Ask Felgall

HTML doesn’t contain a single element combo box. To get the equivalent of a combo box in a web page you need to somehow combine a drop down list and an input field.

One way to do this is to provide an extra option in the drop down list that will make a separate input field appear so that values not in the list of the most common choices can be entered there. This means that it will not look much like a combo box but will at least work like on provided that your visitor has JavaScript enabled.

Dynamic Text Boxes

This article explains what hashing is and also goes through the terminology associated with it explaining what all the different terms mean.

What is Hashing?

The easiest way to add common content to all your web pages is to place that content into a separate file to be included into all the HTML pages before the pages are sent to the browser. How you do this depends on which server side languages you have available on your web server. In this tutorial we look at the command you need to use and naming convention needed for the page if you can use SSI or PHP.

Common HTML Content

My advanced form2mail script contains a number of security features that allow you to select how difficult you want to make it for the spambots to submit via your form.

Why wouldn’t you always choose the most secure level offered? Well the more secure that you make forms to defend against the spambots the more likely it is that you will prevent real people using the form as well. By offering several different levels of security the form allows you to start with a lower level of security that interferes with fewer people using the form and allows you to increase the security on those forms where you actually need a higher level of security to cut down on the spam.

Securing your Forms Against Spam

The original purpose of screensavers was to save the screen from burn-in due to displaying the same static image for too long and damaging the screen itself. Modern screens do not suffer from this problem and so screen savers are no longer required.

So why do people still use screensavers? Well those who use a screensaver that blanks the screen completely do so to try to reduce power usage. Those who require a password to turn off the screensaver use it to protect their computer if they forget to lock the computer before they leave it temporarily for whatever reason. Others just use it because they think the screensaver displayed looks interesting.

There is another use we can make of screensavers if we set it up so that we can run it instantly when we want to rather than having to wait and that is to be able to quickly hide what we have displayed on the screen if someone comes up to us while we are working on something we don’t want them to see. This tutorial takes you step by step through what you need to do to set this up.

Hiding Your Screen

The most likely item that you will want to add to your computer setup yourself is to add a new printer to your computer. This is not simply a matter of plugging a few things in, there are also a number of things you have to run on the computer itself in order for the programs running on your computer to be able to use the printer. Here are some step by step instructions on how to add a printer.

Installing a Printer

Sometimes the solution to a problem is extremely simple but not very obvious until you know what it is. One such simple solution relates to not losing the values already entered into a form when you want JavaScript to report validation errors.

Keeping Entered Values when Reporting an Error

p.s. why do so many people insist on misspelling lose (opposite of win) as loose (opposite of tight). Are people these days so reliant on spell checkers that they have forgotten how to spell even simple words?

Quite a few people visiting my web site send me questions about problems that they are having with their computer hardware because they can’t find an answer to their question on my site. The main reason why they can’t find the answer on my site is because the site is primarily about computer software and the extremely small number of pages dealing with hardware relate to specific problems that I have needed to resolve where I have had direct access to the computer in question either because the computer with the problem is mine or belongs to someone I know.

Hardware problems are almost impossible to properly diagnose without physically accessing the computer with the problem. The best that I can suggest for those with hardware problems is to follow through the basic steps themselves that I always start with when I need to resolve a hardware problem on a computer that I have in front of me.

Resolving Hardware Problems