Phoenix Network Forums

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Welcome.
Tim(a admin here) is also from australia

alex.e.t wrote:Hey, My name's Alex Tworowsky and i'm 13 but that really doesn't stop me from doing things super geeky. Anyway as you may know from the topic title i'm an aussy, from Melbourne and i'm into the following things

PHP - My very first scripting language
HTML/Javascript - Kinda goes with PHP

C/C++ - I love this and am hoping to learn more, i currently am writing some small scripts for iPod Linux, yes linux on the ipod (uclinux)

Hello Alex, and welcome to the forums. You seem to have a similar history. I started coding (in QBasic) with 11. Currently I'm at C++ and I love TCL (has nothing to do with Eggdrop; I don't write Eggdrop scripts, I just love the language). =)

However, I never had the money for things like iPod. About 6 months ago, I had a Pentium 1 with 233 MHz and 128 MB RAM. Well... roofers have the worst roofs. =D

alex.e.t wrote:my friend (windows lover) is tring to get me into programming with asp ...

I can't understand how people could love Windows. Is there a secret Bugs-Malfunctions-SecurityHoles=Off switch?

alex.e.t wrote:I have a website which i use for learning perl and php (http://kerfu.com) it goes on and off like every week. i can never just keep one design i have to have many. thats another thing, i like to design websites and then ask people if they are good or not, but i never get a straight answer, probably cus there not really to good...

I can't really tell what it's good for. Regarding design, it's not bad, but I force my own fonts in my browser settings, so your page isn't well aligned. I've made a screenshot for you.

alex.e.t wrote:i would like a shell so i could learn how to use linux plus i would be nice to have a live chat room on my site using irc but if thats not alowed it would still be good for me to learn in a real linux enviroment

Regarding chats, what I recommend is IRC - always. But I fear, you're not going to be allowed to have an IRCd running on your shell account. However, a commercial shell account where you can run a full featured IRC service costs like 3..5 Euros (= 6..7 Dollars). That's the better solution in this case.

alex.e.t wrote:let me mention that i hate, absolutaly hate :( php chat that just refresh's the page i don't know why but i hate it, thats how i got into flash.

Maybe you just hate bad programming style like I do. PHP chats are a bad misinterpretation of the purposes of HTTP and PHP. However, use IRC here. Many people won't even visit a web chat.

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alex.e.t wrote:Could you please elaborate on the design problems(mm_freak), i would really enjoy like some guides tip etc but thanks for that little tip i shall work around this.............eventually

The problem is that your site is intended to work with a font called Bell MT, which is not installed on most hosts (and browser configurations mostly don't allow downloading additional fonts, but your site doesn't use that feature anyway). It's intended to work with the font and font size that you dictate. If the font size changes slightly, then it will look like what you see on the screenshot.

You shouldn't use third party fonts for web pages. Best would be to use font names such as fixed or sans in the stylesheet. You don't have to do without own fonts, but you need to specify alternatives. Example:

Code: Select all

font-family: Bell MT, helvetica, serif;

This means: use Bell MT if available, otherwise use helvetica if available, or as a last resort use serif, which is available in all CSS-compliant browsers. It's not a font directly, but rather instructs the browser to use a font without sans.

Also I noticed that you use pixel sizes much too often. This makes your site appear terribly malformed in not-so-popular browsers.

alex.e.t wrote:by the way the tree in the left block of my site, i'm still trin to get HTML_TreeMenuXL to work properly.

Why don't you write it yourself? Shouldn't be too difficult. There are a few XML parsers for PHP, so you could use XML to define the tree and PHP to render it.

alex.e.t wrote:ok so i found this thing called AJAX that may work to some degree but.... never beat IRC :)

Use IRC. You're going to use Java or give pointers to IRC clients anyway. =)

alex.e.t wrote:ne way this windows buddy of me, keeps finding way's to shut me down about C/C++ Java and anything else i come up with to combat his damn VB 8 or what eva

Don't listen to him. Visual Basic is easy to use, that's true, but you're not going to write anything serious in it.

alex.e.t wrote:could you please tell me about what i can actually do with this shell in terms of chat IRC (eggdrop etc)

If it's only secondary, you can run an eggdrop and if the database isn't too big, you could also run nickname/channel/... services. However, there should also be something very valuable. Then you have a better chance to get a shell account.

However, seeing that your site is hosted on a private web-space provider, don't you have shell access to there? I guess you would have much more freedom there, assuming that you're paying for your web-space.

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alex.e.t wrote:..., do you have any advice of where i could get large space that allows this (shell :), php, basic scripting ... and like able to host things like eggdrop all combined with web hosting (hope it even exists)

Usually when you have shell access, all other things are included. I don't know of any providers in your region, and I think, you won't be happy with German providers. =)

It starts at 10 Euros here, which is about 12..13 Dollars. Just look around.

alex.e.t wrote:could you suggest an alternative to pixl sizes

Vertical pixel sizes are okay, if they're not too large. Horizontal pixel sizes are okay, if they only cover a very small area (like a logo in the upper left/right corner). Otherwise, use percentages ("80%" instead of "700px"). Don't combine pixel sizes and percentages on the same row or in the same column. If there is no specific reason to specify a size, don't do it; let the browser decide.

However, there is nothing too bad about pixel sizes, but they make your page dependent on the screen resolution (and sometimes on the browser), and that's bad web-design. Even your login page is totally messed up with resolutions less than 1024x768. Just have a look at it yourself. Set the side margins to 2% or 3% and the directory tree on the left to 15%. Don't give a specific size for the login cell. Then this problem is solved.

alex.e.t wrote:any more advice.... :) lol

Yes. =)

Another thing that I've noticed is that your pages are written in XHTML, but the server sends them out with the text/html MIME-type. You should rewrite your PHP scripts to send them as application/xhtml+xml instead. This is the Content-Type header line. That's not too bad, but even modern browsers are going to render your page as HTML, because they do what the server tells them to do.

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No problem. I like your current design. =)

Any hot girls living in Australia?

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Alex,

I just went to your site and it appears that your index page is missing. Don't know if you are doing maintenance or not. Just wanted to let you know. If you your provider allows you to turn off directory listings, I would certainly do it.

safety wrote:If you your provider allows you to turn off directory listings, I would certainly do it.

Why?

mm_freak wrote:Why?

That way if an index page is left off, the directory can't be viewed. For example, if an artist has a site and leaves the index page off of his gallery directory, all photos and other directories, if they don't have index pages, are visible. Some sample photos will undoubtably be visible on the site, but the artist may have other photos for paying customers.

mm_freak, don't you think this could possibly be a security risk?