CSS2 Colors

CSS Level 2 defines several additional color names that represent the special system-specific colors used by the operating system. These names should look look very familiar to prior developers of “Fat Client” software, primarily VisualBASIC and PowerBuilder.

NOTE: These work with MSIE 5.0+ and Mozilla/Netscape 5.0+, prior browsers “try” to interpret these colors as hexadecimal RGB (Red/Green/Blue) equivalents, resulting in a huge mess.

The colors shown below will be mapped from your current operating system settings and as such MAY vary from computer to computer!

CSS 2 Color Name Example (Using Background-color) Description
ActiveBorder Active window border.
ActiveCaption Active window caption.
AppWorkspace Background color of multiple document interface.
Background Desktop background.
ButtonFace Face color for three-dimensional display elements.
ButtonHighlight Dark shadow for three-dimensional display elements (for edges facing away from the light source).
ButtonShadow Shadow color for three-dimensional display elements.
ButtonText Text on push buttons.
CaptionText Text in caption, size box, and scrollbar arrow box.
GrayText Grayed (disabled) text. This color is set to #000 if the current display driver does not support a solid gray color.
Highlight Item(s) selected in a control.
HighlightText Text of item(s) selected in a control.
InactiveBorder Inactive window border.
InactiveCaption Inactive window caption.
InactiveCaptionText Color of text in an inactive caption.
InfoBackground Background color for tooltip controls.
InfoText Text color for tooltip controls.
Menu Menu background.
MenuText Text in menus.
Scrollbar Scroll bar gray area.
ThreeDDarkShadow Dark shadow for three-dimensional display elements.
ThreeDFace Face color for three-dimensional display elements.
ThreeDHighlight Highlight color for three-dimensional display elements.
ThreeDLightShadow Light color for three-dimensional display elements (for edges facing the light source).
ThreeDShadow Dark shadow for three-dimensional display elements.
Window Window background.
WindowFrame Window frame.
WindowText Text in windows.

Cheers!

USS Helena (SSN-725)

I should add that I spent about 4.5 years of my life (from 1990-1995) living on a submarine. The ‘boat’ was stationed in Pearl Harbor, HI at that time and made several deployments in the Pacific Ocean. For you bubble-heads, it consisted of one NORPAC, two WESTPAC (the second one incuded some time in the Persian Gulf), and several EASTPAC deployments.
More information can be found here… http://www.skotfred.com/ssn725.php

I’ve made port calls in the following places…

  • San Diego, CA (Point Loma)
  • Bangor/Bremerton, WA
  • Victoria/Esquimalt, BC Canada
  • Nanoose, BC Canada
  • Guam
  • Yokosuka, Japan (south of Tokyo)
  • Sasebo, Japan (north of Nagasaki)
  • Chinhae, Korea
  • Pattaya Beach, Thailand
  • Singapore
  • Bahrain
  • Abu Dhabi, UAE
  • Dubai
  • Darwin, NT Australia

September 11th conspiracy?

Many of the events of this day have never felt quite right or even been ‘believable’ to me. The physics and timing of many of the events just seem too convenient, and have obviously been manipulated for the press-believing, conforming, masses of ‘sheep’ that are so common in this time and country. True patriots of the past fought against such oppression as exists now, but current ‘Americans’ have willingly given up so many of their rights in the face and fear of ‘terrorism’. I ask, just who are the terrorists, some Islamic extremists, or the elected goverment officials themselves?

I don’t make or take these statements lightly, I am a U.S. veteran of the first Gulf War and spent my entire life in a military family. I beleive in the jobs and lives of these people, I believe in the ‘country’. But I don’t believe the common ‘story’ that a bunch of terrorists planned the events of that day without assistance and full knowledge and support from high places in our own government.

Here’s a few sources I urge you to check…

Auto focus ‘first visible’ form field on page…

Occassionally there comes a need to set the focus within a web page to the first ‘visible’ form field, here’s the most convenient I’ve found thus far…

Implementation:
1. Add the following Javascript to the HEAD section of your page.

function formfocus() {
if(document.forms.length > 0)
{
var formElements = ["text", "checkbox", "radio", "select-one", "select-multiple", "textarea"];
var form = document.forms[document.forms.length-1];
for (var j = 0; j < form.elements.length; j++)
{
var field = form.elements[j];
for(var x = 0; x < formElements.length; x++)
{
if (field.getAttribute("type") == formElements[x])
{
field.focus();
return false;
}
}
}
}
}

2. Add the function call to the BODY tag…

<body onload="formfocus();">

That’s it! Enjoy!

Proxy Auto-config

There comes a need for many organizations (or individuals) to establish proxy servers on their network. This is usually done for reasons of security or network topology. While the use of proxy servers simpifies some aspects of networking, it comes at the cost of maintaining the browser configuration of every network device (usually browsers). Netscape provided a mechanism to automate much of this problem by allowing the browser to retrieve the proxy configuration from a centrally managed server.

The proxy autoconfig file is written in JavaScript, it should be a separate file that has the proper filename extension and MIME type when provided from a webserver.

The file must define the function:

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
...
}

1. FILENAME EXTENSION:
.pac

2. MIME TYPE:
application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig

3. REFERENCES:

4. ApacheHTTP config.

Add the following to the httpd.conf file:

Redirect permanent /wpad.dat {yourdomain}/proxy.pac
AddType application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig .pac

5. EXAMPLE:

/* 'proxy.pac' - This is the main function called by any browser */
function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{

if (isPlainHostName(host) || // No Proxy for Non FQDN names
shExpMatch(host, “*.localnet”) || // No Proxy for internal network
shExpMatch(host, “127.0.0.1”) || // No Proxy for LocalHost
shExpMatch(host, “localhost”) || // No Proxy for LocalHost
shExpMatch(host, “mailhost”) || // No Proxy for MailHost
dnsDomainIs(host, “giantgeek.com”) || // No Proxy
return “DIRECT”;

else {
return “PROXY proxy.giantgeek.com:8080; PROXY proxy.giantgeek.com:8090; PROXY proxy2.giantgeek.com:8080”;

} //End else

} // End function FindProxyForUrl

NOTE: Also see my ‘WPAD’ blog entry.

PHP on Apache 2.2 (Win32)

This came as a shock to me a while back, when i started evaluating an upgrade to Apache 2.2 from Apache 2.0.58. It seems that PHP doesn’t ship with a handler for Apache 2.2, as such after a huge headache and little bit of searching I found this article and downloads available at http://www.apachelounge.com/

It should also be added that other great binary assets are available at these sites/

JavaScript (intro)

JavaScript is one of the foundations of the internet as we currently know it, but is often misunderstood. It is the “J” in AJAX (to be discussed elsewhere), and is typically used for creation of interactive browser applications with client-side (browser) functionalities such as FORM validation and manipulation of onscreen elements via the DOM (to be discussed elsewhere).

JavaScript is more appropriately called ECMAScript, as it is a ‘Standard’ from the ECMA organization. Early incarnations of this specification were called LiveScript (by Netscape). Microsoft, in typical form, created a VisualBASIC like version that they called JScript, though while mostly compatible, has some proprietary differences.

Implementation:
It’s always preferred to add this to your HEAD section (or the equivalent in HTTP Headers):

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Script-Type” content=”text/javascript” />

To include external files containing JavaScript:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”/filename.js”></script>

To include XHTML compliant blocks of JavaScript in your page:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
<!– <![CDATA[
…
//]]> — >
</script>

DO NOT use the deprecated ‘language’ attribute:

<script language=”JavaScript”>
…
</script>

Prior works…

I started my Internet career while still in college and working at a small (<10 employees) marketing company (NEWMAX, which after I left became Explicit Marketing). Several of my early works are still available online, via their portfolio and/or via web archives such as The Internet Archive (aka Way Back Machine).

Here’s a sampling of some of the one’s I can remember.

http://www.newmax.com/
http://www.newmax.net/
http://www.thedigitaldoor.com/
http://www.fdccorp.com/
http://www.olssonroofing.com/
http://www.phoenixbuilders.com/
http://www.teschnerpainting.com/
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/
http://www.ahlithoprint.com/
http://www.bley.com/
http://www.bleymetrology.com/
http://www.bleyproducts.com/
http://www.scottlift.com/
http://www.daviesturner.com/
http://www.deforestgroup.com/
http://www.elkgrovechamber.org/
http://www.synergypeo.com/ (the-synergy-plan.com)
http://www.amer-comfort.com/
http://www.stoutequipment.com/
http://www.irvingpress.com/
http://www.dspins.com/
http://yourpad.com/
http://www.nuveaudesigns.com/
http://www.waucondaorchards.com/
http://www.hollistergrove.com/
http://www.rocketusa.com/
http://www.healthpromo.com/

<option disabled=”disabled”>?</option> not implemented in MSIE

This was a complete shock to me recently, even after years of ‘assuming’ that something this simple would be well supported… after all, this is pretty basic.

All modern browsers Mozilla (Firefox), Safari, Opera, even old Netscape (eg: 4.x) browsers work properly with the following code and comply with the W3C HTML specification making the value “Two” unable to be selected by the user within the browser… MSIE doesn’t comply and allows the user to select it!

<form name="example" action="#" method="get">
<select name="test">
<option value="1">One</option>
<option value="2" disabled="disabled">Two</option>
<option value="3" selected="selected">Three</option>
<option value="4" style="color:green;">Four</option>
</select>
</form>

This ‘failure’ to support standards actually seems to be due to the way the <select> tag is handled by the browser… it passes off control to the operating system (Windows). Obviously, Microsoft was able to pass along ‘other’ attributes, like ‘style’ in the example above, but chose to not support ‘disabled’.

In this case, the developer is left to find a solution… easiest is to just remove the unwanted value from the list of options, otherwise it requires extensive amounts of JavaScript.

Good luck!

NOTE: Tested on MSIE 6.0 (WinXP), hopefully Microsoft will fix this in MSIE7.