Web Designers Killer Handbook - www.killersites.com

Subscript

Heavy water: H₂0 has one more hydrogen atom than regular water.

Code:

Heavy water: H<sub>2</sub>0 has one more hydrogen atom than regular water.

Comment:

Both subscript and superscript are examples of code that does not get any easier except for maybe <hr> , the horizontal rule. But I decided to include them here after I found that some very experienced web designers did not know about them!

Supercript

This book is published by SecretSites^™.

Code:

This book is published by SecretSites <sup>&#153</sup>.

Prevent the page from jumping

Non-Jumping page link.

Code:

Non-Jumping <a href="#" onClick="alert('This is a message.'); return false;">page link.</a>

Comment:

Sometimes you may want to call a JavaScript function when someone clicks on a link. The most common use of this is when creating a pop-up window. To keep the original page from jumping back to it's top position, you need to enter : 'return false' after your JavaScript function call. In this example and in the next, I call JavaScript's built in function 'alert'. Alert pops open a little box with a message you specify when you call the fucntion.

For those non-nerds out there, 'calling a function' is basically asking the browser to take an action. Sometimes these 'actions' (functions) are built in like the 'alert' function I mentioned above, and other times these 'actions' are created by you or other programmers. Don't worry about the function stuff now, it is not really important for our discussion here.

Cause the page to jump

Jumping page link. (Be careful, when this link is clicked your page will jump)

Code:

Jumping <a href="#" onClick="alert('This is a message.');">page link.</a>

Comment:

In the above code samples you will notice that after you click the first link the page stays put, whereas when the 2nd link is clicked the page jumps to the top. The first link does not jump because of this code inside the onClick event handler:

return false

Obfuscated email address to protect yourself from spam

Spammers often send out webbots to scrape email addresses listed on web pages.This is a sample of an obfuscated (in other words: encoded) email address to protect yourself from spam.

my email

Code:

<a href="mailto:nudiom">my email</a>

Protect your email address with this easy to use script.

Jump to a spot on another page

Jump to spot

Code:

<a href="styling.jsp#cssBorder">Jump to spot</a>

Comment:

You can set what is called an anchor point in your pages with the following code :

<a name="myAnchor"></a>

And then refer to this anchor within the same page (as seen at the top of this page: <a href="#book"> Jump to the book </a> ) or from another page by appending the number symbol : # and the anchor name to the URL of the page. In the above example I am jumping to the 'articles' anchor in the page 'styling.jsp'

Another way to do the same thing is to 'tag' your tag with an id:

ASCII / HTML Character Codes

Comment:

ASCII character codes (often called HTML codes) allow you to insert special character into your HTML pages that you can't normally find on your keyboard. Having this list can prove to be very useful on some web jobs.

Learn more about HTML codes

Easy navigational drop-down menus

Place this code in between your <head> and </head> tags at the top of the page:

<script language="JavaScript">       
	function jumpToArticle()
	{
	killersitesBox = document.navForm.navigation;
	destination = killersitesBox.options[killersitesBox.selectedIndex].value;
	if (destination) location.href = destination;
	}
</script>

Now paste this code where you want the drop down menu (known as a select box in HTML) to appear on your page:

  
<form name="navForm" method="post" action="" onSubmit="jumpToArticle(); 
return false;">
					 
<select name="navigation">        
<option value="" selected>> SELECT TIP </option>
<option value="http://www.killersites.com">Jump to this cool site.</option>  
<option value="#2">Jump to a spot on the same page.</option>        
</select>
<input type="submit">
	
</form>

The key lies in each '<option></option>' tag in the above code. Each of those tag pairs holds your menu items of your drop-down list. If we look at an example:

You will notice that after the 'value=' text we have the URL of: "http://www.killersites.com" . This tells the browser where to send the user when they select the option. And the text: 'Jump to this cool site.' tells the browser what is actually displayed to the user in the menu. So to add menu items to your drop-down menu you need to just add <option> tags with the values filled in accordingly.

I have not described the details of the script assuming many of you have no idea about programming right now. That's ok because you don't need to understand everything to use it. In future articles I will explain some of the programming to you.

Removing the %20 in URL's

Comment:

Recently someone was wondering why the browser kept inserting this text in his URLs: %20. This code (%20) tells the browser there is a white space in between the text. Take for example the following html file that someone created and named it:

top ten.htm

The browser will insert the code %20 in the URL to deal with the space in the file 'top ten.htm' like so:

http://www.somesite.com/Top%20ten.htm

The bottom line is that there should be no white spaces in an url, and that includes your HTML file names. Sometimes people make this mistake of leaving a space because the name of the file would be hard to read otherwise. A good trick around this is to capitalize the second word in the file name and to keep the first letter of the first word in lower case:

topTen.html

This is a common way to name files and is very popular with Java programmers (I do a lot of Java work and that is where I get it from… but it is not strictly a Java thing though)

Add to favorites: How to create an 'add to favorites' link

Comment:

This little code snippet allows you to present a link that when click will add your page to the users list of favorites. The following example uses a text link but you could also swap up the text for an image if you would like to create a graphical button.

<a href="#" onClick='window.external.AddFavorite(location.href, document.title); return false'>Add to favorites</a>

The next code tip creates a link button that when click sets your page as the users home page. Like any html link, you can insert an image instead of the text to create a button link.

Of course you will have to replace the text:

http://www.killersites.com

You need to insert your own website address otherwise people will be making killersites.com their home page.

Here is an example of a link made with an image instead of text:

One important thing I should point out is that when inserting an image into a hyperlink as we just did, you need to specify a border of zero (0):

Otherwise you will get an ugly looking border around the image.

A more extensive version of the add to favorites code

I've only tested the add to favorites code in IE; you never know how code will react in every which browser, so I dug up this script that only allows people using IE to automatically 'add to favorites'. If the user is not using IE this script will cause a Java Script pop-up window to appear when the link is clicked, asking them to do it manually. In a nutshell: the link will appear in all browsers, but will only allow IE users to save the page as a favorite.

Create a 'print page' button or link

Use this code to provide an on-page link that will allow people to easily print your page:

<a href="#" onClick=" window.print(); return false">› Print this page</a>

Print this page

MISCELLANEOUS

WEB DESIGNERS HANDBOOK™ - Misc. Tips

Subscript

Supercript

Prevent the page from jumping

Cause the page to jump

Obfuscated email address to protect yourself from spam

Jump to a spot on another page

ASCII / HTML Character Codes

Easy navigational drop-down menus

Removing the %20 in URL's

Add to favorites: How to create an 'add to favorites' link

Here is an example of a link made with an image instead of text:

A more extensive version of the add to favorites code

Create a 'print page' button or link