DR. WEBSITE
Scrolling Status-Bar Tickers: Nifty or a Just a Nuisance?
Dear Dr. Website®: I've seen a bunch of sites that have custom messages that scroll across the bottom border of the browser window. How can I create this kind of scrolling text?
The most common way to incorporate scrolling text that appears in the status bar at the bottom of the browser window is via JavaScript.
You can cut and paste the applet's source code from a page that uses such a ticker, making sure to initialize it inside the <HEAD> tag and call the function in the <BODY> tag.
But before you add this capability to your pages, you should note its potential design problems. Many end users complain about the way these scrolling status-bar tickers interfere with other status-bar messages. For example, the scrolling ticker can interfere with the display of URLs that should appear when users pass a mouse over hyperlinks.
Getting Started With JavaScript
Dear Dr. Website®: I need to come up with some JavaScript enhancements for a client in a hurry. How hard is it to learn JavaScript without already knowing Java or C first?
While it's not really a prerequisite, it's helpful to understand the basics of Java or C before learning JavaScript. If you can spare the time, try picking up a beginner's book on C to gain a crash course in its command and syntax, since JavaScript uses some of the same conventions.
That said, if you need to supply JavaScript programs in a hurry, you'll find there are many resources available to you to make that job easier. There are a number of comprehensive JavaScript computer books in print.
JavaScript Index is one Web resource comprising links to online tutorials, book publishers, mailing lists, and sites that make good use of JavaScript. Gamelan's list of JavaScript links offers another index for finding JavaScript resources. One of the most useful ways to gain programming skills is to study the work of other programmers, and viewing the source code of JavaScript-enhanced pages will afford you a wonderful opportunity to do so. You may also find it useful to subscribe to the Usenet newsgroup comp.lang.javascript for ongoing news and discussion of JavaScript.
Creating Adjacent Tables
Dear Dr. Website®: I have a Web page with two tables that will only seem to display with one on top of the other. Is there an easy way to make them appear side by side?
One useful method for achieving this effect is to create tables within tables. To create a table that contains two smaller tables side by side, for example, you would need to put the code for each mini-table within the <TD> tags of individual cells in the same row of the larger table. You can eliminate the border around the larger, encompassing table by setting the <BORDER> attribute in the <TABLE> tag to 0.
Here's an example of two tables displaying side by side on a Web page, followed by the code for making the effect work:
Cell 1 Cell 2 Cell 3 Cell 4
Cell 5 Cell 6 Cell 7 Cell 8
<HTML>
<BODY>
<TABLE CELLPADDING=5 BORDER=0>
<TR>
<TD>
<TABLE BORDER=1>
<TR><TD>Cell 1</TD>
<TD>Cell 2</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Cell 3</TD>
<TD>Cell 4</TD></TR>
</TABLE>
</TD>
<TD>
<TABLE BORDER=1>
<TR><TD>Cell 5</TD>
<TD>Cell 6</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Cell 7</TD>
<TD>Cell 8</TD></TR>
</TABLE>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Please Send your site design and development questions to drweb@internet.com, or visit the Ask Dr. Website page.
Reprinted from Web Week, Volume 2, Issue 12, August 19, 1996 © internet.com Corporation All rights reserved. Keywords: HTML Date: 19960819
