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| *** THE BIGNOSEBIRD.COM NEWSLETTER *** |
| Placed at your virtual door in beautiful plain text |
| Be sure to stop by http://bignosebird.com/ today! |
| Everything You Need to Create and Maintain Great Websites |
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| December 31, 2000 Issue #10 |
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GREETINGS!
Here is the tenth issue of the BigNoseBird.Com low volume newsletter.
Our thanks for allowing us to add just one more deperately needed
item to your inbox. Now filling over 15,000 inboxes!
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JUST A YEAR AGO TODAY...
Remember Y2K? It was a year ago today that we were all sitting around
waiting for anything from nothing to the end of the world to happen.
You still here? I am.
Are you M3 compliant? According to most experts, the 3rd Millenium
starts tomorrow. Just leave some hay out for the four guys and their
horses. ;-)
This has been a rather quiet year at BNB. Quiet is nice. I promised
a low volume newsletter, but I hope to get more than two out next
year.
We hope that everyone had a great 2000, and hopefully you have an
even better 2001.
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ESSENTIAL TAGS
Ever wish you had a usable reference of the major HMTL tags?
http://bignosebird.com/tags.shtml contains complete explanations
and options for the 25 or so essential tags.
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SECURITY FOR YOUR VISITORS
One of the nice features in the new MSIE browsers is the autocomplete
funcion to make it easier for people completing forms. Of course,
it is not exactly the greatest thing having peoples passwords and
login id information on your forms pop up when other people use
their computer. To turn off this feature so that your visitor's
privacy is protect, set up your FORM tag as follows:
<FORM AUTOCOMPLETE="OFF" METHOD="POST" ACTION="/cgi-bin/script.cgi">
Of course, METHOD and ACTION will vary according to your needs.
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SECURITY FIX FOR SURVEY SCRIPT
According to the good folks at Bugtrak, there is a little glitch
in the handling of input on the BNB Survey Script. I was not able
to duplicate the problem, but please fix your code using the modification
below.
Find the line:
$SURVEY_NAME=$fields{'survey_name'};
then replace it with the following:
if ($fields{'survey_name'}=~/^([-\@\w.]+)$/){
$SURVEY_NAME=$fields{'survey_name'};
}
else {exit;}
If you wish to download the script, visit:
http://bignosebird.com/carchive/survey.shtml
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THE FAVICON.ICO TRICK FOR MSIE 5.0
(a reprint do to popular demand lately)
A while back I noticed in my error logs a lot of requests for
a file called "favicon.ico". I noticed that it only occured with
Microsoft IE 5.0. At first glance I thought it might be some
strangeness on the part of the browser. So, I made up a little
icon with the likeness of our favorite bird, stuck it in my main
HTML directory, and got a copy of MSIE 5. When I visited the
site, magically the icon appeared in the address line next to
the URL- as well as on the bookmarks page.
If you don't have an icon editor, IconForge by Cursor Arts, Inc.
Stop by http://www.cursorarts.com/ca_if.html to pick up your
copy.
Make a small graphic, save it as "favicon.ico" and FTP it up
to your main HTML directory. Your error log will be smaller and
your readers will see your icon instead of the "web page icon".
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SPEED VS. BEAUTY
If you want a few pointers on when to GIF vs. JPEG, please
check out http://bignosebird.com/losewait.shtml for some useful
information and illustrative examples on how to get the best
look with the least bandwidth.
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GO FIGURE...
Have you surfed the web on a cellphone yet? Just for the fun of
it I played around with WML. After a few fits and starts I got
it working. What I can't figure out, is that everyone thinks
this is so great- yet they make fun of me when I use Lynx
(text browser) on my notebook when using the wireless modem.
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COOL THINGS
Clowning around with the tech crew at work the other day, I was
introduced to a VERY cool site- http://www.cafepress.com/
What makes this site very slick is that in a matter of a few
minutes, you can set up an on-line store featuring your artwork
printed on shirts, mugs, mousepads, etc. The presentation looks
great- especially considering the fact none of it exists until
somebody buys it. Check it out, it costs you nothing. You even
get to mark up your merchandise. Visit our little store at:
http://www.cafepress.com/bignose/
All I have seen is a T-Shirt from the site, so I can't vouch
for the quality of all the items.
***IMPORTANT NOTE**** as of January 16, 2000, CentralInfo
suspended the program mentioned below. Existing domains work,
but new ones cannot be added.
Another free service I have been taking advantage of, first at
work and now with the BNB related stuff is the FREE DNS
provided by CentralInfo.Net, http://www.centralinfo.net/
It takes about 2 minutes to set up either a master or slave
zone information is almost immediately available. Even if you
have your own DNS servers (like we do), having additional
servers located away from your network is a great safety
thing- as in your network getting toasted and having to
quickly get set up elsewhere.
I have been using CentralInfo for over six months with no
gripes.
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SHAMELESS BEGGING
Okay, no pride here! If you see someplace that you feel that
BigNoseBird.Com should be listed, you have my permission to
handle the submission. BNB's popularity is due almost completely
to word of mouth recommendations, and any assistance you could
provide if you feel BNB worthy would be greatly appreciated.
<A HREF="http://bignosebird.com">Bignosebird.com: Everything you
need to build great web sites- for free!</A>
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THE REALLYBIG NETWORK
http://www.Reallybig.com
http://www.BigNoseBird.com
http://www.FontPool.com
http://www.GraphxKingdom.com
http://www.Free-Backgrounds.com
http://www.DHTMLShock.com
http://www.Java-Scripts.net
http://www.TopWebJobs.com
http://www.SeeHits.com.com
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