One benefit to the way that my shopping cart script now works is that it makes it much easier to hide unwanted fields in the order form without any need to modify the associated JavaScript.

Changing the Order Form

Yes I have had the JavaScript shopping cart listed on the site almost since I first started the site. What is significant about it now is that I have gone right through the script updating it from the way that it was coded to work with the browsers around at the time I first wrote it (Such as IE3 and Netscape 4) and have changed it to take advantage of the less obtrusive way that modern browsers allow.

JavaScript Shopping Cart

One topic I haven’t added to in quite a while is the one on C++ programming. In this article I discuss how to start up a second program from within a C++ program. There are two ways of doing this depending on how you want the two programs to interact.

Using EXEC and SPAWN to Link to Another Program

One of the big benefits to Object Oriented Programming is being able to define classes that can be reused from one project in another. A class library takes this even further by providing a prewritten set of classes that can be used in all your projects.

What is a Class Library?

For anyone using db2 databases, there will be occasions where you need to perform general processing from the command line. Here is a list of all the db2 Commands available for you to use.

Unless you are a professional web developer and designer all rolled into one, there will be occasions where you will want someone else to do some work on your site for you. In some cases you may be able to get them to do the work for you, send you the files, and upload them yourself. Other times, particularly if you have little knowledge of how the web works you will need to give them access to upload the files for you. You wont want to give them access to everything in your hosting account.

The solution to this is to set up an FTP account for them on your hosting that gives them access only to the folder that they need access to in order to upload the files. This doesn’t negate the need to make sure you give the job to someone you can trust but it does help limit the damage they can do if it turns out that they made a mistake. Besides which any legitimate developer or designer will not want access to any more than is necessary to do the job. If something breaks in an area they don’t have access to then there isn’t even a possibility that they could be considered responsible.

Limited FTP Accounts with cPanel

The mainframe sort utility program can do a lot more than just sort the records in your file. It can also be used to test for and remove duplicates.

Removing Duplicates Using DFSORT

Why worry about validating your HTML? Well there are a number of reasons why it is best to avoid using HTML that doesn’t validate.

Invalid HTML

Most books on web design assume that you have no knowledge of creating web pages apart perhaps from knowing some HTML. This book takes a different approach and assumes that the person is already a web developer. It then builds on what they already know about how server side processing interacts with the web page to explain the design concepts.

Find out more about what I think of the book Web Design For Developers.

The one time that you don’t need to compare values to make a decision is when the value is what is known as a Boolean value. A Boolean value is either true or false (those are the only two values it can have) and we can therefore make decisions based on the value of a Boolean without having to compare it to anything else. We can of course also assign the result of a comparison to a Boolean value for later use.

Assigning Boolean Values

Most of the time in making decisions you need to compare something with something else. The tutorials on how JavaScript makes decisions therefore begins with information on how JavaScript handles comparing two values.

Comparison Operators

Back in March 2007 a book publisher asked me to write a new book on JavaScript for them. I had the book all planned out and had written draft copies of several chapters before deciding that I just wasn’t going to have enough time to write the book in any acceptable amount of time. I therefore ceased working on the book but had a whole lot of material from the introductory chapters which I had been working on. I have now converted the content of those chapters that were closest to their final form into a series of online tutorials instead. The material on decision making was intended to be chapter three of the 23 chapters in the book.

JavaScript Making Decisions