If you ended up on this page, most probably, you are running HTMLDog’s Sons of Suckerfish Dropdowns and you did some compatibility check either by using an old Windows XP computer running multiple IEs, some virtual machine or using MSIE’s developer tools changing browser mode or document mode. I had the same problem with another website and thought I found the solution by Matt of Built From Source although the fix was not working for a 2nd level drop down. What happened was when I initial hover on the top bar menu and the first dropdown is displayed, all second level dropdowns also appear all at the same time.

If Matt’s simple fix to the SuckerFish Dropdown IE7 issue was this:

#menu li:hover, #menu li.hover {
position: static;
}

I have a simple fix too for the second level. But first thing to mention is, I think the second element #menu li.hover did not really do anything since there is no hover class in my code. So I disregarded that and simply changed my code to this:

#nav li:hover ul{

position: static;

}

#nav li:hover ul ul{

position: relative;

}

And like Matt’s solution… VIOLA! The second level is fixed! Still thanks to Matt for giving me a place to start and not relying on IE conditional comments or CSS hacks for IE problems.

Ronnie Garcia's web design of his personal website.

Design stolen exactly how it looks like, mainly just minor color changes

Now as of current blog press time, there is another website stealing his design, depending on the time you read this, you may probably not see the same design if they decided to change their design. But as time of writing, this German website Webteque.de just copied the site almost exactly the same.
 

Webteque.de, the Web Design Copycat Stealer

Even the minute web design elements on the page, all the same

Check the calendar date of the last article.

Copied calendar date on latest articles

The menu, contact form, headers, subheaders, breadcrumb, links, sitemap link, all the same.

Comparison of Ronniesan.com and WebTeque.de

Take a closer look at the stolen web design, check the links

List of links on Ronnie Garcia's Site and on Webteque.de

WTF, *LOL*, he copied the exact same links. Clearly, this is not how to steal someones web design. Actually that is how he found out, the links were aside from being popular web design related pages, they were also linking out to friends. And one of them, Usability Expert Jegan Chen pointed this out saying he noticed WebTeque.de linking to him and appeared in his referer logs. It was Jegan that told Ronnie about it.

Try to appear more legitimate with an older copyright year.

WebTeque.de's old copyright date with a new copied design.

He just stole the web design and is not yet finished, and claims to have a copyright on it since 2008. Well just for the benefit of the doubt, you can say the copyright was for the content and not for the design.

Inspiration or Stealing?

I had my share of active web designing days from 1997 to 2006, today I do more SEO work now and with some occassional web design and development side projects and I guess many web designers have looked at other websites for “inspiration” where you take a few things here and there, but never have I did a straight out copy of everything and just modify the code. To me that is stealing already, but of course this is my opinion and I know this is a debatable issue. Some can say the Internet is free, the source is free, whatever, but I think in design, there is a clear distinction between a stolen copy of a design and a design inspired from some other design. What do you think?

XML Cake!

Hat tip to MoinAnjum‘s  A New Morning!

Uploading files to a web server for whatever purpose can be done in several ways.

• FTP
• SSH
• Web-Based Upload

Although each method has an advantage and disadvantage in using them, for many content management systems (CMS), often these are all web-based user interfaces where when required to upload some assets such as images, software binary files for downloading, PDF files and other files, they are all done within the CMS interface that will rely on server-side scripting languages such as PHP, ASP, JSP or others to handle the file uploading. And each time a file is going to be uploaded, it will use plain HTML on the frontend for the form where each uploaded file is entered by hitting the browse button to be able to navigate your local computer and choose the files you need to upload.

With the use of Java, applets can be created where drag and drop files from the local computer folders to the web server are possible for file uploading.

All file uploading methods are not that user-friendly to the non-technical user

I personally know many people that love Multiply mainly because of their Photo Gallery. And personally, I like iFoto, Plogger and ZenPhoto way better than Multiply. My wife is one of the users that loves the Multiply photo gallery and they main reason is the convenience of running the Java powered file uploader.

They simply use a web-based interface and there is no need to press any browse button and navigate to where the files are and you have to do this 1 by 1 and they just drag the images into the webpage that is running the Java applet.

Upload using Drag and Drop JUpload Java Web Applet

Upload by dragging and dropping files into your own web server or any web hosting account using JUpload. With JUpload, you can turn a webpage into a drag and drop FTP page. This gives you the great convenience of multiple file selection for uploading as opposed to one by one uploading of files.

A colleague of mine at work, Patrick Alcisto, asked me how a getElementByClass is done in JavaScript since getElementByID exists in JavaScript but getElementbyClass does not exist. And I have been using a standard script ever since 2004 that I just always have handy in my previous work, but sometimes, looking and remembering which websites I applied it on takes some time. So just to make it easy for me find the code when I need it, might as well post it on my blog so it is easy to find. Check the sample getElementsByClass code below:

The getElementByClass example code.

/* getElementByClass
/**********************/

var allHTMLTags = new Array();

function getElementByClass(theClass) {

//Create Array of All HTML Tags
var allHTMLTags=document.getElementsByTagName(“*”);

//Loop through all tags using a for loop
for (i=0; i<allHTMLTags.length; i++) {

//Get all tags with the specified class name.
if (allHTMLTags[i].className==theClass) {

//Place any code you want to apply to all
//pages with the class specified.
//In this example is to “display:none;” them
//Making them all dissapear on the page.

allHTMLTags[i].style.display=’none’;

}
}
}

Just a brief explanation to the less knowledgeable in JavaScript how this sample code of getElementByClass works is you are simply taking note of all HTML tags present on the page. And going through a loop check each tag, placing them in an array. Then for each member of the array, check if any of them has a class name. And check if it is the class you are specifying.

Feel free to use the code above and share to the world.

Since this is a function, you just tie it up to any event like an onclick or onmouseover on within other functions. Here is an example where someone clicks on a link and will apply the JavaScript code in getElementByClass to a div.

<div class=”whatever”>…</div>

…

<a href=”…” onclick=”getElementByClass(‘whatever’);”><img src=”…”></a>

Just a small note, not all browsers support all JavaScript versions. This script may not work in older browsers. Where getElementByID will not work either. Another note is if you did a copy and paste to the codes above, be sure to change the doublequotes and ( ” )  single quotes ( ‘ ) with the plain text ones so you get no errors.

View Larger Map

Here is also a map of Aparri.

View Larger Map

The two maps above can now show you major roads. Though these maps are not yet as detailed as the Google Map for the United States where it will really give you driving directions, I am still impressed with the development. I can say that this is indeed a good start and I appreciate the effort that Google is making to provide the users a more effective and efficient map. What will it be like when someday all the roads in the Philippines will be fully mapped by Google? Will it be the end of getting lost in the middle of nowhere?

In my point of view, if US government computers have really been hacked, it is not necessarily China who has done the hacking. Why is this so? It’s because when you hack into a computer, you will leave tracks and authorities can trace these tracks and will lead them to the hacker. In the US, the systems are so interconnected and if anyone does a cybercrime, the crook can be easily traced. As many of us know, all computers in the world basically use the same system, software and servers, whether Linux or Windows, Apache or IIS and all have the same security problems. Thus, it is of high probability that an unsecure server of China may have been hacked and was used to hack into the US government computers therefore hiding tracks to the real culprits. Who knows, the crooks may have actually come from England?

I would also like to voice out my opinion regarding this issue. Lately, I’ve noticed that China has been the center of controversy for various issues like Mattel products from China recalled, some food containing formalin, Hong Kong residents being hesitant to buy poultry from China and recently, this alleged hacking activity. For me, the “Sleeping Giant” is slowly becoming a powerful and influential country that could rock the whole world with its tremendous power. Do you think that these events are some of the means of stopping China in becoming a superpower? Are Chinese people really hacking into US government computers? Or are there just lame people (not necessarily Chinese or from China) who want to destroy China’s credibility?

Now check this enhanced checkbox using CSS and Javascript. It looks better.

Impressed? But how was this possible?

I stumbled upon this page on the Internet showing how you can change the boring checkbox into an exciting one. What’s great about this is that you no longer have to change your existing code. By embedding this code, you can easily customize the look of the checkboxes any way you want.

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

Don’t you think that this is simply amazing? You can’t do this with plain HTML but with the use of a simple code, you can now make your checkboxes look better and exciting.

This custom checkbox is one of the examples of the importance of CSS. Most modern websites now use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), either full CSS or partial. Before CSS even existed, when we do major design updates we either change all the pages, taking so much time. But with CSS, work has become easier and faster.

Doing hard reboot on the server may help and also depends if your data center offers some reboot facility for you. but doing this all the time may not be the best way to fix the problem if the only problem is CPanel and the Web Host Manager are not working and only show a blank page and the rest of the server still works perfectly. It’s probably best to simply restart CPanel only.

We assume you are a dedicated server owner or co-located server owner running a server with CPanel, so again, we assume you have shell access. So login to your server by SSH, and I do assume you have an SSH software of course. If not and you are using a Windows machine, Putty works fine. Login as root to your server and simply run this:

/etc/init.d/cpanel restart

And it will restart all your CPanel related services and simply wait until it’s done.