 Dogs</title></head>
<body>
<h1>See 4 Dogs</h1>
<ol>
<li>
<img src="http://www.ego-management.org/image-files/awww4.png" alt="one">
</li>
<li>
<img src="image-files/awww4.png" alt="two">
</li>
</li>
<li>
<img src="./image-files/awww4.png" alt="two">
</li>
</li>
<li>
<img src="/image-files/awww4.png" alt="two">
</li>
</ol>
</body></html>

> 
>> <snipped signature YOU SHOULD BE DOING THIS >
> 
> Huh?
> 

Time to learn how to post on Usenet.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=mozilla&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=netiquette+posting+on+Usenet&spell=1
netiquette posting on Usenet - Google Search

>> Okay are you sure the uploaded images are not corrupted? Upload as ASCII
>> and not BINARY can do it. In a different path. Case error on filename, a
>> common Windows user error. On local Windows drive example.jpg,
>> ExAmPlE.JpG and example.JPG are all the same, but no on a live
>> webserver.
> 
> No, none of that was the reason.  It was "simply" their CMS not seeing
> the first src attribute unless that first src attribute was in
> absolute file path format.

What CMS? Are to publishing though from sort of frontend? Can you not 
compose in plain text editor, like Notepad then FTP the page to the server?

> 
>> If the images are of significant size  and a slow connection
>> or server you may not see the change when to crudely place the image
>> load in a  onMouseOver onMouseOut attribute, Far better to preload. Let
>> me see, been a while since I have fiddle with JavaScript image swaps
> 
> I took out preloading, timed animation, cursor graphics changes, etc.,
> because I wanted to help clarify the issue for tech support.  That's
> why http://ego-management.org/test.html is called "test," and why it's
> a very simple <html><head><title></title></head><body><img /></body></
> html> affair.
> 
>> <script type="text/javascript">
>>
>> var pix as new Object;
>>
>> pix['imageID1']=new Array;
>> pix['imageID1'][0]=new Image;
>> pix['imageID1'][0].src='someimageoff.gif';
>> pix['imageID1'][1]=new Image;
>> pix['imageID1'][1].src='someimageon.gif';
>> // next image
>> pix['imageID2']=new Array;
>> pix['imageID2'][0]=new Image;
>> ...
>>
>> function swap(id,state){
>>    var target=document.getElementById(id);
>>    target.src=pix[id][state].src;}
>>
>> </script>
>>
>> In HTML:
>>
>> <img id="imageID1" src="someimageoff.gif' alt="the target image">
>>
>> ...
>>
>> <some_element onmouseover="swap('imageID1',1);"
>> onmouseout="swap('imageID1',0);" ... >
> 
> Uh...thanks, but that would certainly have confused tech support.
> Remember that they (and even you people!) kept thinking I was asking
> for programming help!

A hosting company will not debug your scripts. At least not for free...
<snip>

Note, answer to question about trimming signatures. Below is my 
signature which you have quoted. Don't. Remove my signature, real 
newsreaders do this automatically. But don't snip quotes attributes for 
quotes that you leave in. You see this thread as one long web page, that 
is not how it looks in a newsreader.

> 
>> --
>> Take care,
>>
>> Jonathan
>> -------------------
>> LITTLE WORKS STUDIOhttp://www.LittleWorksStudio.com
> 


-- 
Take care,
 
Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Jonathan

5/13/2008 7:11:58 PM

On May 13, 3:11 pm, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net> wrote:
>
>
> That make no sense at all. If you properly use a relative path to your
> Document Root (which on a webserver you have, but on a local file system
> you don't) is will work. With your page, if the image is in the folder
> "image-files" off of your document root and the webpage is in your
> document root then:
>
> http://www.ego-management.org/image-files/awww4.png
> image-files/awww4.png
> ./image-files/awww4.png
> /image-files/awww4.png
>
> would all display the image. Don't believe me? Create a file
> "test2.html" in your document root and paste this code.
>
> <html><head><title>4 Dogs</title></head>
> <body>
> <h1>See 4 Dogs</h1>
> <ol>
> <li>
> <img src="http://www.ego-management.org/image-files/awww4.png" alt="one">
> </li>
> <li>
> <img src="image-files/awww4.png" alt="two">
> </li>
> </li>
> <li>
> <img src="./image-files/awww4.png" alt="two">
> </li>
> </li>
> <li>
> <img src="/image-files/awww4.png" alt="two">
> </li>
> </ol>
> </body></html>

I'm sorry, I don't even know what you mean to say.

Why should the first src attribute be in absolute path format?

> Time to learn how to post on Usenet.
>
> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=mozilla&rls=org.mozilla:en-...
> netiquette posting on Usenet - Google Search

Ah, so you were referring to your .sig not being trimmed.

Tell me, why do you have a .sig if you want other people to trim it?
Just don't have a .sig at all, then, if you don't want people to see
it!

> What CMS? Are to publishing though from sort of frontend? Can you not
> compose in plain text editor, like Notepad then FTP the page to the server?

The CMS on their side...apparently, they use some kind of CMS to host
the websites they do...they're not just a regular standard webhost; I
can't just FTP up an image or something; I can only send up an .html
document through a specific widget of theirs, and only then upload
images ***if*** the webpage specifically calls for them...it's very
weird and awkward and ham-fisted since their system was not designed
for people to create their own HTML -- but they try to accommodate
those who don't want to use their online widgets for website creation
(since that results in a "cookie-cutter look")...unfortunately,
there's at least one bug in their CMS, such that a simple image-swap
can occasion such a fuss....

> A hosting company will not debug your scripts. At least not for free...
> <snip>

Jesus F. Christ -- I AM NOT asking them for programming help!!!  I
HAVE NEVER asked them for programming help!!!  What don't you
understand between code that works in my browser when loaded from my
hard drive, and ***the same exact code*** not working in my browser
when loaded from their server!!

Please get your head around that!  Otherwise you are heading towards a
wholly different conversation than what I'm having here!!

> Note, answer to question about trimming signatures. Below is my
> signature which you have quoted. Don't. Remove my signature, real
> newsreaders do this automatically. But don't snip quotes attributes for
> quotes that you leave in. You see this thread as one long web page, that
> is not how it looks in a newsreader.

Geez, why should I be responsible for the fact that your software
can't do what seems a most logical thing, which is to display a thread
as a tree??

Why should I be responsible for trimming text (your .sig) that you
want to put in??

Why would you even use a .sig if you want people to redact it out????

> <SNIP>

There, Happy Birthday!  =\

Prisoner

5/13/2008 8:23:58 PM

On May 14, 3:01 am, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> It turns out now that SBI! has a bug in their CMS which requires the
> first src attribute of an <img> tag involved in an image-swap to use
> the absolute file path name format, while everything else can remain
> relative.

That is interesting.  I have seen this before in some WYSIWYG inline
editors.  Would they be using something called tiny_mce or something
like that?  I think that there is a flag in the configuration of this
WYSIWYG editor that says to "resolve paths when saving content" or
"dont resolve paths".  Just a guess and a thought from past experience
with these types of tools.

Disco

5/13/2008 10:09:26 PM


Prisoner at War wrote:

> On May 13, 1:05 pm, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
> sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Yep, I do understand that. Mind you I think what I am trying to say is
> > that you should do a bit more reading on baysic web design issues.
> > Such as not adding things to your pages that do not need to be there.
>
> That's my life-philosophy, my Weltanschauung, even; I don't even have
> a phone (none whatsoever) 'cause I don't really need it.  "Minimalism"
> and "less is more" are personal ideals to live by!
>
> But this situation has nothing to do with those issues.  I'm not
> asking for aesthetic judgments on whether an '90s-style image-swap is
> advisable; I was asking how could valid code that works off my hard
> drive not work off the webhost's server.
By not actually being valid code. Read about quirks vs standards mode
and gain a good understanding of it before doing anything. It can have
a large impact on how your pages work on the web.
For a start your page does not have a doctype, give it one and
validate your pages. DO NOT use XHTML I have set my editor to not use
it for all new sites that I develop. Google for the reasons why you
should not use it.
--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesignonline.org

<snip>

Chaddy2222

5/14/2008 7:04:55 AM

On 13 May, 17:43, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Why their CMS needs to see absolute file paths is strange -- but
> stranger still is why it's only the first src that needs it;

So swap it back to being a relative filepath. Now that it's working, I
bet that it will _continue_ to work when you change this. That's
because this wasn't ever the problem at all.

Maybe you'll think it's "stereotyping" when I tell you that this is a
very common situation in user support. This is also why you always aim
to get a simple example _working_ first, then modify it gradually to
do what you need (whilst also keeping it working). Changing something
that's working is so much easier than fixing something that isn't
working.

I don't know why it didn't (past tense) work, but I doubt _VERY_ much
if it was to do with absolute paths. It just doesn't work that way.
Something else caused the problem, you didn't notice quite what it was
that fixed it, it just happened at the same time. Now switch the path
(and ONLY the path) back to being relative, and I bet it will still
keep on working.

Welcome to user support. That's what it consists of day in, day out.
This is how cargo cults develop.

> Look at the code for <http://www.ego-management.org/test.html> and tell
> me what is wrong with it.

> It works, doesn't it?

No one is disputing that, merely that it could also be different
(relative path), yet still work.

Andy

5/14/2008 11:59:00 AM

On 8 May, 21:54, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> the image-swap itself is your basic <img
> src="blah.png" onMouseOver="bleh.gif" onMouseOut="blah.png">.

For utter perversity, you _could_ do this:   8-)


<img id="hardway" src="rollover_normal.png"
  onMouseOver="rollover_hover.png" onMouseOut="rollover_normal.png" >

With this JS:

<script type="text/javascript" >

function rollable_trap(e) {
	if (!e) var e = window.event;
    var elmRolled = e.target;
    switch (e.type) {
    case 'mouseover':
        elmRolled.src = elmRolled.getAttribute( 'onMouseOver' );
        break;
    case 'mouseout':
        elmRolled.src = elmRolled.getAttribute( 'onMouseOut' );
        break;
    }
	e.cancelBubble = true;
	if (e.stopPropagation) e.stopPropagation();
}


function onload_listenForRolloverEvents () {
    var elmRollable = document.getElementById('hardway');
    if (elmRollable) {
        // Do it the crude way, rather than using addEventListener()
        // This avoids the error raised by the old URL value for "the
handler" being treated as a function
        elmRollable.onmouseover = rollable_trap;
        elmRollable.onmouseout = rollable_trap;
    }
}


/* ******    ******    ******    ******    ******    ******
******    ****** */
// A listener list for the initial onload event
window.onloadListeners = new Array();
window.addOnLoadListener = function( listener ) {
    window.onloadListeners [window.onloadListeners.length] = listener;
}
window.onload = function () {
    for (var i in window.onloadListeners) {
        window.onloadListeners [i] ();
    }
}
// Add some listeners
window.addOnLoadListener( onload_listenForRolloverEvents );
</script>

Andy

5/14/2008 2:06:54 PM

LOL!!

That's actually rather similar to a "web-standards" version offered by
the book "DOM Scripting" (excellent book for beginners ready to get
"intermediate"), but yes, rather perverse in reality even though it
serves the otherwise worthy ideal of markup-styling-behavior
separation.

Prisoner

5/14/2008 8:10:43 PM

On May 14, 3:04 am, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> By not actually being valid code. Read about quirks vs standards mode
> and gain a good understanding of it before doing anything. It can have
> a large impact on how your pages work on the web.
> For a start your page does not have a doctype, give it one and
> validate your pages. DO NOT use XHTML

If I haven't mentioned it before to you (I did to somebody -- a
handful of somebodies now, but can't remember whomever exactly), let
me do so:

The original webpage had doctypes, etc., etc.  This current one,
"test.html," was designed to help tech support diagnose the issue by
removing the visual "clutter" of extraneous code that did not
highlight the problem (of a simple perfectly valid image-swap not
working).

Again, I don't know why you guys keep looking all over the place when
the problem is right in front of you: a simple and valid image-swap
does not work when hosted by their server.  It's got nothing to do
with XHTML, etc.

> I have set my editor to not use
> it for all new sites that I develop. Google for the reasons why you
> should not use it.

But XHTML is a W3C recommendation, is it not?  Despite my disdain for
usenet rules like top-posting, sig-snipping, etc., I do believe in web
standards.  Personally I prefer the laissez-faire ethos of good ol'
HTML, but I understand why for consistency's sake (that is,
consistency with the "semantics" of developing and future
technologies) XHTML might be preferred.

> --
> Regards Chad.http://freewebdesignonline.org
>
> <snip>

Prisoner

5/14/2008 8:19:05 PM

On May 14, 7:59 am, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
>
>
> So swap it back to being a relative filepath. Now that it's working, I
> bet that it will _continue_ to work when you change this. That's
> because this wasn't ever the problem at all.
>
> Maybe you'll think it's "stereotyping" when I tell you that this is a
> very common situation in user support. This is also why you always aim
> to get a simple example _working_ first, then modify it gradually to
> do what you need (whilst also keeping it working). Changing something
> that's working is so much easier than fixing something that isn't
> working.
>
> I don't know why it didn't (past tense) work, but I doubt _VERY_ much
> if it was to do with absolute paths. It just doesn't work that way.
> Something else caused the problem, you didn't notice quite what it was
> that fixed it, it just happened at the same time. Now switch the path
> (and ONLY the path) back to being relative, and I bet it will still
> keep on working.

Interesting proposition; I will, and will update my findings!  Bear in
mind, though, that the absolute path reason is given by their own
"programmers" (that's what tech support said), and I should think they
know what they're doing -- even if they won't explain further why and
how it works that way....

> Welcome to user support. That's what it consists of day in, day out.
> This is how cargo cults develop.

Eh?  Sorry, I've read Marvin Harris' "Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches:
The Riddles of Culture" but I'm not sure I see the connection between
how cargo cults develop and the user support experience you're
alluding to....

> No one is disputing that, merely that it could also be different
> (relative path), yet still work.

Good grief, man!!

That's how it **started** out, with relative paths, as per standard
practice!

When that didn't work (on *their* end -- i.e., over the WWW from their
server), that's when I contacted tech support and was told, after two
weeks, that I had to use an absolute path for that first src
attribute!

Whereupon I came to usenet soliciting opinions concerning what seemed
even to my newbie self as a very strange situation.

I *know* relative path format is supposed to work...the issue for me
is whether this webhost, SBI, is just very strange, or whether all,
most, many, or some webhosts also have weird things about them, where
they require you to do things in a certain way (with SBI! you upload
through their widget, not just FTP whatever you want) -- even code/
markup a certain way (as in this image-swap case here)....

Ultimately, I'm quitting these folks (I still regret it a bit, as they
can be very educational, particularly about the business/marketing
side of things), but I need to know what to expect **of** a webhost,
what would be industry standards...SBI! is all I know and though I
appreciate the hand-holding they provide I'm afraid I don't want to
deal with one nagging weirdness (like this image-swap that took two
weeks to resolve) after another (like not supporting .ani or .cur
files), with God-knows-how-many-more to come...so I need another
webhost.

But before I sign up again, I need to know what to expect, how
webhosts work...can I assume that anything I can create on my laptop I
can put up on a webhost's server and it'll run just as it does when
off my hard drive??

Prisoner

5/14/2008 8:33:50 PM

On May 13, 6:09 pm, Disco Octopus <di...@discooctopus.com> wrote:
>
>
> That is interesting.  I have seen this before in some WYSIWYG inline
> editors.  Would they be using something called tiny_mce or something
> like that?  I think that there is a flag in the configuration of this
> WYSIWYG editor that says to "resolve paths when saving content" or
> "dont resolve paths".  Just a guess and a thought from past experience
> with these types of tools.

I don't know how SBI! runs its affairs, but someone else has also
noted that characteristic of content management software...so when I
get a new webhost, how do I make sure this kind of situation doesn't
arise again?  What kind of per-sales question would I ask of them --
"can I use relative file path format?"?

Prisoner

5/14/2008 9:00:25 PM

On May 15, 6:19=A0am, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On May 14, 3:04 am, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
>
> sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> > By not actually being valid code. Read about quirks vs standards mode
> > and gain a good understanding of it before doing anything. It can have
> > a large impact on how your pages work on the web.
> > For a start your page does not have a doctype, give it one and
> > validate your pages. DO NOT use XHTML
>
> If I haven't mentioned it before to you (I did to somebody -- a
> handful of somebodies now, but can't remember whomever exactly), let
> me do so:
>
> The original webpage had doctypes, etc., etc. =A0This current one,
> "test.html," was designed to help tech support diagnose the issue by
> removing the visual "clutter" of extraneous code that did not
> highlight the problem (of a simple perfectly valid image-swap not
> working).
>
> Again, I don't know why you guys keep looking all over the place when
> the problem is right in front of you: a simple and valid image-swap
> does not work when hosted by their server. =A0It's got nothing to do
> with XHTML, etc.
>
> > I have set my editor to not use
> > it for all new sites that I develop. Google for the reasons why you
> > should not use it.
>
> But XHTML is a W3C recommendation, is it not? =A0Despite my disdain for
> usenet rules like top-posting, sig-snipping, etc., I do believe in web
> standards. =A0Personally I prefer the laissez-faire ethos of good ol'
> HTML, but I understand why for consistency's sake (that is,
> consistency with the "semantics" of developing and future
> technologies) XHTML might be preferred.
>
>
>
It's not supported by any version of Internet Explorer.
http://hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml
--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesignonline.org

Chaddy2222

5/15/2008 6:13:12 AM

On 14 May, 21:19, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> But XHTML is a W3C recommendation, is it not?  Despite my disdain for
> usenet rules like top-posting, sig-snipping, etc., I do believe in web
> standards.  Personally I prefer the laissez-faire ethos of good ol'
> HTML, but I understand why for consistency's sake (that is,
> consistency with the "semantics" of developing and future
> technologies) XHTML might be preferred.

If you can write that paragraph, you don't even begin to understand
what XHTML is, let alone the question of whether to use it.

Andy

5/15/2008 10:01:17 AM

On May 15, 6:01 am, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
>
>
> If you can write that paragraph, you don't even begin to understand
> what XHTML is, let alone the question of whether to use it.

I don't know what you mean by "understand," but I understand enough
for my own purposes, and that's all I as a newbie can care about at
the present moment.  I use it because it's web-standard (in the sense
of "W3C-recommended") and it may be important in the future -- and if
not, then no harm done; it'll still get parsed all right as regular
HTML.

Prisoner

5/17/2008 3:34:04 AM

On May 15, 2:13 am, Chaddy2222 <spamlovermailbox-
sicur...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> It's not supported by any version of Internet Explorer.http://hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml
> --
> Regards Chad.http://freewebdesignonline.org

Hmmm, so interesting!  Thanks, wow what an eye-opener...but that link
seems to be concerned with IE 6...does IE 7 also still not support
XHTML??

Well, anyway, some real food for thought there...thanks again...wow,
what a gap between you folks on these newsgroups and the books I'm
reading!!

Prisoner

5/17/2008 3:36:07 AM

Prisoner at War wrote:

> 
> Hmmm, so interesting!  Thanks, wow what an eye-opener...but that link
> seems to be concerned with IE 6...does IE 7 also still not support
> XHTML??

Yes it doesn't:

http://www.spartanicus.utvinternet.ie/demo.xhtml
XHTML 1.1 Demo

-- 
Take care,
 
Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Jonathan

5/17/2008 4:14:48 AM

On May 17, 12:14 am, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net> wrote:
> Prisoner at War wrote:
>
> > Hmmm, so interesting!  Thanks, wow what an eye-opener...but that link
> > seems to be concerned with IE 6...does IE 7 also still not support
> > XHTML??
>
> Yes it doesn't:

LOL!

> http://www.spartanicus.utvinternet.ie/demo.xhtml
> XHTML 1.1 Demo

LOLOLOLOLOL!!

"Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.spartanicus.utvinternet.ie.

    *   The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try
again in a few
          moments.

    *   If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's
network
          connection.

    *   If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or
proxy, make sure
          that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.


[Try Again]"

> <SNIP>

I still don't understand why you use a .sig if you want people to snip
it in their reply!

Prisoner

5/19/2008 3:54:56 AM

Prisoner at War wrote:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
*attribute

> On May 17, 12:14 am, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net> wrote:
>> Prisoner at War wrote:
>>
>>> Hmmm, so interesting!  Thanks, wow what an eye-opener...but that link
>>> seems to be concerned with IE 6...does IE 7 also still not support
>>> XHTML??
>> Yes it doesn't:
> 
> LOL!
> 
>> http://www.spartanicus.utvinternet.ie/demo.xhtml
>> XHTML 1.1 Demo
> 
> LOLOLOLOLOL!!
> 
> "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.spartanicus.utvinternet.ie.
> 
>     *   The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try
> again in a few

Okay, tired of other folks' examples not being available, here is an 
example that I just uploaded.

http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/usenet/xhtml1.0.php
XHTML 1.0 Strict properly served

> 
>> <SNIP>
> 
> I still don't understand why you use a .sig if you want people to snip
> it in their reply!
>

The signature is superfluous, and not needed, you know who woke the 
quote be leaving in the attribute, I have * your attribute at the top of 
the post. Some folks have large signatures, but 4 lines max is 
recommended for politeness. Snipping signatures and bits not replied to 
   call trimming is also recommended for politeness, it save bandwidth 
and make the posted conversation easier to follow. Remember not everyone 
views Usenet with Google, they only see post by post and not one whole 
webpage with the thread. Also their new server may not have stored all 
the previous posts in the thread. If you trim, you will not hear any 
complaints...

-- 
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Jonathan

5/19/2008 3:09:15 PM

Jonathan N. Little wrote:

> Prisoner at War wrote:
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> *attribute
> 
> >On May 17, 12:14 am, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net>
> wrote:
> > > Prisoner at War wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Hmmm, so interesting!  Thanks, wow what an eye-opener...but
> > > > that link seems to be concerned with IE 6...does IE 7 also
> > > > still not support XHTML??
> > > Yes it doesn't:
> > 
> > LOL!
> > 
> > > http://www.spartanicus.utvinternet.ie/demo.xhtml
> > > XHTML 1.1 Demo
> > 
> > LOLOLOLOLOL!!
> > 
> > "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at
> > www.spartanicus.utvinternet.ie.
> > 
> >    *   The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try
> > again in a few
> 
> Okay, tired of other folks' examples not being available, here is an
> example that I just uploaded.
> 
> http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/usenet/xhtml1.0.php
> XHTML 1.0 Strict properly served

Pff, who needs example pages when one can serve a "live" website that
validates against XHTML 1.0 Strict?

My own blog website:
http://www.neonnero.com/

Okay, so it's barely updated (almost 2 years between the last two blog
posts - I admit I'm not much of the blogging type), but at least it
validates against XHTML 1.0 Strict, as well as CSS 2.1 (no errors).

-- 
Kim Andr� Aker�
- kimandre@NOSPAMbetadome.com
(remove NOSPAM to contact me directly)

iso

5/21/2008 7:45:46 PM

On May 19, 11:09 am, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net> wrote:
>
>
> The signature is superfluous, and not needed, you know who woke the
> quote be leaving in the attribute, I have * your attribute at the top of
> the post.

Sorry, I'm not understanding you at all.  I can't parse that sentence!

> Some folks have large signatures, but 4 lines max is
> recommended for politeness.

What's "politeness"??  It may seem ridiculous to have a ten-line .sig
(even if it's a really nice poem or something), but just what makes it
"rude" to do so???

> Snipping signatures and bits not replied to
>    call trimming is also recommended for politeness, it save bandwidth

Bandwidth??  We're talking ASCII text here -- in 2008 A.D. no less!

> and make the posted conversation easier to follow.

I don't understand how a .sig, which is obvious, could possibly
obscure any discussion.

> Remember not everyone
> views Usenet with Google, they only see post by post and not one whole
> webpage with the thread.

Really?!?!

So so-called "real" newsreaders can't display posts as discussion
threads?!?!

Not that I understand what that has to do with trimming .sigs and good
manners....

> Also their new server may not have stored all
> the previous posts in the thread. If you trim, you will not hear any
> complaints...

I'm really sorry, Jonathan, but I can't follow your logic at
all...because someone's news server may not have stored previous
posts, I should trim .sigs????

> --
> Take care,
>
> Jonathan
> -------------------
> LITTLE WORKS STUDIOhttp://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Again, there's your .sig right there -- you're obviously inviting
people to visit your website.  Why would you want someone to trim
your .sig, where you're inviting people to visit your website????

Prisoner

5/26/2008 5:18:20 AM

Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> writes:

> I'm really sorry, Jonathan, but I can't follow your logic at
> all...because someone's news server may not have stored previous
> posts, I should trim .sigs????

No (well, I can't speak for Jonathan, but if you ask me ...)

The Usenet has a long history, and during that history some rules on
how to post most effectively have evolved. A quick summary on how
to quote would be:

- Quote sufficiently much to give context to your reply, so that it is
  readable on its own, but not more.
- Reply below the quoted parts that your reply to.
- Correctly attribute all your quotes.
- Do not quote signatures. (Which is also why you should correctly 
  delimiter your signature, using a "-- " line)

It is often recommended that a signature is no more than 4 lines
of 72 characters, but this is not a strict rule, only a guideline.

Some of these rules might initially have been created to save
bandwidth, but they also makes it possible to enter a thread at
any point and make some sense of it, and makes reading a message
easier. For a medium where there can be thousands of readers of
each message, spending a little more time to make a message
readable is better than having a thousand readers spend two more
minutes on understanding what is written.

/L
-- 
Lasse Reichstein Nielsen  -  lrn@hotpop.com
 DHTML Death Colors: <URL:http://www.infimum.dk/HTML/rasterTriangleDOM.html>
  'Faith without judgement merely degrades the spirit divine.'

Lasse

5/26/2008 5:37:59 AM

Lasse Reichstein Nielsen <lrn@hotpop.com> wrote
> Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> wrote

>> I'm really sorry, Jonathan, but I can't follow your logic at all...because
>> someone's news server may not have stored previous posts, I should trim .sigs????

> No (well, I can't speak for Jonathan, but if you ask me ...)

> The Usenet has a long history, and during that history
> some rules on how to post most effectively have evolved.

They are nothing like rules in the sense that you are claiming.

> A quick summary on how to quote would be:

> - Quote sufficiently much to give context to your reply,
> so that it is readable on its own, but not more.

And that particular approach doesnt make sense anymore.

And you lost too much of the context so that this post no longer contains the context.

> - Reply below the quoted parts that your reply to.

That was never a rule in the sense that you are claiming.

There are good reasons to reply at the top if you
are making a general comment on the entire post.

> - Correctly attribute all your quotes.
> - Do not quote signatures. (Which is also why you should
> correctly delimiter your signature, using a "-- " line)

> It is often recommended that a signature is no more than 4 lines
> of 72 characters, but this is not a strict rule, only a guideline.

None of the others are anything like a strict rule either.

> Some of these rules might initially have been created to save bandwidth,

So no longer make any sense and so can be discarded.

Its more useful to maintain the entire context now than it is to minimise the use of bandwidth.

> but they also makes it possible to enter a thread at any point and
> make some sense of it, and makes reading a message easier.

Its better to not trim now for that reason.

> For a medium where there can be thousands of readers
> of each message, spending a little more time to make a
> message readable is better than having a thousand readers
> spend two more minutes on understanding what is written.

And few bother to clean up the quoting even tho that would make sense for that reason.

Rod

5/26/2008 5:55:34 AM

In article 
<dbae22c5-d13e-442e-87f6-081032e962de@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
 Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On May 19, 11:09 am, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> > The signature is superfluous, and not needed, you know who woke the
> > quote be leaving in the attribute, I have * your attribute at the top of
> > the post.
> 
> Sorry, I'm not understanding you at all.  I can't parse that sentence!

It looks like the sentence of a man on his fifth whiskey. But he is a 
clean livin' simple Texan and he is right that signatures, endlessly 
quoted are superfluous. Superfluous to what? To everyone's patience. 
Trim the damn things and stop fucking arguing.

-- 
dorayme

dorayme

5/26/2008 7:39:11 AM

"Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> writes:

> Lasse Reichstein Nielsen <lrn@hotpop.com> wrote
>> For a medium where there can be thousands of readers
>> of each message, spending a little more time to make a
>> message readable is better than having a thousand readers
>> spend two more minutes on understanding what is written.
>
> And few bother to clean up the quoting even tho that 
> would make sense for that reason. 

...and that's how you spot clever, thoughtful posters.

       A.

5/26/2008 7:43:19 AM

ad@remove.this.and.keep.what.follows.ionicsoft.com (Arnaud Diederen
(aundro)) writes:

> "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Lasse Reichstein Nielsen <lrn@hotpop.com> wrote
>>> For a medium where there can be thousands of readers
>>> of each message, spending a little more time to make a
>>> message readable is better than having a thousand readers
>>> spend two more minutes on understanding what is written.
>>
>> And few bother to clean up the quoting even tho that 
>> would make sense for that reason. 
>
> ..and that's how you spot clever, thoughtful posters.

[and now people have one more hint about my mother 
tongue not being english]

I meant 'contributor', not 'poster'.
       A.

>
>        A.

5/26/2008 7:47:20 AM

On May 26, 1:55 am, "Rod Speed" <rod.speed....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Lasse Reichstein Nielsen <l...@hotpop.com> wrote
>
> > Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote
> >> I'm really sorry, Jonathan, but I can't follow your logic at all...because
> >> someone's news server may not have stored previous posts, I should trim .sigs????
> > No (well, I can't speak for Jonathan, but if you ask me ...)
> > The Usenet has a long history, and during that history
> > some rules on how to post most effectively have evolved.
>
> They are nothing like rules in the sense that you are claiming.
>

Well, yes they are.  They are rules of effective communication.  I do
not even read posts that aren't written using the "rules" that Lasse
speaks of.  I suspect there are many like me.  All of us are inundated
with information. This is a different kind of bandwidth, one in which
humans, not machines, are overloaded.  In fact, I would take an
educated guess that the rules spring, not from computer science, but
from writers who were trying to come up with a way to guide non-
writers into getting their point(s) across.

Bob Gulian

beegee

5/26/2008 3:08:48 PM

On May 26, 3:39 am, dorayme <doraymeRidT...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> It looks like the sentence of a man on his fifth whiskey. But he is a
> clean livin' simple Texan and he is right that signatures, endlessly
> quoted are superfluous. Superfluous to what? To everyone's patience.
> Trim the damn things and stop fucking arguing.

Who's arguing?  I'm asking a question.  How does a quoted .sig tax
someone's patience???  Like your name below...I don't know what's the
point of such a .sig, since it's obvious who the author is already,
but why should it bother anyone that it's there in a reply post??  No
one's actually explained what makes it so bad.  I  mean, I don't even
agree with the top-posting rule, but at least that has some semblance
of logic to it.  But now this .sig trimming, I haven't heard any
explanation why it's so bad, only that it's considered bad not to
trim....

> --
> dorayme

Prisoner

5/26/2008 7:16:59 PM

On May 26, 1:37 am, Lasse Reichstein Nielsen <l...@hotpop.com> wrote:
>
>
> No (well, I can't speak for Jonathan, but if you ask me ...)

Sure, that's the beauty of a public discussion!

> The Usenet has a long history, and during that history some rules on
> how to post most effectively have evolved. A quick summary on how
> to quote would be:
>
> - Quote sufficiently much to give context to your reply, so that it is
>   readable on its own, but not more.
> - Reply below the quoted parts that your reply to.
> - Correctly attribute all your quotes.
> - Do not quote signatures. (Which is also why you should correctly
>   delimiter your signature, using a "-- " line)
>
> It is often recommended that a signature is no more than 4 lines
> of 72 characters, but this is not a strict rule, only a guideline.

I know usenet got started by academics, who are used to the MLA format
for publishing papers, but I think the internet is an inherently
informal medium, and if "information wants to be free," it stands to
reason that its form should also be "free"...I do not see the point of
those rules/guidelines.  For example, the first one you cited just
now: I've been taken to task over not quoting enough, for only quoting
the most previous post and not quoting two or even three posts back!
Now I say isn't that just ridiculous -- you can just respond "yes" or
"no" to a question, you needn't answer a question by including the
question in your answer ("yes, you may have a cookie")....

> Some of these rules might initially have been created to save
> bandwidth, but they also makes it possible to enter a thread at
> any point and make some sense of it, and makes reading a message
> easier. For a medium where there can be thousands of readers of
> each message, spending a little more time to make a message
> readable is better than having a thousand readers spend two more
> minutes on understanding what is written.

I'm afraid I just don't see why I'm responsible for someone else
walking in on the middle of an ongoing discussion.  Some TV shows like
to recap what happened in last week's episode, while others do not.
What's the big deal?

> <SNIP>

And just what is the point of a .sig, anyway??  If it's worthy of
being snipped (I mean, golly, if including it in a response is going
to somehow confuse people), maybe it shouldn't exist in the first
place -- logical, no???

Prisoner

5/26/2008 7:25:59 PM

Prisoner at War wrote:
> On May 26, 3:39 am, dorayme <doraymeRidT...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>>
>> It looks like the sentence of a man on his fifth whiskey. But he is a
>> clean livin' simple Texan and he is right that signatures, endlessly
>> quoted are superfluous. Superfluous to what? To everyone's patience.
>> Trim the damn things and stop fucking arguing.
> 
> Who's arguing?  I'm asking a question.  How does a quoted .sig tax
> someone's patience???  Like your name below...I don't know what's the
> point of such a .sig, since it's obvious who the author is already,
> but why should it bother anyone that it's there in a reply post??  No
> one's actually explained what makes it so bad.  I  mean, I don't even
> agree with the top-posting rule, but at least that has some semblance
> of logic to it.  But now this .sig trimming, I haven't heard any
> explanation why it's so bad, only that it's considered bad not to
> trim....
> 
>> --
>> dorayme
> 

Yes, you are arguing.

It's just common courtesy, developed over several decades of usenet. 
It's called "netiquette".

You can follow netiquette and be welcome on many groups.  Or not follow 
it and be considered an asshole in those same groups.  It's up to you.

-- 
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

Jerry

5/26/2008 7:37:58 PM

On Mon, 26 May 2008 12:16:59 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War wrote:
F'ups set to a.w.w, since it's one of the groups I read, it's nominally the
one NG appropriate to the OP (I don't know a.paidwebhosting), and I'm sick
and tired of seeing things posted to five different groups.

> On May 26, 3:39 am, dorayme wrote:
>>
>>
>> It looks like the sentence of a man on his fifth whiskey. But he is a
>> clean livin' simple Texan and he is right that signatures, endlessly
>> quoted are superfluous. Superfluous to what? To everyone's patience.
>> Trim the damn things and stop fucking arguing.
> 
> Who's arguing?  I'm asking a question.

Ad nauseum. You seem steadfast in your refusal to accept the answers you've
been repeatedly provided, or to adopt the etiquette preferred in (at least
most of) the many groups to which you've been posting. I don't know how
they do things over in alt.paidwebhosting or misc.consumers, but in the
other tech groups, quoting sigs and top-posting are aggravating and
unwelcome.

And frankly, by now, that ought to be good enough for you.

> How does a quoted .sig tax someone's patience???

Besides being opposed to the manners expected of repeat posters who have
been advised otherwise?

Consider this, if you will: Threads in newsgroups can get rather long. Your
threads are prime examples. Some posts within a thread can get quite long.
Your posts are prime examples. Readers of a NG might be popping in at any
time, anywhere in the thread, they may or may not have seen all of the
previous or other posts in the thread. They may or may not care about all
the subthreads.

It behooves all of us, therefore to adhere to a certain courteous
convention of efficiency. Such a convention has developed over the years,
and I did not develop it, so don't complain to me if you don't like it. It
just is, and as a well-mannered participant I try to adhere to the
convention as well.

The convention is basically this: Quote enough for context, including
attribution lines at the top for that which you quote, and make your
comments (questions/corrections/elaborating remarks/etc.) following the
quoted bits to which you wish to respond.

*Trim everything else.* Anything else only clutters the discussion, bogs
down the servers and networks, loads up harddisks, and causes more
scrolling at readers' machines.

And, um, I think I'm done. Because unless you are (exceptionally) making
some comment about the contents of a certain signature, you don't need to
quote it, and nobody wants to see it (and the previous sig, and the one
before that...). Get it?

> But now this .sig trimming, I haven't heard any explanation why
> it's so bad, only that it's considered bad not to trim....
> 

I guess you haven't read the reply from Lasse Reichstein Nielsen at
<tzglhbgo.fsf@hotpop.com>.

I hope things are clear now, and that you'll happily just trim irrelevant
content, including all the sigs, and work *with* the community you've
plunged into for help.

For more discussion read e.g. http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/unice.htm or
http://www.aww-faq.org/#quickanddirty (incl. the rest of the page).

I also invite you to choose your target NG more carefully. Many standard
newsreader filters kill posts crossposted to more than three NGs. Five is
ridiculous.

-- 
John
Pondering the value of the UIP: http://improve-usenet.org/

John

5/26/2008 8:11:26 PM

In article 
<de8a95df-5ec6-4842-9e23-c9a78f3734b3@2g2000hsn.googlegroups.com>,
 Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On May 26, 3:39 am, dorayme <doraymeRidT...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> >
> >
> > It looks like the sentence of a man on his fifth whiskey. But he is a
> > clean livin' simple Texan and he is right that signatures, endlessly
> > quoted are superfluous. Superfluous to what? To everyone's patience.
> > Trim the damn things and stop fucking arguing.
> 
> Who's arguing?  

You are. You are being awkward like a dorayme when it is in one of its 
moods. I am an expert on awkwardness and I can smell it. (BTW, I know 
what planet you are from and what your minders are planning for earth. I 
received some intelligence on you from my own minders).

> I'm asking a question.  How does a quoted .sig tax
> someone's patience???  Like your name below...... 
> why should it bother anyone that it's there in a reply post?? 

Because it takes up unnecessary space, unnecessary energy to read, 
unnecessary "glance-energy" and "subliminally notice-energy". 

These energies are a measure of the heat generated by an organism 
noticing stuff, whether it be fully conscious and lingering or in 
passing.

It is wasting time and resources. You only see a tiny millionth of the 
real costs because of your narrow perspective. Add up all the useless 
and wasteful things that happen here and you might get to see what I am 
talking about.

Have you never heard of Ockham? Do you think Ockham was some sort of 
philosopher of science? No! He was a dandy with an acute sense of 
aesthetics. Ever heard of less is more? Jesus Christ, PoW, I am going to 
have to take you under my wing and look after you. 

I completely failed to reform Boji, I was a total failure with Luigi and 
.... well, a martian needs to keep trying...

-- 
dorayme

dorayme

5/27/2008 12:06:42 AM

Prisoner at War wrote:
> On May 26, 1:37 am, Lasse Reichstein Nielsen wrote:
<snip>
>> ... . A quick summary on how
>> to quote would be:
>>
>> - Quote sufficiently much to give context to your reply, so that
>>   it is readable on its own, but not more.
>> - Reply below the quoted parts that your reply to.
>> - Correctly attribute all your quotes.
>> - Do not quote signatures. (Which is also why you should
>>   correctly delimiter your signature, using a "-- " line)
<snip>
>  ...I do not see the point of those rules/guidelines.

What you do or do not see is irrelevant; the rules exist, following them 
is the accepted norm, and the result works well, has worked well for 
many years, and will continue to work well unless the medium changes 
(which it will not in the foreseeable future).

You are not going to change anything by whining, and you are not 
proposing a better alternative.

> For example, the first one you cited just
> now: I've been taken to task over not quoting enough,

Quite right, you often trim too much and so fail to provide context for 
your responses.

> for only quoting the most previous post and not quoting two
> or even three posts back!

Yes, in a discussion where the post before the one that is being replied 
to was quoted to provide context for its response your quoting only the 
response deprives it of its contexts and so removes the context of your 
response. For example, earlier today you posted:-

| > Yes but you can ease into it.
|
| Not as a n00b!  I don't even understand it!
|
| > It parses the code and analyses it instead of executing it.
|
| But...it can't be very reliable, can it...I mean, sounds like some
| artificial intelligence would be needed to really parse something
| (that is, deal with semantics, intent)....

- where both the "Yes but you can ease into it" and the "It parses the 
code and analyses it instead of executing it" comments had been made 
following quotes that made it clear what "it" was in both case. But 
because you removed those quotes by the time it gets to your response 
there is nothing left to say what these "it"s are that you are talking 
about. Indeed there is nothing left in your post to indicate that these 
two "it"s are not the same "it".

> Now I say isn't that just ridiculous -- you can just
> respond "yes" or "no" to a question,

You certainly can when the question appears just above the response for 
all to see what the answer relates to.

> you needn't answer a question by including the
> question in your answer ("yes, you may have a cookie")....

Have your tried giving "yes" or "no" answers out of context?

But the point of using quotes of preceding posts to provide context for 
their responses is to avoid the need to re-establish the context in the 
response. You certainly can get away with quoting less if you do provide 
more of the context in the responses. In the example I cited above, if 
you had substituted "ECMA 262" and "JSLint" for the "it"s in your 
response then there would have been sufficient context for a reader to 
know what you (and Peter) were talking about. It is just that generally 
it is quicker and easier to let the quoted material provide the context.

>> Some of these rules might initially have been created to
>> save bandwidth, but they also makes it possible to enter
>> a thread at any point and make some sense of it, and makes
>> reading a message easier. For a medium where there can be
>> thousands of readers of each message, spending a little more
>> time to make a message readable is better than having a
>> thousand readers spend two more minutes on understanding
>> what is written.
>
> I'm afraid I just don't see why I'm responsible for someone
> else walking in on the middle of an ongoing discussion.

Did you read the paragraph that you are responding to here? It makes two 
points; that rules that may once have been directed towards minimising 
bandwidth still have the pleasant side effect of making reading posts 
easier, and that in a one-to-many communication actions that ease the 
workload of the writer at the expense of the reader are disproportional 
harmful to the readers because they considerably outnumber the writer. 
There is nothing in there about people joining ongoing discussions.

On the other hand, you are responsible for your desire to participate in 
newsgroups where people will 'walk in on the middle of an ongoing 
discussion'. That old posts become unavailable is a common, known and 
expected characteristic of news servers.

> Some TV shows ...

This is not a TV show.

>> <SNIP>
> And just what is the point of a .sig, anyway??

In their extremes they are a concession to vanity. They could have been 
forbidden, but instead the concession that we all make to each other 
goes precisely so far, and no further.

> If it's worthy of being snipped

Everything that does not provide context for its response is "worthy of 
being snipped", and so the only time a signature should be quoted is 
when it is the subject of a response. There is nothing special about 
signatures, they are just irrelevant to the vast majority of posts made 
in response to the messages where they appear, and the irrelevant should 
be trimmed out.

> (I mean, golly, if including it in a response is going
> to somehow confuse people),

The only sense if which an erroneously quoted signature might confuse is 
that it may induce a reader to look for its relevance to the response 
made (and probably physically look for that response (i.e. scroll down 
when they otherwise didn't need to)).

> maybe it shouldn't exist in the first
> place -- logical, no???

Maybe they shouldn't, but they do, and how they should be handled has 
been clearly laid out.

Remember that you are posting to comp.lang.javascript because you are 
interested in programming (javascript). Programming is a disciplined 
activity, as is creating a well-formed Usenet post. But programming 
requires the considerably greater discipline and so if you are incapable 
or unwilling to demonstrate and ability to perform the lesser discipline 
it should not be unexpected if you are perceived as someone for whom it 
would be a waste of effort to attempt to teach aspects of the greater. 
(That is, yes it is also a test; it is an aptitude test and it is an 
intelligence test.)

Richard.

Richard

5/27/2008 1:09:39 AM

dorayme wrote:
> In article 
> <dbae22c5-d13e-442e-87f6-081032e962de@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
>  Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> On May 19, 11:09 am, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@central.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> The signature is superfluous, and not needed, you know who woke the

Sorry, sometimes my typos are really bizarre!

"The signature is superfluous, and not needed, you know who *wrote* the 
quote be leaving in the attribute"

>>> quote be leaving in the attribute, I have * your attribute at the top of
>>> the post.
>> Sorry, I'm not understanding you at all.  I can't parse that sentence!
> 
> It looks like the sentence of a man on his fifth whiskey. 

My head can get scrambled enough with alcoholic augmentation.

> But he is a 
> clean livin' simple Texan and he is right that signatures, endlessly 

Texan? Never been to Texas. You must be thinking of Travis maybe...

> quoted are superfluous. Superfluous to what? To everyone's patience. 
> Trim the damn things and stop fucking arguing.
> 

Succinct, a bit earthy, but I heartily agree.

-- 
Take care,
 
Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Jonathan

5/27/2008 1:35:38 PM

Prisoner at War wrote:
> 
> I know usenet got started by academics, who are used to the MLA format
> for publishing papers

You have been told at least once that your knowledge on this topic is 
incorrect, in message <fuarbs0krk@news5.newsguy.com>.

Usenet had significant non-academic users from shortly after its 
inception.

Truscott and Ellis, the inventors of Usenet, were CS grad students at 
the time. Bellovin, who wrote the first implementation, was an 
undergrad CS student. MLA format is not generally used in CS.

There are many citation formats and style guides used in academia, and 
MLA is by no means dominant. Nor does it have anything to do with Usenet.

Few people use any of the common academic print styles or citation 
formats in Usenet posts, regardless of their academic field or lack 
thereof.

-- 
Michael Wojcik
Micro Focus

Michael

5/27/2008 3:08:43 PM

In article <ab154$483c0e2c$40cba7b3$27004@NAXS.COM>,
 "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4art@central.net> wrote:

> dorayme wrote:
hat sentence!
> > 
> > It looks like the sentence of a man on his fifth whiskey. 
> 
> My head can get scrambled enough with alcoholic augmentation.
> 

You mean "without alco..." Me too.

> > But he is a 
> > clean livin' simple Texan and he is right that signatures, endlessly 
> 
> Texan? Never been to Texas. You must be thinking of Travis maybe...
>

Well, where are you then? I have told my Mission Impossible team several 
times recently to hunt for an artist on dial up in the middle of 
nowhere. And I just assumed it was Texas? Just as in a Shirley moment 
(did you see what Toby last said to me before he did his disappearing 
trick?) my fingers thought JK was from Iceland. 

> > quoted are superfluous. Superfluous to what? To everyone's patience. 
> > Trim the damn things and stop fucking arguing.
> > 
> 
> Succinct, a bit earthy, but I heartily agree.

With sensitive Australian immigration officials roaming the streets to 
pick up aliens and deport them, I cannot be too careful. So I adopt the 
ways and voices of the Aussies around here, to blend in till I complete 
my missions on earth.

-- 
dorayme

dorayme

5/28/2008 2:49:02 AM

dorayme wrote:
> In article <ab154$483c0e2c$40cba7b3$27004@NAXS.COM>,
>  "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4art@central.net> wrote:
> 
>> dorayme wrote:
> hat sentence!
>>> It looks like the sentence of a man on his fifth whiskey. 
>> My head can get scrambled enough with alcoholic augmentation.
>>
> 
> You mean "without alco..." Me too.


Arrrgh!

>>> But he is a 
>>> clean livin' simple Texan and he is right that signatures, endlessly 
>> Texan? Never been to Texas. You must be thinking of Travis maybe...
>>
> 
> Well, where are you then? I have told my Mission Impossible team several 
> times recently to hunt for an artist on dial up in the middle of 
> nowhere. And I just assumed it was Texas? Just as in a Shirley moment 
> (did you see what Toby last said to me before he did his disappearing 
> trick?) my fingers thought JK was from Iceland.

Not too hard to discover. Do not have it hidden...

-- 
Take care,
 
Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Jonathan

5/28/2008 3:39:49 AM

In article <6b360$483cd39a$40cba7b3$11014@NAXS.COM>,
 "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4art@central.net> wrote:

> dorayme wrote:
> > In article <ab154$483c0e2c$40cba7b3$27004@NAXS.COM>,
> >  "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4art@central.net> wrote:
> > 

> Not too hard to discover. Do not have it hidden...

Ah! So you are from Texas then!

-- 
dorayme

dorayme

5/28/2008 3:51:03 AM

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