http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/ Frequently asked questions about the World Wide Web, including security, viruses, privacy, creating web sites, and more. By the longtime editor of the original WWW FAQ. en-us Copyright 2006, Boutell.Com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Boutell.Com, Inc. Technical questions and answers about the Web daily 1 http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/setup.html 2012-03-26 2012-03-26: first, consider the easy way... But whether you choose to build your website yourself in HTML and CSS or use a friendly service like Apostrophe, you'll still want to register a domain name for yourself... The services mentioned above include web hosting and don't require you to learn HTML and CSS... You must choose a web hosting company to host your site for you... Web Hosting Talk offers well-established forums in which to discuss the quality of various web hosting providers... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/domainathome.html 2011-02-16 2011-02-16: In the article How do I get a hostname for my home computer, I explain how to get a hostname for free, even if you have dynamic DNS... There are two solutions... Of course, you still have to register your domains with a real domain registrar, and that is not free... Once your freedns.afraid.org configuration settings are correct, you will Need to log into your domain name registrar's website and change your DNS server settings to match those provided by freedns.afraid.org... freedns.afraid.org provides a good, free solution... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/privacy/liberty.html 2011-02-13 2011-02-13: "I live in a country where the government censors everything... First: you have my admiration for considering such a step in a place where it is personally dangerous to you to express your views... Second: please be as careful as you can and consider the risks you are taking for yourself and for others... Third: there are steps you can take to be safer... Post under an identity you do not EVER use from your Internet connection at home (if you have one) Post from a variety of places to be harder to track If at all possible use a secure connection (https) to Facebook, gmail, etc... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/webhostingreviews.html 2009-12-03 2009-12-03: the following is a short list of web hosting companies with good reputations, many of which I have used personally... Unfortunately pair.com does not offer virtual machine hosting, a middle ground between shared hosting (in which other users may potentially be able to see your files in some cases) and dedicated hosting (in which a physically separate computer hosts your websites and your websites only)... If you are doing PHP development, and especially if you are using the Symfony framework (which I love and recommend), ServerGrove is an excellent choice... Starting at $20/month they'll give you a virtual private server... (ServerGrove also offers shared hosting at even lower prices which might be right for your hobby sites.) ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/iphone.html 2009-09-15 2009-09-15: Apple's iPhone is an exciting device... The iPhone has built-in features that help users navigate websites intended for bigger screens... But you would like to make your site look good on the iPhone without any extra effort on the user's part... If you are a CSS expert, your first thought will be to use the "handheld" media type in your CSS code... Is there an alternative... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/iphoneaudio.html 2009-09-15 2009-09-15: Although Apple's Mobile Safari browser is probably still the best browser in anyone's pocket, it does have certain limitations... While Mobile Safari does have other audio options, they are somewhat limited... However, you can provide the user with access to audio in three ways: ... Just link to an MP3 file with a normal "a" element, like this: Play My Song The MP3 file will play in a full-screen player when the user clicks on the link... Embed the file with an old-fashioned embed element, like this: This works after a fashion... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/browser/removeoldjava.html 2009-04-27 2009-04-27: "each Java Runtime Environment 5.0 update takes up 145MB... Yes, you can remove older versions of Java and keep just the latest version that is installed on your system and yes, this will free disk space... A very small number of Java applications may require specific versions of Java in order to run... Windows users can uninstall old versions of Java by following these steps: ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/addomain.html 2009-01-16 2009-01-16: "When I'm at home, I can access my company website just by typing mycompanyname.com... This problem typically occurs in offices that use Microsoft's Active Directory technology to manage users... Can anything be done about this... However, your system administrator could set up Microsoft Internet Information Server or Apache on the domain controller (or controllers) in a very minimal configuration in which all traffic is redirected to www.mycompanyname.com... Of course this requires enabling IIS on each of the domain controllers, and that is something your system administrator may be quite reluctant to do... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/podcast.html 2008-08-19 2008-08-19: A podcast is the audio or video equivalent of a blog with an RSS feed... A podcast is set up so that iPods (thus the name podcast) and other players, with appropriate software, can automatically download the latest installments without the need for the user to look at text and click on links to start up a player and so on... A podcast listener can hook up their iPod to their PC in the morning, sync it, head out the door for their morning drive or jog and listen to your new podcast (and others to which they have subscribed) with no further effort on their part... Apple invented podcasting as a useful way to fetch new recordings to listen to on the iPod portable music player... Podcasting has since grown well beyond the iPod... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/forwardports.html 2008-08-18 2008-08-18: Your router allows all of your computers to share a single "real" IP address on the Internet... If you have WiFi, or more than one computer connected to the Internet by any other means, then you definitely have a router (even though it might be built right into your modem) and you must not skip this step... To begin, log in to the built-in web server of your router as you have most likely done in previous articles... Every router is slightly different, so you'll need to consult the manual to find out how to enable "port forwarding" or a "virtual server." Both of these terms refer to the same thing: configuring the router to accept connections on certain ports and forward them to certain ports on your own computer... Here's what you need to do: configure the router to forward connections on port 80 to your computer... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/hostmyown.html 2008-08-18 2008-08-18: You can host your own website at home, and I'll tell you exactly how... The best reason to host your website at home is to learn how it all works... Warning: running a server of any kind at home is a security risk... Here are the steps to follow to set up a website hosted entirely on your own Windows PC... Make sure you have cable modem, DSL or another high-speed connection... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/hiddenaudio.html 2008-08-18 2008-08-18: it's easy to embed music in a page... lt;embed src="mysong.mp3" nbsp;width="0" height="0" nbsp;autostart="false" nbsp;name="mysound" nbsp;enablejavascript="true"/gt; ... Although this is enough to hide the player effectively from the user, it may still take up a pixel or two in your page layout, so place the embed element just before the close of your body element... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/phpextensions.html 2008-06-21 2008-06-21: The PHP programming language, like Perl and many other interpreted languages, supports the idea of extensions that bring in otherwise missing features that would execute too slowly if they were written directly in PHP... Today I needed a less well-known extension, dbase, which provides access to files in the exceedingly old-school dbase database format... Compiling PHP From Source ... There are several ways to add add these extensions to PHP... ./configure --enable-bcmath --with-bcmath --enable -bz2 --with-bz2 --enable-calendar --with-calendar --enable-ctype --wit h-ctype --enable-curl --with-curl --enable-dba --with-dba --enable-dbx --with-dbx --enable-dio --with-dio --enable-exif --with-exif --enab le-ftp --with-ftp --enable-gd --with-gd --enable-gettext --with-gettex t --enable-gmp --with-gmp --enable-iconv --with-iconv --enable-mbstrin g --with-mbstring --enable-mime_magic --with-mime_magic --enable-mysql --with-mysql --enable-openssl --with-openssl --enable-overload --with-o verload --enable-pcntl --with-pcntl --enable-pcre --with-pcre --enable -posix --with-posix --enable-session --with-session --enable-shmop --w ith-shmop --enable-sockets --with-sockets --enable-standard --with-stand ard --enable-sysvsem --with-sysvsem --enable-sysvshm --with-sysvshm -- enable-tokenizer --with-tokenizer --enable-wddx --with-wddx --enable-xml --with-xml --enable-yp --with-yp --enable-zlib --with-zlib --prefix =/usr/local/php5 --with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs --with-freetype-dir --enable- gd-native-ttf --with-jpeg --enable-jpeg --with-jpeg-dir=/usr --with-xsl --enable-xsl ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/firedblog.html 2008-06-06 2008-06-06: "I have a personal blog which was rather private... Yes, your boss can definitely penalize you for blogging about your job... They won't actually do thatmdash; it's a waste of their time and money... In short, you were fortunate to keep your job... Don't even think about "venting" about your job on the Internet again... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/whynoimages.html 2008-05-02 2008-05-02: "Hi, I have a problem with my website... Visit any page of your website that suffers from the problem... Take a look at your img elements... But is your personal hard drive hooked up to anybody else's computer... So what do you need to do... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/reoutputformfield.html 2008-02-19 2008-02-19: "Given that we've set a parameter on one web page and assigned it a variable name, how can I get the value of that variable and use it as a form field entry... When you use PHP, this becomes a very simple problem... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/worth.html 2008-02-07 2008-02-07: How do we assign a dollar value to a web site... The right answer depends on three factors: ... The popularity of the site... The quality of the audience... Products and services sold directly by your business... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/hostcompany.html 2008-01-16 2008-01-16: Usually, no... Most of the negative reputation of security in a web hosting environment comes from experiences on shared servers, the least expensive web hosting option... Note that hosting your own servers can actually make your site less secure unless you follow good security practices... If this sounds very expensive, you're right... Make sure you're on the record supporting an externally hosted site... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/domainseparatecompany.html 2008-01-07 2008-01-07: Many people register their domain name with the same company that provides their web hosting... Most web hosting companies are reputable and responsible and would never mishandle your domain... Often, when people change web hosts, they are doing that because they are dissatisfied... Now imagine hoping and praying that they will transfer your domain to another company as promised... Smart webmasters register their domains separately with a company that they use solely for that purpose... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/framesbad.html 2007-12-12 2007-12-12: Short answer: no... The newer iframe element is slightly less awful, because it doesn't create problems for bookmarking pages... OK, now the long answer: ... Frames keep people from bookmarking your pages properly... As a designer who wants people to navigate his or her web site in a particular way, you might think this is good... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/isp.html 2007-12-06 2007-12-06: An ISP (Internet Service Provider) is an organization that provides Internet access to others... Earthlink, AOL and Comcast are popular ISPs in the United States... "But who is my ISP?" ... Your ISP is the company you pay for Internet access... If you are the person who pays the bills in your house, you'll already know... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/musicrights.html 2007-12-05 2007-12-05: "I want to run a legitimate Internet radio station... You've decided to take on a difficult project, my friend... So if you find all of this complicated..... Also, you must display to the user the song name, artist, and all other available information about the song while the song is playingmdash; but not before... All of these rules are part of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) definition of an Internet radio broadcast... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/asp.html 2007-12-05 2007-12-05: ASP (Active Server Pages) and ASP.NET are server-side dynamic web programming languages... "How are ASP and ASP.NET different?" ... ASP was Microsoft's original server-side web programming language, based on their earlier Visual BASIC language... Bear in mind that all server-side dynamic web programming languages are the same as far as the end user is concerned... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/howmanysearch.html 2007-11-28 2007-11-28: According to the excellent site SearchEngineWatch.com, the following search engines enjoyed a market share of at least 2.6% as of July 2006: ... Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask... For complete results check out the SearchEngineWatch Nielsen NetRatings for July 2006... While these results are worldwide, it is worth keeping in mind that nation-specific search engines sometimes beat out Google in their particular market... "Yes, but EXACTLY how many search engines are there?" ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/ispersonalusefairuse.html 2007-11-26 2007-11-26: "I'm just a guy/gal with a personal / club / church web site for some friends / some teammates / a tribe of chimpanzees... Yes, you do have to pay to use copyrighted music on your web site... I get variations on this question all the time... Alas, as Inigo says to Vizzini in The Princess Bride: "you keep using that word... "Fair use" is an extremely specific legal doctrine applying only to a handful of situations... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/ajaxfetch.html 2007-11-08 2007-11-08: JavaScript code can send data to, and receive data from, the same website that the page was loaded from... Previously, programmers worked around this problem with painful hacks like hidden frames... So how do we create one of these XMLHTTPRequest objects... Fortunately, we can wrap all this complexity up in a simple function to call every time we want to make a request, as shown here: var req; // Get an XMLHttpRequest object in a portable way... What can we do with our request object... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/support.html 2007-11-08 2007-11-08: live support chat pages can't be implemented just by designing a pretty HTML form to type comments into... What's more, to provide a smooth experience for the user without constantly fetching new pages from the web server, a live support system should use AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML)... Can you get live support features for your site without understanding these issues... For those who are willing to make a little more effort, though, live support can be implemented for free without writing your own solution from scratch, as long as your web hosting account allows PHP... SupportMeLive was originally written to answer the question "how do I fetch data from the server without loading a new page?" It has since blossomed into a useful tool in its own right... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/accounts.html 2007-11-07 2007-11-07: Many websites, including Google and Yahoo but also smaller sites, allow users to create accounts in order to retain the same settings from one visit to the next... PHP provides us with a built-in mechanism for handling "sessions." That is, we can easily keep track of a user's choices during a particular visit to a website... That's a shame, because PHP's sessions are convenient and require very little programmer effort... Actually, there is... Accountify began life simply as an example for use in this article... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/browser/bluequestionmark.html 2007-11-05 2007-11-05: You are seeing a blue question mark and a QuickTime logo on lots of websites... You have Apple's QuickTime player software... On Windows, yesmdash; there is a simple fix which I will describe below... On MacOS X, a similar series of steps usually does the job just as well... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/captcha.html 2007-10-24 2007-10-24: Captchas are a great way to slow spammers down... To slow down these attacks, many websites use CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) software... A typical captcha involves a picture of textmdash; usually with the text rotated, distorted, colored and otherwise creatively altered... Computers can break 'em anyway..... Some humans can't break 'em... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/websitewords.html 2007-10-24 2007-10-24: Originally, the correct answer was "yes, and Web should be capitalized." However, usage has evolved over time to the point where "website," one word all lower case, is common and accepted usage... I recently performed an informal poll of web-savvy users in which 83% preferred "website" to "web site." ... While I prefer "web site" personally, it's time for those of us who have been on the web since the beginning to acknowledge that language changes over time... At one point, capitalizing the "w" in website to distinguish a "World Wide Web" site from an intranet website was recommended practice... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/songexcerpt.html 2007-10-19 2007-10-19: I am not a lawyer and cannot give legal advice... Short answer: no... Reducing the quality of the audio, for instance by using a very low MP3 bitrate such as 16mbps, does not change the legal situation... To be clear, you cannot take a 30-second excerpt from a popular song and play it in the background to jazz up your personal or corporate website and call that "fair use." You can't use a five-second excerpt, either... That is a good reason for the legitimate holder of the rights to work with you..... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/noindex.html 2007-09-28 2007-09-28: "How do I keep my web page or entire website out of Google and other search engines?" ... It is possible to keep any web page out of Google and other well-behaved search engines... The older approach involves a text file called robots.txt in the document root of your website... noindex prevents Google from indexing the content of the page... nofollow means that Google and other correctly coded search engines should not follow any links found in the page to discover new pages... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/owns.html 2007-09-28 2007-09-28: The short answer: no one... The long answer: the whois database that ultimately determines who holds what domain name for the .com and .net domains is currently managed by Network Solutions, Inc., a division of Verisign, under contract with the umbrella organization to which the various domain name registrars belong... The thirteen root DNS servers that answer top-level questions about the best-known Internet domains could be said to be in control, but they do not all belong to a single organization... Internationally speaking, there is truly no one entity in charge, as each national domain (.uk, .fr, etc.) has its own registrars... The standards that determine the behavior of web browsers and web servers are set, often after the fact, by the Internet Engineering Task Force and the W3C Consortium, both of which are made up of many representatives from many companies... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/include.html 2007-09-20 2007-09-20: The easiest way, by far, is to use "server side includes" in your HTML... For those who cannot use server side includes, ASP, ASP.NET or PHP, we also present two client side methods: the JavaScript method, and the iframe method... Of course, server side includes only work when a web server is being used to access your pages... A simple server side include directive to include another file found in the same folder looks like this: ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/random.html 2007-09-18 2007-09-18: to randomly insert one of a group of images into a web page, you can use this simple JavaScript code... A different image will appear at the appropriate point in the page every time the page is loaded or reloaded... If the user has disabled JavaScript, the image backupimage.jpg appears instead... Just remember that the code output by document.write becomes part of the page exactly as if it had appeared at the point in the page where the script element is located... If you had an ordinary element, you would wrap a link around it like this: So to wrap a link around a randomly chosen image, we simply put both the script and the noscript elements inside our a element, like this: ..... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/browser/installfirefoxwithoutie.html 2007-08-12 2007-08-12: Internet Explorer is not working and you want to install Firefox as an alternative... I'll show you exactly how... Now, here's how to install Firefox without using Internet Explorer: ... To start FTP, click on the Start menu, then "Run..." and enter: ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/cantaccessmysite.html 2007-08-08 2007-08-08: You followed the steps in my article how do I host my own website at home... When you connect to your home-hosted website by name, the name resolves to an IP address... So how do you work around the problem without buing a better router... On Windows XP, the hosts file is located here: c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts You will need to open this file with Notepad and add one line at the end... Here's the line to add to your hosts file: 192.168.2.100 example.is-a-geek.com "How do I edit the hosts file?" You can use Windows Notepad... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/java.html 2007-08-08 2007-08-08: Java is a technology that allows software designed and written just once for an idealized "virtual machine" to run on a variety of real computers, including Windows PCs, Macintoshes, and Unix computers... You need to do one of the two: keep it updated or get rid of it... As of this writing, Java is usually (though not always) included as standard equipment on Windows PCs... Java applets have been almost completely replaced by Flash, but there are occasional jobs for which Flash is ill-suited... There are also many older applet games, such as Atari's official Asteroids applet, that simply haven't been rewritten in Flash... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/browser/updatejava.html 2007-08-08 2007-08-08: "My computer is nagging me to update something called Java... You have two reasonable choices: ... Update Java whenver you are asked to... Uninstall Java completely... Click on the "Start" menu ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/browser/nomoveandresize.html 2007-08-06 2007-08-06: Some web pages resize or move the web browswer window when they are opened... Users who dislike this behavior can avoid it by using the Firefox web browser... Pull down the "Tools" menu... Select "Options." ... Click on the "Content" tab... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/paidtoread.html 2007-08-02 2007-08-02: There are many companies that claim to pay you to take surveys or read advertising emails... Legitimate paid-survey companies are looking for demographic information... Other companies, such as athletic shoe manufacturers, will then pay the survey company for that information and use it to design better products... For the most part these companies pay you, in cash or merchandise, to answer surveys... How can you tell whether an online survey company is legitimate... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/privateblog.html 2007-07-25 2007-07-25: "Is a blog 'out there' for anyone to find and read or is it possible to create a blog that is just for family and friends?" ... Yes, it is possible to create a private blog that is solely for your family and friends... If you are using Google's blogger.com service, see their FAQ entry how do I control who can view my blog... But blogger.com is far from the only service that addresses the privacy issue... You can "friendslock" some or all of your journal entries so that only people on your LiveJournal friendslist can read them... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/email.html 2007-06-26 2007-06-26: Visitors to your website want to contact you... At first it seems simplemdash; just design an HTML form... There are easy fixes and sneaky workarounds for this problem... Also, this approach doesn't allow you to control the format of the user's message in any way... Another well-known shortcut is the mailto: form submission: ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/php.html 2007-06-26 2007-06-26: PHP is a popular programming language for extending web pages with dynamic features... PHP is currently the most popular web server extension language, used by many websites both large and small... For more information, visit www.php.net, PHP's home on the web... PHP stands for "PHP Hypertext Preprocessor." Yes, you read that rightmdash; "PHP" does appear in its own expansion... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/password.html 2007-06-19 2007-06-19: Many webmasters want to protect certain pages with a password... Do you want to require customers to create accounts, provide a valid email address, and log in before they see certain content... Or do you need simple password protection for part of the sitemdash; perhaps for administrative pages that are not intended for the public... Once you have implemented accounts for your website using my PHP-based login system, Accountify, you can easily force the user to log in before they access any particular page... If image theft is an issue for your site, you can address this problem by delivering the images with PHP code as well... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/emitimage.html 2007-06-14 2007-06-14: There are two perfectly acceptable solutions... Solution One: write the image to a temporary file in a web-accessible directory, and generate an element with a src URL that points to that file... Solution Two: generate an element with a src attribute that points directly to your Perl/CGI or PHP script, with GET-method form parameters (name=value pairs, separated by , after the ... The myscript.pl script can then look at the generateimage and imageid parameters exactly as it would if they had been submitted via a form... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/whatismyurl.html 2007-06-14 2007-06-14: Many comment forms on blogs now ask for your URL... It's very simple: comment forms that ask for your URL are asking where your blog, website, myspace page or other personal page on the Internet is... So, if you have a blog of your own on blogspot.com, you might respond with: http://myblogsname.blogspot.com/ ... If you have a LiveJournal, you might respond with: ... http://mylivejournalname.livejournal.com/ ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/faq/whyfaq.html 2007-06-12 2007-06-12: First off, the WWW FAQ was originally created by Nat Torkington - not me... I started maintaining the WWW FAQ while working for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory... After I left CSHL, I continued to maintain the FAQ as a personal labor of love, and also as a way of giving back to the Internet community... I stopped regularly updating the WWW FAQ in the late nineties, then picked up the ball again in 2003 when it became clear that people still needed answers to basic questions about the web - the questions had changed, but the interest was still there... Today I continue to write WWW FAQ articles to help folks understand the Web directly and personally, so that the technology remains open to everyone... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/mostpopularwebsite.html 2007-06-12 2007-06-12: Since the Internet is not run by a single company or government, there is no perfect way to identify the most popular website... alexa.com provides free access to their list of the top 500 websites... Alexa can also provide you with information about the popularity of your own site or any other site that you search for... That much, they offer for free... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/paragraphspacing.html 2007-06-04 2007-06-04: CSS allows us to control the space between lines of text... We can easily control the line-height property... We can also set line-height in pixels, or as a percentage of the height of the containing block... Paragraph spacing is controlled by the margin-top and margin-bottom CSS properties of the paragraph element... Most current web browsers only implement two CSS units well: "ems" and pixels... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/windowcenter.html 2007-05-30 2007-05-30: You can center a newly opened browser window on the screen with the top and left parameters to the window.open JavaScript method... Now that you're familiar with window.open, you're ready to control the window's position as well as its size... There's a catch: not every browser is friendly to the width, height, left and top options of window.open... But what if the window we're asking for is bigger than the screen... The following simple web page opens a new 300x200 pixel window, centered on the screen, when a link is clicked: Click here to open the page in a new window... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/streaming.html 2007-05-30 2007-05-30: Streaming audio is audio (speech, music, et cetera) that plays back as it is downloaded... Streaming playback was invented to solve a problem: downloading an entire song or album takes time, and users get tired of waiting... Early audio players, like the first versions of the RealAudio Player, worked around this problem by using "metafiles." Rather than linking directly to the actual audio file, a website would link to a special "metafile." These were simply text files containing the URLs of one or more audio files... For the most part, this technique is no longer necessary... Even if the user's Internet connection is fast enough, it is still possible for the web server's connection to be overwhelmed... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/mp3.html 2007-05-30 2007-05-30: MP3 is the most popular format for audio (sound and music) on the Internet... Technically known as MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, the MP3 format is a "lossy" format... Why are "lossy" formats useful... But MP3 can compress by a factor of ten to one without much noticeable loss... MP3 files can be compressed (shrunk) even more, but quality begins to suffer as the compression rate is increased... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/printbutton.html 2007-05-29 2007-05-29: "I want to add a 'print' button or link to my web page, to help users who are confused and don't know how to use their browser's print button... It's easy to add a print button... Here's an example of a web page with a JavaScript print button: Print Test Print Test I've tested this code successfully in Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox... We can fix the problem by generating the print button itself with JavaScript... Of course, the user can just use her web browser's normal print button instead... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/midi.html 2007-05-29 2007-05-29: General MIDI files (.mid files) are not the most popular way to distribute music on the web, and there are good reasons for that... But good General MIDI tracks do exist... By itself, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) doesn't specify any standard instrument sounds... Unfortunately, Flash won't do MIDI... The param name="loop" element specifies how many times the song will repeat... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/browserversussearchengine.html 2007-05-17 2007-05-17: Web browsers and search engines both talk to web servers in order to retrieve web pages... For more information, see what is a web browser, what is a search engine and what is a web server... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/401unauthorized.html 2007-05-16 2007-05-16: 401 Unauthorized (sometimes mislabeled as 401 Forbidden) is the HTTP status code produced by a web server when you don't have the right credentials to access the page or file you have asked for... For a complete list of standard HTTP status codes, see the W3 Consortium's website... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/403forbidden.html 2007-05-16 2007-05-16: 403 Forbidden is the HTTP status code produced by a web server when you are not permitted to access a particular URL... Some websites are locked down so that only those on the local company or school network can access parts of the site... Sometimes webmasters try to set up dynamic web programming features like PHP or Perl/CGI but fail to do so correctly... 403 Forbidden can appear in other situations at the discretion of the webmaster, so you may see it in scenarios other than these... For a complete list of standard HTTP status codes, see the W3 Consortium's website... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/captcha.html 2007-05-08 2007-05-08: CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart... So, spammers create bogus Hotmail accounts to spam us with... Websites like Hotmail require people to type in these letters and numbers before they are allowed to apply for a new account... Computers can break 'em anyway..... Some humans can't break 'em... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/transparent.html 2007-05-01 2007-05-01: Transparent images are useful when you are not certain of the page background color on which your image will be displayed, or you intend to display your image in front of a complex background rather than a single background color... Pull down the File menu... You now have a completely transparent image, to which you can add additional elements... Alpha Channel Versus 100% Transparency ... Advanced programs like The Gimp and Photoshop support the idea of an "alpha channel," which allows every pixel (dot) to have any level of transparency, from completely opaque to completely transparent and anything in between... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/licensecovers.html 2007-04-12 2007-04-12: You have recorded your own version of an existing song - in other words, a cover version... But is it legal... First, let's break it down a bit and understand the two major possibilities: ... You want to stream the song on your site... You want to allow the user to download the song and keep it permanently, usually by downloading an MP3 file and then burning it to a CD or adding it to their iTunes library... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/browser/browsercachetoosmall.html 2007-04-11 2007-04-11: Fetching things over the Internet can be slow... Imagine a page that uses the same image over and over as part of the page layout... But how big can the cache get... Fortunately, there is no minimum cache size... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/browser/fastest.html 2007-04-10 2007-04-10: Speed means many things to many people... Microsoft Internet Explorer usually has the fastest startup time on Microsoft Windows machines, although this is mostly because the real "price" of starting it up is paid during the booting of your Microsoft Windows system, whether you really want it or not... Opera is the fastest browser in terms of placing minimal demands on an older computer... Firefox is a very fast descendant of Mozilla, well-tuned for real-world browsing experiences, with an interface that speeds up the way you get things done in a web browser by offering features like tabbed browsing and a more elegant "find" feature -- another relevant kind of speed... Apple's Safari browser, seen on MacOS X systems, is derived from KDE's Konqueror browser, most frequently seen on Linux systems... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/sitespecific/hideads.html 2007-04-07 2007-04-07: You don't... You can customize your MySpace page in many ways, but you can't have 100% complete control over it... If you really want control over your web page, ask yourself why it is still on somebody else's site... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/outline.html 2007-04-05 2007-04-05: Outlines are a useful way to represent information... Of course, it's possible to do this using ordinary hyperlinks: I... "Hey, I just want the code!" ... If you like, simply skip to the end of the article and you'll find simple instructions for creating fully collapsible outlines... is there a better way... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/formurl.html 2007-03-30 2007-03-30: "I made an HTML form and when I submit it, all the form data winds up in the URL... You are using a form element with the method attribute set to GET, or missing altogether... Write your form element like this: This article assumes you already know the basics of handling form submissions on your website... The GET method packs all of your form fields into the URL... The format of a GET-method URL isn't all that hard to understand... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/printpart.html 2007-03-30 2007-03-30: "I want to print only one image, or one div, from a web pagemdash; not the whole thing... I had my doubts that this was pratical without code on the server side... The trick is to open up a new window (or tab) from your JavaScript code and fill that window with a simple page that displays the image in question... Generating the HTML for a new window "on the fly" is a powerful technique with many applications... You can't put a tag inside a quoted string in JavaScript code... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/editblog.html 2007-03-28 2007-03-28: There are four situations where other people might unexpectedly edit your blog: ... Your password was not a good password, and it has been cracked... Your password has been stolen (phished)... You are using poorly designed blog software that has a security hole, and a cracker who knows about the hole has taken advantage of it... The administrators of the site you blog on (such as blogger or MySpace) have chosen to modify your blog... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/converttomp3.html 2007-03-27 2007-03-27: In the article how do I embed sound and music in a page, I explain how to play MP3-format music as part of your website... The simplest solution is a little bit time-consuming, but it works with every audio format your computer can play backmdash; if you can listen to it, you can convert it to an MP3... Owning a CD or an iTunes track does not give you the right to play that music on your website for other people... In this article I assume you're working with audio files you have a legitimate right to distribute on the web, such as songs recorded by your own band... If you want to play songs you don't own on your website, check out the article how do I start my own Internet radio station... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/namebasedhosting.html 2007-03-23 2007-03-23: Hosting more than one website at home is no harder than hosting a single website at home... To host multiple websites at home, just use the Apache web server and name-based virtual hosting... Of course, you must actually create the document root folders and fill them with content... Also, please note that you do not use the \ character in the DocumentRoot path... This is just the most basic setup possible... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/rollovermenus.html 2007-03-22 2007-03-22: Some websites feature menus that expand as you roll the mouse over them... With modern web standards, it shouldn't be that hard: just use the :hover CSS pseudoclass... Fortunately, others have researched this issue thoroughly and found the best workaround available... So I'm not going to duplicate their excellent work here... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/backbutton.html 2007-03-21 2007-03-21: In the most general case, you can't... However, with JavaScript, you can warn the user before they leave the page inappropriately (with the back button or otherwise), explain why it is a really bad idea, and give them a chance to cancel the operation... I cover exactly how to do this in my article how do I keep the user from leaving the page... If you control all of the pages involved, you can prevent the user from backing up within your site by making sure that pages "bounce" the user forward again when the user backs up to them... On the surface, the job is simple... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/how.html 2007-03-21 2007-03-21: Web pages, such as the one you are now reading, "live" on web servers all over the Internet... Web browsers, such as the program you are using right now on your computer to see this web page, speak to web servers in a language (a "protocol") called HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol)... But before the web browser can talk to the web server, it needs to know the web server's IP address on the Internet - just as you have to know your friend's phone number before you can call him... Once the web browser knows the IP address of the server, it can make an HTTP protocol connection and ask for the page you want to see... Most users will see links as blue, underlined words in the text... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/usenetlink.html 2007-03-12 2007-03-12: You can create a link to a UseNet newsgroup in such a way that the user's browser will automatically launch the user's preferred UseNet "newsreader" software... If you are linking to a public newsgroup, an alternative method is to link to the newsgroup via Google Groups, which offers a friendly interface to UseNet newsgroups without the need for correct settings on the user's PC: Read talk.bizarre via Google Groups ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/disableclose.html 2007-03-12 2007-03-12: In most cases, preventing the user from leaving the web page is obnoxious and counterproductive... But sometimes, in a web application such as an online banking system, users really do enter a great deal of information that they would hate to lose... However, you can force the browser to display a warning message and give the user a chance to change her mind... You can display such a warning message by setting up a JavaScript handler for the onBeforeUnload event... Here's an example of a web page that features the popup message... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/newsgroup.html 2007-03-12 2007-03-12: UseNet (User's Network) is a collection of online forums, known as "newsgroups," that are automatically shared among many thousands of servers all around the Internet... UseNet newsgroups are older than the World Wide Web... Today website forums have largely replaced UseNet, and most newcomers have never used UseNet... Also, in the early days of UseNet, the idea of thousands or millions of users contacting a single server to fetch messages was impractical... However, UseNet newsgroups are still somewhat common today as a means of communication for smaller groups... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/broadcastcopyrighted.html 2007-03-09 2007-03-09: OK, so sharing playlists on iTunes and Rhapsody isn't enough for you... Live365.Com is currently the best answer... You want to run your own Internet radio station on your own site, keep all the advertising revenue, and use your own code... Trouble is, it's very expensive and very difficult... Far be it from me to stand in your way... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/uploadslow.html 2007-03-08 2007-03-08: "Hey, how come downloads from my home-hosted website are so slow?" ... You're hosting a website at home, possibly after reading my article how can I host my website at home... Cable and DSL providers know this... Home-based hosting is fun, but limited speed is only one of many many reasons why it usually isn't practical... Those who are determined to host downloads of large files at home should consider publishing them via BitTorrent... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/directoryindex.html 2007-03-06 2007-03-06: You have successfully configured your website to handle server side includes (.shtml or .shtm files), or perhaps PHP pages (.php files)... The key is to use Apache's DirectoryIndex option... We can use Apache's -t option to test the configuration file: /usr/sbin/httpd -t If you don't see the message Syntax OK, pay attention to the message you did receive and fix any errors... Start Menu -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services These steps are correct for the Windows XP "Classic View." If you are using the standard view, the steps are slightly different: ... Start -gt; Control Panel -gt; Performance and Maintenance -gt; Administrative Tools -gt; Services ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/threecolumnlayout.html 2007-03-02 2007-03-02: A three-column layout is a popular design because it allows space for navigation on the left, content in the middle, and advertising on the right... Of course we'll use CSS to create our layout... Variable-width, or flowing, layouts naturally grow and shrink with the size of the browser window... In this article, I'll show how to create all three types of three-column layouts: fixed width, variable width and mixed... Some of the CSS code you'll see here deals with centering the layout in the browser window... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/definitions/site.html 2007-02-23 2007-02-23: A website is a collection of web pages maintained by a single person or organization... Less often, a set of pages beginning "lower down" than the home page of the site will also be referred to as a website... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/history/inventednet.html 2007-02-23 2007-02-23: No one person invented the Internet as we know it today... Leonard Kleinrock was the first to publish a paper about the idea of packet switching, which is essential to the Internet... The big advantage of packet switching: a physical connection can carry packets for many different purposes at the same time, depending on how heavy the traffic is... What if Google needed a separate modem and phone line to talk to every user, like an old-fashioned BBS (Bulletin Board System)... With packet switching, packets destined for thousands or millions of users can share a single physical connection to the Internet... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/history/gore.html 2007-02-23 2007-02-23: Former United States Vice President Al Gore did not invent the Internet... To understand how this story got started, it's important to understand what Gore actually said, how his words have been maliciously misinterpreted, and what his actual contributions were as a politician... What Gore Really Said ... Here's what Gore actually said, during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet... In fact, what Gore really meant is so obvious that those who have attacked Gore over the years have felt the need to misquote him... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/history/emeagwali.html 2007-02-23 Philip Emeagwali was never a "father of the Internet" and made no significant contributions to the Internet's development... Philip Emeagwali did work in supercomputing in the eighties, making improvements to the "Connection Machine" parallel supercomputer design... Unfortunately, Emeagwali has promoted himself as a "father of the Internet." This is based on Emeagwali's claim that "the Supercomputer is the father of the Internet," because both are networks of computers working together... The biggest problem with this is that Emeagwali did his work in the late eighties, and the core standards for communication on the Internet already existed by then... A secondary problem is that Emeagwali's contributions to supercomputing just weren't all that significant... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/wherethedatais.html 2007-02-23 2007-02-23: The information on the Internet is stored on the hard drives of web servers all over the world... The World Wide Web never "runs out of space" because webmasters (people who have websites) are generally willing to pay for a website... In practice, web servers usually aren't exactly like your computer... But there is no fundamental difference between your computer and a server in a rack at a web hosting facility... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/sizeofweb.html 2007-02-15 2007-02-15: How many websites exist... So what can be done to measure the size of the World Wide Web... Netcraft's primary goal is to determine web server market share: what percentage of websites run Microsoft's Internet Information Server, versus the Apache web server... Of course, Netcraft's survey isn't perfect - there may be websites in the world that were not discovered by Netcraft's software... "But how many web pages are there?" ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/phpinhtml.html 2007-02-13 2007-02-13: "I want to use PHP in my web pages... You can do it without breaking a thing... If you are using the Apache servermdash; and if you're working with PHP, Apache is by far the best choicemdash; then it's easy to do this... By creating a .htaccess file that lives in your web server's home directory (where your home page is), you can change how all pages are handled... So to convince Apache that .html, .htm, and .asp and .aspx pages should be scanned for PHP commands, all we have to do is use the AddType command in a .htaccess file located in your website's home directory... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/aspinhtml.html 2007-02-13 2007-02-13: "I want to use ASP in my web pages... You can do it without rewriting all of your links..... Since you are interested in using ASP, I'll assume you are using Microsoft Internet Information Server... Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) allows you to decide what "script interpreters" are used to respond to each file extension... So to convince IIS that .html, .htm, and .php pages should be scanned for ASP commands, all we have to do is use the Internet Information Services control panel to change the way these file extensions are handled... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/earn.html 2007-02-09 2007-02-09: If you are selling goods and services and simply need to know how to accept payments from users on your site, see how do I charge money on my website... If you are giving away useful information or entertainment, the three easiest and most profitable business models are: ... Selling advertising space on your site... Merchandise sales... The "tip jar" approach: visitors to your site voluntarily give you money, purely out of the goodness of their hearts... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/scriptpass.html 2007-02-09 2007-02-09: Your JavaScript page has retrieved some information from the user... Submitting form data to a server-side script that then outputs a new JavaScript page containing the data... Passing form-style data in a URL to a new JavaScript page, without using any server-side scripts... Passing data via the window.name property... When possible, it's best to use the first method, because the amount of data you can pass is essentially unlimited... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/browser/dslslow.html 2007-02-05 2007-02-05: When a DSL connection is working properly, it is very fast... Connect your DSL modem to the phone jack with a different phone cord... Shut off any radios (especially AM), stereo equipment, and other appliances in the house... Connect your DSL modem to a different phone jack... Still not working... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/powerpointtoweb.html 2007-02-01 2007-02-01: It's not hard to put a PowerPoint presentation on the Web... The user receives a warning that the presentation is "optimized" for Internet Explorer... If the end results aren't compatible with all browsers, why bother converting from PowerPoint at all... Which one you choose depends on whether you just want to export the content in a reasonably readable (and Google-indexable) form, or prefer to keep your presentation's visual style more or less intact... First I'll demonstrate how to convert to HTML... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/browser/multiplepcs.html 2007-01-30 2007-01-30: If you have a broadband connection to the Internet (DSL service or a cable modem), then you already have a fast enough connection to share with multiple computers... You can share your Internet connection with more than one computer by using a device called a "router." The router forwards traffic from the Internet to the computers "behind" it on your private home network or Intranet... How does this work... Wireless Versus Wired Routers ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/sethomepage.html 2007-01-29 2007-01-29: In Internet Explorer 6.0 and earlier, it was possible to change the user's home page with JavaScript... How It Used To Work ... Until Internet Explorer 7.0, it was possible to do it via JavaScript code, like this: But this is no longer permitted in Internet Explorer 7.0... The Best Workaround Today ... The best workaround is to give your users instructions on how to manually set the home page... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/sitespecific/myspaceautoplay.html 2007-01-26 2007-01-26: You have a song on your MySpace profile, but you don't want it to play automatically... Log into MySpace ... Click "Account Settings" ... Look for "Music Settings," click "Change Settings" to the right of that ... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/sitespecific/googlemoney.html 2007-01-17 2007-01-17: Google "gives away" a great search engine, among other features... In a nutshell: advertising revenue... Google is a major player in the online advertising industry... In addition, you may have noticed columns or boxes containing similar text-link ads on other websites - such as this one - which say "Ads by Google" at the top... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/stoptoolbar.html 2007-01-16 2007-01-16: For the answer to this question and related questions about limiting what the user can do in a web browser window, see the article which features of the browser window can I control from JavaScript, and when... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/stopaddressbar.html 2007-01-16 2007-01-16: For the answer to this question and related questions about limiting what the user can do in a web browser window, see the article which features of the browser window can I control from JavaScript, and when... http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/stopmenubar.html 2007-01-16 2007-01-16: For the answer to this question and related questions about limiting what the user can do in a web browser window, see the article which features of the browser window can I control from JavaScript, and when...