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Sausage Sizzler - Tired Traveller |
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| Editorial March 26th 2002 |
G'day Sizzlers!
Well what a hectic week it has been for me! Traveling for what
seemed like forever to get to Melbourne (well 36 hours is a long
time), and loosing the last week, due to what appears to be the
flu, just isn't very helpful at all.
I am still feeling the trailing effects of the flu, a sore throat
and a good dose of lethargy. However I have to make the most of
being here so I shall soldier on.
As I write this editorial I am still trying to get the cable
connection at my parents to work well enough to allow me to
download my e-mail. Without it I wont be getting this issue out. I
will probably resort to going to the Sausage office and doing it
from there tomorrow. Actually I have to say that this Telstra
Cable connection SUCKS. It is so flaky and now I have just found
out the whole network is having problems. For my parents needs I
think I will be looking at some alternatives, even dial-up would
be better. Customer Support at Big Pond have been feeding my
mother lines for months that the flaky service is just not their
problem. I wonder if the Optus alternative is any better?
(A day later...) I am fed up with Telstra so I have been
convinced to swap over to Optus, as a package, my parents can get a
better deal on cable internet, tv and phone combined. If they
suck too I will be sure to let everyone know!
Talking of Sausage I was really impressed with the offices we
have secured. Nothing too fancy but it looks great. Plenty of
room for the team to expand and a nice light office in a great
location. I can tell you the plans to expand are under way and we
have a couple of new services about to be launched very soon! So
stay tuned.
Also thanks to all of you who volunteered to become beta testers.
I have a list I have created and will let you know when I have
something for you to test. For any others who want to beta test
just sign up for the forums and send an e-mail to
beta@sausage.com.
Lets hope that next week I can get the issue out a lot easier. My
sanity depends on it!
Keep on sizzling!
Nathan Allan
Sausage Sizzler Editor
editor@sausage.com
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Contact Manager - Adding Data
This time around we're going to build the forms needed to
populate our tables. There are however two corrections to be made
to the tables. First, a suggestion from Chris Burch, the ID columns in both our tables
should be INT UNSIGNED, this will allow for double the entries in
our database. Second we have a suggestion from Henry B. Poole, our zip code column, to be correct
should allow for 10 characters instead of 5 but, for simplicity's
sake I'm going to continue with our CHAR(5) definition, you can
change it if you like though.
There's two forms we will build here, first will be the "Add
User" form, then we'll do the "Add Contact" form. All of our PHP
files will use a nearly blank (for now) require()d file at the
beginning, this file, in the next tip, will contain the user
authentication code.
prepend.php
This is the require()d file. for now it should only contain:
<?php
session_start();
?>
add_user_1.php
This is pretty simple. When you first load the page, it will be
just a plain form. If you submit it and there are errors, it will
report the error back using the session, and fill in the username
for you, again, using the session.
add_user_2.php
This script would be simple if not for error checking everything.
For a system like this, this level error checking is a bit
extreme, but it shows that you shouldn't trust any data you're
given. There are several other options that could have been added
as well. One of them would have been to make sure the username
doesn't contain specially crafted SQL, and that it's just a
username.
add_contact_1.php
Same basic idea as the "add user" page, just more fields.
add_contact_2.php
Again, same basic idea as the second "add user" script, just more
fields and less error checking.
There are many ways these scripts can be improved. The most
important would be sane error checking on the add_contact_2.php
page. Next time we'll implement the authentication and listings
of the contacts and users. One thing to keep in mind, this is in
no way meant to be a complete contact manager, but please discuss
all ideas for improvements in the forum.
Tip by Rich Cavanaugh
From - EnFlyer: The Email Marketing Experts
Discuss it in Rich's PHP and MySQL Forum
The paragraph tag <P> is used to define a paragraph. It will make
the browser drop down two lines and start a fresh paragraph.
You can also align the text within the tags by using the
attribute ALIGN. Your options include left, right and justify.
Personally I like the way text looks when it is justified to the
left and right margin.
An example of the paragraph tag may look something like this:
<P align="justify">The paragraph text goes in here.</P>
This is simple to use, but becomes even more powerful when used
with Style Sheets as well.
Tip by Nathan Allan
This is a first for me, spotlighting a topic that I originally
generated. I feel awkward doing so, but it truly seems to be a
hot topic. While it doesn't have as many posts as other sections
in the forums, it certainly ranks way up there in views. Less
than a week after the posting, there are well over 300 views of
this topic... not to mention some incredible opinions.
I'm genuinely interested in what you have to say. What are your
feelings about PCs vs. MAC for designing? For business use? For
mixed use? Some of the respondents clearly say that it’s a
matter of choice while a few others say MAC or PC all the way.
It's not too late to share turn your views into postings.
Please, come in and stay awhile.
http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=139
Review by Bram Leland Scolnick
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|
The current state of the world
This week I'd like to turn my attention to something a bit off
the HTML and design topics. I'll try to be as politically
correct as possible by limiting my words.
Lately the news is full of war, death and in the USA, sex starved
priests. In the past week alone, I think more than five (5)
priests have been convicted of sex crimes against children.
(Personal comments withheld).
War and terrorism - If it’s not the remembrance of lives lost in
the USA, it’s battling in Afghanistan or the Middle East. The
chairwoman of one of my companies lost her dad in the WTC
attacks. In addition to the daily battles in the Middle East,
most recently Daniel Pearl was executed and just the other day a
church, supposedly in a "safe zone", was blown up in Pakistan.
What’s wrong with the people on this planet? What does any of
this have to do with HTML and design?
Well, for one thing, how does this affect your work? Do you feel
stressed and perhaps distracted? We're all human beings and most
of us are affected and influenced by the world around us. How is
the world affecting your designing? Are any of you directly
affected and perhaps unable to get work done? Is anything
troubling you that you've otherwise been unable to get off your
chest? Here's your chance to let loose.
What are your thoughts about the things happening around us?
Share your feelings with the rest of us.
http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=198
Discuss your experiences with Bram Leland Scolnick
Colors Revisited - How Web safe are you?
Last week I wrote about colors and their importance to design
(Colors, Colors, Colors -
http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=138). To
my great pleasure, there has been much and varied discussion over
this topic.
Of the many questions, raised, I think the issue of using Web-
safe colors one is most fascinating. One might think that 216
colors are more than enough. How many of you currently use the
Web safe pallet and ONLY the Web safe pallet? Do any of you fear
the wrath of the fierce counsel of html'ers if you break away
from web safe - 216? I try to stick to colors that at least use
common hex codes. There has been a few times recently, where my
design was suffering because the colors I wanted to use just
would not convert to ANYTHING in the web safe spectrum. Anything
that I tried just did not convey the feeling I intended. I used
a clean, simple color scheme, the colors of which were all well
outside the realm of the 216 web safe colors.
Have any of you looked at the colors used by the Sausage site?
The color scheme works, but using my handy dandy ColorSchemer, it
seems as though not one color is truly web-safe. However, the
colors work in all browsers... at least on my PC.
Does anyone even know where the original premise of 216 web-safe
colors started? Do any of you feel limited by 216 colors? Do
any of you feel that its web-design sacrilege if colors other
than the 216 web-safe colors are used?
Care to share your feelings?
http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=164
Discuss with Bram Leland Scolnick
Name: ePrompter
Version: 2.0
Cost: Freeware
Website: http://www.eprompter.com
Download: http://www.eprompter.com
I have personally liked this program for a good couple of years
and have been lucky enough to meet the guys who are developing
it. What is it you ask? Well a program to check multiple email
addresses, especially the likes of Hotmail and Yahoo without the
need to enter the respective Web site.
The latest version even allows you to reply using ePrompter
(previously it only allowed you to read and delete your e-mail).
This is a really handy application to check those free e-mail
addresses you use as dummies to protect your real address. You
can check up to 16 accounts at any one time.
Give it a try if you haven't already. You have nothing to loose,
as it is free!
Review by Nathan Allan
To read the Sizzler Forums you do not need to be a member.
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you a few seconds to sign up!
- Go to: http://www.sizzlerforums.com
- Read the information and click on the REGISTER button
- Fill out the form
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