These are some of the questions most frequently asked by readers of my web publishing and HTML books. As I get the time, I'll be adding even more. If you have any suggestions for questions or answers that might be helpful here, or if you have any corrections or emendations you'd like to suggest, please e-mail me at .
Internet Explorer 6 no longer supports sending mailto form responses. The latest versions of the Netscape browser (and the Mozilla browser) also no longer support sending mailto form responses. Earlier versions of Internet Explorer (5.5 and earlier) only had partial support for mailto forms.
If you want to test out sending and receiving mailto form responses, you can download and install Netscape Communicator 4.78 from ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/communicator/english/4.78/windows/windows95_or_nt/complete_install. (Note: If asked to make it your default mail program, just click no or cancel.)
If you want to publish forms to the Web, your only choice is to use a CGI form. You can check if your Web host provides a form-processing CGI script you can use. If so, just follow their instructions. You can also sign up to use a free third-party form-processing script -- they usually include advertising on the submission confirmation page. You can find lists of free third-party form-processing scripts at these two script directories:
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In Windows, display of file extensions is turned off by default. In the Open dialog box, you'll just see the name of the file ("mypage") along with the program icon associated with the file type, instead of the full file name ("mypage.html"). To see the file extension, you need to turn on display of file extensions. In Windows 98, for instance, do the following:
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Remember to do the following:
You can also open a local HTML file in your browser by dragging and dropping the file on your browser's window.
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In Windows Notepad, the Open File dialog window defaults to displaying only text files (with .txt file extensions). To see other file types, including HTML files (with .html or .htm file extensions), select All Files as the file type.
If you're just using the file name of an image as its URL, make sure that both your HTML file and the images you want to display inline are saved in the same folder. If you want to link to images in a different folder from the linking file's folder, you need to use a relative URL (src="images/myimage.html" or src="../images/myimage.html" for instance).
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Look for an unclosed PRE element. Scroll back up to through your HTML file in your text editor and make sure any <PRE> start tag is followed by a </PRE> end tag.
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You've almost certainly forgot to close off a CENTER tag or a DIV tag (with center-alignment or right-alignment set). Scroll back up through your HTML file and make sure you don't have any unclosed CENTER or DIV tags.
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Internet Explorer recognized the BGSOUND attribute for the BODY tag for playing background sound files, but because this is a Microsoft extension and not an official HTML tag attribute, Navigator does not recognize it. To play a background sound file in both Navigator and Internet Explorer, you need to use the EMBED element.
To hear the background sound file, the visitor will need to have an appropriate plug-in player installed.
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File and folder names on UNIX servers are case senstive. Thus, mypage.html and MyPage.HTML, for instance, are treated on a UNIX server as two separate files. The solution is to make sure that any file or folder names used in URLs match exactly the actual file or folder names. I try to stick to using only lowercase letters in file names.
The other thing to look for is spaces in your site's folder and file names. While Internet Explorer will recognize folder and file names with spaces on your local computer, a UNIX server will not (nor will Netscape Navigator). Eliminate any spaces in your site's folder and file names, substituting underscores (_) if you wish, and then edit your URLs to match.
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The Frame element's NAME attribute and the A element's TARGET attribute are case-sensitive and must agree. If the FRAME tag has name="window", then the linking A tag must have target="window" (and not target="Window") for the link target to be displayed in the named frame.
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If display of file extensions is turned off in Windows, saving an HTML file with Text Documents selected as the file type will result in saving a file with two file extensions (mypage.html.txt, for instance). When this file is opened in many browsers (but not in Internet Explorer), you will only see the raw codes, because it is being assumed it is a text file, not an HTML file. You also won't be able access this page once it has been published to the Web, unless you add the hidden extension to the file name.
There are two workarounds for this. The first, and best, is to turn on display of file extensions (see the earlier question and answer on this). The second is to select All Files as the file type before saving your HTML file.
The U.K. keyboard for the Macintosh does not have the "#" (hash) character at the Shift+3 position, but has the "£" (British pound) symbol instead. To insert the "#" character using a U.K. keyboard, just press Option+3 (or Alt+3). The "#" character is required for inserting numerical entity codes, RGB hex codes, and fragment identifiers into HTML files.
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The Mac version of Netscape Navigator defaults to a gray background. (Internet Explorer defaults to a white background.) To change this setting in Navigator: Select Preferences from the View menu, and then click on Colors (under Appearance). Click on the Background box, click the Crayon Picker icon, and then click the white crayon (upper-left).
To make sure that a white background is displayed in all browsers, insert bgcolor="white" and text="black" in the BODY element.
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Steve Callihan
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