St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

Not exactly the way I’d do it but he introduces many important topics. This video also demonstrates how to use the Dreamweaver CS3 interface to create CSS rules.

Sadly he was wrong about the “Page Properties” they only apply to the page that’s open, not “every page that we create from now on” so odd that he got such a basic piece of info wrong . . . We try to actually put these CSS style rules that he’s creating in a separate ” style sheet (a text file, written with proper css syntax and uses the .css extension). Once this is done you can go to every page you have or create anew and tell the page to use the style sheet.

On a professional scale we use “Dynamic Web Templates” to force pages to use certian style sheets and accept changes made to a master template. Because there’s so much more to a web site than it’s CSS.

This video helps explain what a firewall is. (By request)

A two way firewall is absolutely necessary.

Zonelabs has the best on in the business and it’s free.

Obama just took the initiative to ask the general public to submit questions to him online, others members of the general public will read the questions and rate them. The President will ask some of the most popular and well rated.
This article resume’s after the video:

This online interaction between President and Citizens is a lot like the traditional means. I don’t why the guy in the interview seems obsessed with marijuana, but he has the point all wrong, in fact he’s proving my point.
Read the rest of this entry »

Over in Europe they seem to care a little more about encouraging competition than they do here in the states. Even though the courts have ruled Microsoft has an illegal monopoly, the justice department dropped all legal action against them shortly after G. W. Bush took office.

The EU on the other hand saw one of their cases through to the end. At issue in this article is Microsoft’s illegal bundling of Internet Explorer 8 with all versions of Windows. This is unfair not because they are giving something away for free, but because they not made it possible for OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturers) or computer owners to remove Internet Explorer. Plus other action designed to reduce or eliminate competitors. Like buying Netscape Navigator and then selling it to AOL on the condition that they never release a new version of it again and discontinue use and support of it after a period of time. Another trick they would do is to refuse to sell or sell at an inflated price Windows to OEM’s that installed a different browser before they sold it to a customer. Nice guys whuh?

A couple years ago the EU order Microsoft to (amongst other things they also haven’t complied with) to stop shipping Windows with IE included. Instead of doing it, they just paid millions upon millions in fines. Once the adoption of Vista slowed to the point where it looks like there won’t be a significant amount of sales, they complied, sort of.

Now Enter Windows 7, the next version of Windows. It is required legally to not have IE included it. Yet it does. Microsoft is now trying to say they are complying by having a check box buried deep in their control panel that lets you “Turn off”" the dreaded IE8 (which purposely displays web pages that are written specifically for IE8 improperly, and yes if you write it for IE8 it won’t work right in any other browser, most of the time). If you find this cleverly hidden check box (it will surely be moved and relabeled right before the official launch). You must re-boot the computer twice. After all that it still doesn’t remove IE! It’s still there, perhaps even running (that’s unknown at this point), just the .exe is gone.

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The FCC has privacy guideines, not laws concerning privacy policies on web sites. Recently they’ve made a few changes to the guideines:

• Extended these privacy guidelines to include ISP’s and mobile phone service providers
• Now urges websites to tell consumers that data is being collected during their searches and to allow them to opt out
• Recommends that mobile companies and Internet service providers also inform customers about data collection and allow users to decline

Pretty lame if you ask me. Especially since there is no reason for companies to comply. Currently internet privacy laws state that yo can basically do whatever you want with data collected from users if you vaguely describe what you are doing with it and how you are protecting the data. The only time you can get in trouble with the law is if you fail to follow your own vague privacy statement, or if you don’t have one and share this data.

At Dream designs we strive to go way beyond these guidelines. One way we do this is by not storing this kind of information. Then it can’t be shared. In some instances we do have to store this information temporarily. For instance if you fill out a contact form, the information you submit is stored until we view it and do something with it, like respond to your question. Then this information is deleted. If you become a client is another example. Obviously we have to store your name and contact info so I can communicate with you about the services you’ve purchased (“Your web site is done early and under budget sir”). Hard to do business without doing this, wouldn’t you say?
That why we have a great privacy policy.
In the future we are going to draft the perfect privacy policy and try ot gain industry wide support for it. It’s a bigger task than you would think. Look for it in the near future.