h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

St.Peter - I don't suppose now is the time to mention the 2nd commandment in the Electronic Bible...

Thou shalt make a back-up copy...

BTW the 1st is Thou shalt not be in League with Bill Gates

* he catches the same glimpse in Zax eyes, he usually gets when HE is about to re-visit the Fire & Brimstone days *

Oh...I think, I had better shut up now...

St.P.

*clearing throat*
yes, well... hermmmm....
Having FULLY realized the value of a backup, i happened to have made one.... however, it would probably have helped a WHOLE HECK of a LOT if the backup i *DID* make hadn't been saved in MICROSOFT WORD AS WELL!!!!!

;^)#
Patron Saint of the Pixely Challenged (with a sideline in bearing bad news)

i am NOT liking this new format...

don't get me wrong, i think it's great they're all changing things, and getting a new look... it's just that i liked all the little idiosyncrasies- i'd gotten used to them.. now it's all changed, and it's so INCONVENIENT!

i'm not liking it at all.

this is REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY R E A L L Y INCONVENIENT!!!!!!!!!!!!

i had to load the same thread 3 times JUST to get to the newest posts!!!! i'm NOT happy.

Bruce? is there a code in html that lets you clear all previous orders?
like say i lost track of a tag, and didn't know what it was, but it was making my text screwy... is there a code that would clear all the orders so you could start fresh from some point, without starting all over? something like 'clearall'?

ok.. any help'd be great... also, i just found a great site for html tags and their uses... it's here:

http://www.willcam.com/cmat/html/crossname.html

bookmark it!

anyhoo... with this new format, i probably won't be around much for a while. See you guys in the ether!

Saint Peter - I see half the questions the Angels get will be about the new forum posting system. If we are having concerns and we generally know what is going on, imagine how they will feel.

Also, I thought if you are going to break the threads up into chunks of data, surely you make the last threads pop up first.

St.P.

There's a "jump to the end of a forum" function in the fast track pipeline according to Jim Lynn.

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a "clearall" (universal fixit tag. Is there a particular page that's causing you problems?

;^)#

Actually my first problem on trying to hit my own page was the "no hyphens inside comments (aside from the beginning and ending ones)". Being as I had the CoW list and Guardian Angels lists from Archangel Zax on my page I had to find out how to edit my page without seeing it first. It took me entirely two minutes of w*rk to find it so I'll post the link on my page to which you can just send the people having trouble with such things. Who knows, I may even write up an article if I find many more bugs and will definately be putting links to the ENTIRETY of any threads I read on a regular basis somewhere on there.

Here's a short explanation of how to do just that using this thread as an example.

Here is the normal link to this forum as given by the H2G2 server:

http://www.h2g2.com/FLR38362?thread=50696&skip=0&show=20

Here is one that will show the whole forum:

http://www.h2g2.com/FLR38362?thread=50696&skip=0&show=1024

By changing the &skip value and the &show value you can customize how you want to view the thread. The &skip value tells you how many messages to skip past and the &show value sets the max number of messages in the thread to view at once. This little trick will work for any forum by just copying the link and changing the values, would be nice if they would let you set these numbers as user defined preferences.

St.Peter - Thanks Bruce & John

Those addresses will certainly come in handy...
(...and save me from sitting down & having to sort it out myself )

Bruce, with the difference in skins, I will have to change my page again, as the links are a different colour.

1. Are there basically two different entries for the two different skins ?
2. Is it possible to now colour the links through HTML as its in C++ ?

* Walks off more than a little bemused that the Angels New User's Page is now completely, wholly, absolutely innacurate...

St.P.

ROFL! poor st p.!! and all that editing i did was for naught!!!

>. Are there basically two different entries for the two different skins ?
No - the different HTML for the different skins is created on the fly when the page is requested - as a quick way to preview pages in different skins you can modify the URL in your browser like this
http://www.h2g2.com/A307351?skin=Classic for the Classic goo
http://www.h2g2.com/A307351?skin=Alabaster for the new skin

According to Jim Lynn h2g2 are probably going to add some sort of FONT colour tag to GuideML that will display nicely in both skins - I'm not sure if it will include links.

>. Is it possible to now colour the links through HTML as its in C++ ?
You can do something like

<!--
document.bgColor="green";
document.linkColor="orange";
document.alinkColor="red";
document.vlinkColor="pinnk";
//-->


To set background colour, unvisited links, clicked links, visited links respectively. You'll need to make sure the colours you pick (unless you set the background colour) display OK in both skins.

If you set bgcolor you can't use h2g2 blue (#000066) or black (#000000) for the background unless you want to muck about with FONT colours for various bits of a page )& you can't set journal font colour so homepages using these bgolors will be very strange.

hope it helps
;^)#
who's going out in the real world for a change - right now
chat ya later

St.Peter - I'm very grateful for your help Bruce

I'm sure it has been a BUSY!!! day...

I'm sure when you drift off to sleep tonight you will have source code & questions still flying through your mind...

* Mentally adds '...and your subconscious will amuse itself by chasing Jim Lynn around with a mighty big axe... *

St.P.

Naaahhhh! It was getting boring before - same questions, same answers day in, day out

;^)#

Zax, man, are you ever going to die grrrr. That bloody angels drop-down list you gave me buggered my page and I only managed to get into it because of Bruce (worshipping this man now ). Nah, not really I still love ya, but major panic attack there. And I'm sooooooooooooooooooooooo changing to HTML NOW!!!
Ok, I'm recovering from stress, allow me some manic-ness...

;^)#

i would simply like to point out FOR THE RECORD that the angel's dropdown is simply a hijacked version of one of BRUCE'S dropdowns!!! SO THERE!! (sorta explains how he knew where to find the problem, huh?)

My motto: if you're gonna pirate code, pirate it from those who KNOW what they're DOING!!

*sticking tounge out at tweetie*

so there.

hey bruce? is there any way to make my page recognize which skin is being displayed, and choose the background accordingly? i'd like it to keep displaying black for the classic, but i was thinking maybe yellow or green or even pink for the new skin, so my info will show up... any thoughts on how to make it pick the right one as the page loads?

even better, is there a way to make it always choose the classic skin? i'm really not fond of this new one... it looks so mainstream...

thanks!

also, if you wouldn't mind too much, would you mind telling me why everyone's blaming "MY" dropdown boxes for page faults? it works just fine on MY page, in BOTH skins!!!???

Hehehehehe... it wasn't MY fault.. my boxes work fine! so there!

And just to be really smug, you are all forgeting the golden rule around here!

DON'T PANIC!!!!!!

I don't think I could do that - discriminating on the basis of your skin colour would be bad

I can tell your fortune @ http://www.h2g2.com/A357130 though

Not that I believe in that sort of thing, of course.

;^)#

And I just added a disclaimer to the Fortune Teller.... Zax

;^)#