Saving Time with CSS Inheritance

Inheritance takes many forms. We inherit sutff, we inherit traits from out parents, grandparents and beyond and then there is the CSS inheritance. Bascially, the CSS properties applied to one tag are passed on to nested tags. For example a (p) tag is always placed inside a (body), so the properties of the (body) get inherited by the (p) tag. You can use inheritance to streamline some of your style sheets. For instance if you want all of the text on one page to use the same font. Rather than create styles for each of the tags, simply create a tag style for the (body) tag. In the style indicate which font you want and all the tags on that page will inherit the font,for example body {font: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif}. You can also use inheritance to apply styles to certain sections of the page using the (div) tag. Using the (div) you apply styles for only those tags inside the (div) tag. So if you want all of the text on the banner to be bold; 2em, arial, then create a (div) tag in the header section specific for the banner, ie., (div id ="banner"), then in the style sheet put #banner: {font: 2em Arial; font-weight: bold}. Using CSS is the only way to style sheets now but you already knew that. Article id: 9/1,13/19,15/8,1,16,16,25/25,15,21/1,18,5/9,14/13,25/12,9,6,5)

What Does Cascade Mean in CSS

Although there are some hold outs, Cascading Style Sheets are pretty much the norm for styling web pages. But how many people actually use the Cascade portion of Cascading Style Sheets. Its something to be famiiar with as it can be a friend or a foe. It all has to do with hierarchy. Lets say for some reason you have to overrule some of the external style sheets for just one page. What you would do is use the embedded CSS for that page. It will override any rules you have for that page on your external style sheet. So if you want h2 to be red, then put it in the page as embedded. An embedded rule overrules an external rule for an element. So if your external sheets says font-size: 2em, color: red; and you embed color:green then the text will turn to green but the font-size wil remain at 2em. Take it one more step what if you want to overrule the embedded style. Then you would use an inline style such as h2 style="color: blue". Now the text overruled the embedded and the external rule for color, but the text remained at 2em. In conclusion, the rules are inline first, embedded second, external third.

Without going into the details of code there is a right way to build a web page and a wrong way. In the past web developers took HTML, CSS and Javascript and dumped it all on a page called it the index.html and they were done. That is not the case any longer. To create it the right way you should have one page for content (XHTML), one page for style (CSS) and one page for behavior (Javascript). Then link those pages together. This way if you need to make a style change you only have to change one area, the code on the CSS page and that's it. So if you have 10, 50 or 100 pages this comes in quite handy. For example lets say you want change all of your navigation links to different color. The old way you would have to go through each page and change each link indiviudally. With CSS on a separate page you would first put your navigation in a

on the home page and copy to each page. This would be done when you build the page. Then later if you want to change the style you would go to the CSS page and type
#navigation {
background-color: #ffcc33;
color: navy;
font-weight: bold
}
This would change all the pages at once..you just accomplished a days worth of work in 5 minutes. CSS the way to go..stay tuned for more tips..I'm on a web page design kick.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Ok so you got your website done and its beautiful. You are ready to FTP to your hosting service are you really ready? Well how about the part where you submit it but no one ever sees it because it ranks 4,777,767,000 on the website page ranking. Since Google show about 10 sites per page then your audience will have to click about 4billion times before it gets to your site. That's where Search Engine Optimization comes in. A service I have studied by one of the world's greatest authors on the subject Mr. Bob Viers. Using a combination of keywords spread out throughout your web site and a little insight into Google Analytics, Googlebot, Search Engine Share Ranking (SERP) and some Google Web Master tools. I can bring your web page from the cold, damp tundra of never never land to front page on Google. I concentrate on Google because Google has over a search engine share of 60% and no one else is even close. Yahoo has 16.8%, Live Search has 9.8%, AOL Search is 4.1% and Ask is 2%. hold on all people who do searches on the web. Bottom line is 60% of all searches are done in Google. So anyone out there interested in bringing there web site ranking to the forefront feel free to email me at my business address above.

I Almost Got Spoofed!

For those of you not familiar with the term "spoofed", it's when you receive an email that resembles a company like your banking institution, but it is a fraud. They are usually asking for money or information. I got spoofed this way. I put up a laptop for sale on eBay. About an hour later I get informed on official looking eBay site, that my laptop had been sold. I then received another email from PayPal, again looking completely legit, that money had been transferred and I would get paid when the item was shipped. But here's where the guy screwed up, I then get a third email this time from the person who bought it stating he was a U.S. citizen currently doing business in England. That the laptop was for his son, who lived in Nigeria, and that I needed to ship right away. He said he even added an extra $150.00 for shipping. Well, I gave PayPal a call and no they never received any money from anyone for me on any purchases. So I sent them a copy of the webpage I received to their spoof department. Then I had to contact eBay because it had shown up as being bought. Again I talked with their security department, they reimbursed my advertising and I put it back for sale. Now here is where someone could get tripped up. PayPal will not send you the money until they have proof that you have shipped, and rightly so..therefore if I had shipped right away I would have been out a computer and no money. Again these purchase request web pages I got looked exactly like eBay and PayPal but they were obviously not. So be careful out there..hope this helps raise awareness.

Fake Scams to Watch Out For

I recently advertised my services on Craigslist.com. What I did not realize is all the scams and spams I would start receiving. The first one was in the form of an email. Very innocent looking simply asking if I would like to get a lead on some work. Well, of course replied "yes, I would". She in turn (her name was Jasmine) sent me a email back with a link. I clicked on the link and it brought me to one of those "Get rich in two weeks" websites..pissed me off to no end..then I got another one form a guy who says he's in vegas and has eight computers for me to load windows, office suite and anti-virus. He also stated he a packing company ready to ship if I was interested. Well that one wasn't too hard to figure out. Loading that software on a computer can be done by any technician on the corner, so why would someone in Las Vegas be asking someone in Georgia to do such a simple job. I never responded. Finally, here's one off of one of my favorite sites at www.technibble.com;
Fake Check Scam: The way this scam works is the that scammer will email you about purchasing a large amount of hardware. Since you are a smart person, you are obviously not going to send them anything until the check clears. The scammer will send you the fake check but the amount will be for more than you originally quoted. Shortly afterwards they will say that they accidentally sent you too much and ask if you could send them back the difference. So, you send the difference and a couple of days the check doesn’t clear because its fake. The scammer was never after the hardware, they were after the difference on the fake check and that’s how they get you.
So be careful out there, there's a lot of people trying to separate you from your money. If you want to get involved in catching some of these scumbags check out www.scam419.com; they set the scammers up and keep them busy so they not bothering someone else. They also have a "Wall of Shame" where they convinced scammers to send them their pictures. Great site check it out...take care out there. And remember "If your memory is a hog; call BullDog.

Website Design

This one is real quick. If you are interested in web site design or just want to learn how to build a website for personal pleasure you need to be informed of the latest technology. It ain't you're grandpa's website anymore. Just HTML code is slowing dying. The code bogs down the page and makes it slow to upload. And there is no better way to not have viewers than someone waiting for three or four minutes for your website to upload. The latest tools are XHMTL, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Javascript. XHTML and CSS are absolutely necessary to learn. Also, short courses in graphics and Dreamweaver will add to your skill set. Search Google for the World Wide Consortium for Web design for the latest scoop. Also, the webpage has tutorials to learn all of the above. Once you have that mastered then you can move on to Search Engine Optimization, which is basically how to get your web page to show up in Google, Yahoo and other engines, preferably on the first page that comes up. So go for it, post here if you have any comments, suggestions or just chit-chat.