The Web Forms Exercise

The Web form that we will be building on Monday is here. I'll be posting more about it before the class, along with the PHP script to process the form, and the PHP script generator to create the script. So check back here in the next day or so.

See also:

• Creating Forms in Dreamweaver CS4, an EZ-PZ starter-offer, on Best WebDesgnz. Be sure to click over to the next tutorial on form validation.
  
• Dreamweaver CS4 Widgets. A video tutorial from Layers Magazine.
• How to Create a feedback form in Dreamweaver CS4, by Christopher Heng, on thesitewizard.
  

Further reading:

• Validate e-mail addresses using PHP--a very thorough procedure, on Soaptray.
• Form Validation--Make Sure Your Forms are Filled In, by Jennifer Kyrnin, on About.com
• The Web Forms section of the Curmudgeon's Archives.
  

The Archives Are Moving

Google will shortly cease supporting the file types used in the Curmudgeon's archives. And so, the archive is being removed to Freehostia. Some interruption may occur when you click on the archives, until the porting process has been completed.

UPDATE:
The files have been moved. Some minor anomalies have occurred. Please report any oddities that you encounter.

Preserving Class Work

Two quick and simple Web-based file upload utilities provide good alternative methods to using a jump drive for transferring files back and forth from school to a home computer.

If you have properly defined your site at school, all of your work files will be contained within a root folder. Find this folder on your computer under "work." Right click on it, and then select the option to create an archive. A zip file will be created, having the same name as that of your root folder. You may then send this zip file to yourself over the Net.

The easiest of these file transfer sites is called mailbigfile. After the mailbigfile Web page opens, enter your email address, then upload your zip file, using the file picker. An email will be sent to you with a link to your stored zip file. Be sure to download the zip file as soon as you arrive home, because files are deleted after a couple of days.

Another good service is called Dropbox. This service provides up to 2GB of free online storage so that you can use it as a backup for your projects as well as a means to transfer files. Your Dropbox account is accessible from any computer connected to the Internet. These files are never deleted by the host. Dropbox acts as a virtual hard disk drive, but located on the Internet instead of on your local computer.

If you save your zip files after unarchiving them, you will have a good backup of older states of your project.

See also:

• This older post.
• filesovermiles, a p2p file transfer site.
• TeamViewer, an outstanding commercial remote desktop application that is free for non-commercial use.
  

The SPAM-O-LATOR is now in Beta

The SPAM-O-LATOR broadcast email generator is now in Beta. The first batch of emails was sent out, with a 50% rate of rejection--presumably by SPAM filters. The Web Curmudgeon Foundation, developer of the application, joins Craig's List and The Pirate Bay in taking no responsibility for the way in which the software they develop is used.

The SPAM-O-LATOR is being developed in Flash CS4, PHP, and MySQL. The application parses an LDIF file, pulling out the names and email addresses, then populates these into a table. Next, it uploads an HTML file to a server. This file comprises the message to be sent. Contained within this HTML file is a tag . The PHP script regexes out this tag, and looping over the database, replaces the tag with the first name of one of the entries in the database, thus creating the illusion of personalization. It next writes the headers, mails out the file, and then goes to the next name.

UPDATE:

After the SPAM-O-LATOR got caught is a SPAM filter, it was modified to send out multiple mails within specific domains at intervals. The user enters a time interval. Multiiple emails to that domain are stored in a list, then sent out one-by-one at the timed interval specified.

Beta testers are welcome. Please contact the Curmudgeon by using the form at the bottom of this page, or by IMing him using the chat badge in the upper right part of the page.

FormMail Script-Generator Update

The Cinch-O-Matic PHP script generator for Web forms has been updated in Flash 10. Rather than using a clunky round trip to the server to generate the PHP script, the application now writes the file directly to the local hard disk.

De-dforking a Mac Font

I got an Indesign package from a client with a curious file in the fonts folder that had the extension .dfont. When I opened the INDD file, I got a missing font notice for that face. Whereas the OT fonts went right into my Windows font folder, the dfonts were thrown out faster than Rush Limbaugh getting ejected from an Earth Day celebration.

After scaring my dog with an outburst of invective about Macs, I went to Google to find out what a dfont is. Long story short: it's a tricked-up TrueType font put into a kind of file called a data fork. This I found after two or three clicks on the Google return for the query "dfont Mac." Regular computers can't use these fonts.

Next, I Googled "convert dfont to windows font," which yielded a lot of commercial font-conversion software. I recently gave all of the money I had to Adobe, with none left for any more commercial software. I clicked through a number of these returns until I came upon DfontSplitter, an open source application that converts Mac dfonts into normal TrueType fonts.

I downloaded the application, installed it, converted the offending font, re-opened the INDD file, and found no warning for that particular face. Of course, there were a lot of other issues, but nothing a few clicks around Google couldn't resolve.

WARNING

Just as Rush Limbaugh and the security guards at the Earth Day celebration might not see eye-to-eye about how things should be, so too with a converted font on a different operating system. Your best bet here is to make a PDF of the output for your client to examine to be certain that the font is behaving properly.

Transition To A New Machine

EASIER THAN BEFORE

I have a new PC. All of my work files are on my old PC. The CS4 is on the new one. The old machine has Vista Home Premium; the new one has Ultimate. So, I've linked the two on a local network using my wireless Linksys.

This way, I can run the new machine from the old one as if it were a part of some sort of dual computer. The new machine shows up on the old one with very little latency or resolution degradation. I can tab back and forth between machines.

I am gradually moving directories over from the old to the new machine as I install more apps such as WordWeb, and all of the plugins for FireFox that I had been using .

This is proving to be the best and easiest transition that I have ever made.