Will Bontrager
Company: Bontrager Connection, LLCAuthor Bio:
Publication: WillMaster Possibilities
Tutorials written by Will Bontrager:
Answers To Questions About JavaScript
Our primary focus at willmaster.com is CGI. However, we do receive some questions about JavaScript developed for Possibilities ezine articles and about JavaScript in general. Here are the answers to some JavaScript questions we have received.
Friday, 11th March 2005
Automatic New Window for External Links
Pop one set of JavaScript code into your web page and all external links will open a new browser window — for JavaScript-enabled browsers. Note that some surfers are annoyed when a link automatically opens a new window.
Friday, 11th March 2005
Automatic Page Events
Your visitor's browser knows when it has finished loading a page. Using JavaScript, you can make things happen at that point. The browser also knows when it unloads the page as it prepares to load another.
Monday, 18th April 2005
Automatically Inserting the Current URL Into Forms
When you have the same form on many pages, and it needs to contain the current page's URL, then either the form needs to be edited for every page or an automated method is used to insert the current page's URL. This article shows you an automated method.
Friday, 11th March 2005
Basic JavaScript Date and Time Functions
As the title implies, this tutorial will show you how to get the date and time from the visitor's computer and print them to the web page. You'll learn two basic techniques: How to create what's called a date object and how to extract information from that date object; the hour, minute, month, year, and so forth.
Thursday, 12th August 2004
Browser-Correct Download Instructions
Something I've noticed since I started using non-IE browsers is that download instructions are provided, they're almost always specifically for the IE browser on Windows operating systems (right-click on the link then select "Save Target As..."). What about Firefox? Opera? Macintosh browsers?
Thursday, 16th June 2005
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS); Backgrounds (part 1 of 2)
Background colors and images can be used for stylistic effects and can be an important element in the design of web sites. With standard HTML, one can assign backgrounds to a web page and to tables and table data cells. Compared to what one can do with CSS, however, HTML is limited.
Friday, 10th October 2003
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS); Backgrounds (part 2 of 2)
Part 1 focused on the many ways to specify web page backgrounds with CSS. This part 2 supposes you are familiar with part 1. Without that familiarity, especially if you are a novice with CSS, part 2 can be confusing.
Wednesday, 15th October 2003
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS); Getting Started
If you've been putting off using CSS because you have some uncertainty about exactly how to use it, then today is the day you'll get started. You'll see the simplicity of CSS. You'll realize that making style changes to your site's web pages is not only quick and easy, but also fun.
Wednesday, 1st October 2003
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS); Learning More
In the "Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) -- Getting Started" article, the first in this series, you learned how to use an external style sheet. This article will show you how to embed a style sheet directly into your web page. It will also show you how to define custom styles, styles not associated with any particular HTML tags.
Sunday, 5th October 2003
Change Form Field Values, On The Fly, with JavaScript
This article will demonstrate how to automatically change a form field's value depending on which radio button is clicked.
Sunday, 22nd May 2005
Changing Dropdown Content On-the-Fly (Without Reloading Web Page)
You've seen web pages with two dropdown lists where making a selection in one causes the web page to reload. Once reloaded, the list in the other dropdown has changed.
Monday, 18th April 2005
Changing Form Action URLs On-The-Fly
Sometimes a person just needs to be able to do more with a form.Today, I'll show you how to change the action="_____" URL on-the-fly, depending on which (if any) radio button is checked by the form user. Drop-down lists could be substituted for radio buttons.
Wednesday, 3rd September 2003
Color Code Converter
This article gives you a color code converter -- RGB to hexadecimal, and the other way around. It is one of the easiest to use color code converters on the Internet.
Monday, 18th April 2005
Controlling Checkboxes with JavaScript
Sometimes it's desirable to control whether or not certain checkboxes are checked, or to do something depending on which ones are checked. Although CGI scripts can do their own error checking and display messages to the form user as needed, letting JavaScript do some of the preliminary checks can be faster and less frustrating for the form user.
Wednesday, 29th June 2005
Copying Billing Form Fields Into Shipping Fields
This technique is commonly used on professional order forms. It lets customers click something to automatically fill in shipping information without retyping identical information already provided in billing form fields. Or vice versa.
Wednesday, 11th May 2005
Cron
Cron is a Unix/Linux program scheduler. It'll automatically execute commands on your server according to a schedule you specify. A few of the many uses for scheduled commands are...
Friday, 9th January 2004
Designing Consistent Form Field Sizes
It can be frustrating to design a form so it looks good, then test it on another browser and have the design fall apart. Some browsers calculate the amount of horizontal space taken up by the size and cols attributes differently than other browsers do. That's why the horizontal spacing of name="text" fields and textarea fields can vary from browser to browser. Even the same brand of browser on Mac and on PC can display fields differently.
Tuesday, 6th July 2004
Displaying Alternate Page Area in an IFRAME
An IFRAME is a rectangular area on a web page that displays the contents of an external web page. The rectangular area's size and the URL of the external web page's URL are determined by the HTML code used for the main web page.
Thursday, 21st April 2005
Dynamic External JavaScript Files
JavaScript can be embedded within the source code of a web page. Or, it can be in a file somewhere else and a special JavaScript tag used to insert the file when the web page is loaded into a browser.
Wednesday, 16th August 2006
Ensuring Two Form Fields Have Identical Information
When two form fields must contain identical information before they can be submitted, this article shows you how to implement it. A common implementation is for eliminating typographical errors in an email addresses.
Friday, 11th March 2005
Form Input Validation and Correction
Your website visitors sometimes type their name in all capital letters. Or all lower case. And when you manually correct the case, there is danger of introducing typographical errors.
Saturday, 16th April 2005
Form Required Fields JavaScript Check
You know how annoying it is when you click a "submit" button, wait for the next page to appear, and then all you get is the message, "___________ is required!" You fix that, and another field is required. And another.
Saturday, 16th April 2005
Form Submissions Without Submit Buttons
When you want a form that can be submitted without requiring the rather prominent submit button, this article shows you how, with several methods...
Tuesday, 12th April 2005
Fun with Hover Link Text
A quick and easy example of how css can allow you to have some fun with your hover actions.
Sunday, 22nd May 2005
Hide and Display Content On Demand
You may have encountered web pages where an action on your part (like clicking a link or checking a checkbox or moving the mouse over a certain part of the web page) inserted causes additional content to appear on the page. The web site may have made it possible for another action to remove the content.
Friday, 13th May 2005
How CGI Works
You already understand that when you surf the internet your browser retrieves (or gets served) information from other computers. Those other computers send (or serve) information to your browser with special computer software called a server. Every computer that serves information to internet browsers uses server software.
Monday, 9th June 2003
How to Disable the Submit Button
If you want to prevent multiple clicks on a form submit button, disable the button. It's easy, simple. I'll show you exactly how to do it.
Saturday, 16th April 2005
How to Position Text and Images Exactly
Although I've written several articles that included examples of positioning, such as "Instant Info" and the "No-Kill Pop Box" series, it occurred to me that I've never written an article about how to do the positioning itself.
Wednesday, 29th June 2005
How To Send Email With Perl, Part I
This is a tutorial. In future installments, you'll learn how to use Perl to send email containing both plain text and HTML formatted content, and how to send attachments with the email.
Wednesday, 9th June 2004
How To Send Email With Perl, Part II
Unlike the basic script of Part I, this script uses Perl module "strict" to enforce certain variable naming conventions, which is good programming practice, and to be usable on servers that run mod_perl. (mod_perl is an Apache server module that speeds up Perl programs by a considerable amount. Apache software is used by virtually all Unix/Linux servers.)
Wednesday, 9th June 2004
How To Send Email With Perl, Part III
Part I contained an introduction and a working Perl script for sending email. Part II showed how to send either plain text or HTML email. This Part III will demonstrate how to send both plain text and HTML formats into one email.
Wednesday, 9th June 2004
HTML Form Tutorial, Part I
HTML forms are a means of collecting information. People fill in a form and/or select something. Then they click a button. Forms don't actually process information. For something to be done with the information, it must be sent somewhere. This tutorial is about how to make forms and how to send the information, but not how to process the information after it has been sent off.
Tuesday, 6th July 2004
HTML Form Tutorial, Part II
The first of this 2-part series showed you how to use the <form> tag and the many uses of the <input> tag, including hidden fields. This second part completes the tutorial with multi-line text input areas, selection lists, and a complete form using all the examples and a script to process the form's information.
Tuesday, 22nd March 2005
Integrating With Authorize.net Using SIM
We've received numerous requests for help with modifying Master Form and other programs for integrating with authorize.net's SIM integration method. Authorize.net is asking clients using the ADC Relay Response method to switch to the SIM method. And they have a deadline.
Tuesday, 11th February 2003
JavaScript Double Click Trapper
Not all CGI programs, few in fact, check for double form submissions, those submissions that happen when a user clicks a form submit button more than once. Most click trappers are programmed in JavaScript.
Tuesday, 12th April 2005
JavaScript Form Input Validation and Correction
Your website visitors sometimes type their name in all capital letters. Or all lower case. And when you manually correct the case, there is danger of introducing typographical errors. This article will show you how to fix that -- and without paying a programmer to modify your CGI program.
Tuesday, 12th April 2005
JavaScript Tutorial Part I- Some Basics
Let's clear up any confusion there may be between JavaScript and Java: Although they have similar names, they are very different. Java is a compiled language with modules that load into your browser from a source external to the web page. JavaScript, on the other hand, is...
Monday, 9th February 2004
JavaScript Tutorial Part II - Function Basics
Unlike many programming languages, JavaScript can be written in bits and pieces. It may be interspersed with HTML code on a web page so long as the JavaScript conforms to its own programming language rules. Understanding and using JavaScript programming language rules is the purpose of this article series.
Monday, 14th June 2004
Label Within The Form Field - Handling
Today I'll show you how to implement something that appears easy at first glance but can be a bit tricky. It is the "label within the form field" functionality seen in forms that must take up very little space on a web page.
Friday, 13th May 2005
Limiting Text In Textarea Form Field
In certain situations (classified ad, page description, security), you may want to limit the amount of text that can be put into a textarea form field. For regular input tags, you can use the maxlength attribute, but the textarea tag has no such built-in limit specifier.
Sunday, 22nd May 2005
Log Script Use
How many old, unused (or under-used) CGI scripts do you have lingering on your server, taking up space? You may not be as guilty of abandoning CGI software in lieu of newer versions as we are (we've been creating, and testing software on the same server for 8 years) but odds are you've got a few dusty, unused scripts lurking about.
Monday, 25th July 2005
Making Your Own Layered Sub-Menus
This article shows you how to code a sub-menu system that layers a box with menu-items onto the current web page, over the page's normal content. Instructions are in this article rather than in the JavaScript. The JavaScript has instructions related only to the two sections in the script that need to be customized.
Friday, 22nd April 2005
New Browser Window Checkbox
Let's suppose you want to provide your site visitors the option of automatically causing a new browser window to open whenever they click on a link -- by simply checking one checkbox.
Friday, 22nd April 2005
Pre-Fill Forms From Last Use
When your visitor fills out any form on your web site, all the other forms on your web site can be pre-filled in with the information s/he provided. If the visitor provided a name and email address, for example, that name and email address can be pre-filled in all of your other forms
Monday, 18th April 2005
Presenting a "Good-bye" Message Without Popups Using JavaScript
Here is a method that can be used to present a final web page, a good-bye page, to site visitors after they click on a link to a page on another (or your own) web site.
Tuesday, 29th March 2005
Random and Duplicate Content With JavaScript
We receive numerous questions about random content delivery. These are usually related to ads, images, or other content that appears on web pages next to the main copy. JavaScript can be used for this job. A generator is available to create the Javascript
Thursday, 16th June 2005
Restoring Form Field Values
Once in a while we receive reports from web site owners that a visitor had to re-fill in all fields after submitting a form and then clicking the "back" button to correct information. All the fields go blank.
Monday, 26th September 2005
Retrieve Your Databases with a Click
Master Form V4 can email files on your server to any email address you specify. Files can be inserted into the body of the email and/or delivered as attachments.
Tuesday, 24th May 2005
Running a CGI Script When Page Loads
From statistics gathering to silent webmaster notification to email subscription solicitation, there can be any of many reasons for triggering a CGI script to run when a web page loads.
Thursday, 21st April 2005
Search Engine Spider-Friendly JavaScript Content
If you have syndicated content delivered with JavaScript, the content might not be indexed by the search engines.
Saturday, 24th September 2005
Secret Access
You go to a web page without a form or prompt indicating it might double as a secret access to another web page. You go ahead and type a certain sequence of characters on your keyboard. If you get it right, you are redirected to a secret web page.
Saturday, 24th September 2005
Sending Cookies By Email
An interesting question arrived in my email box a few days ago. The sender is running an affiliate program that uses cookies to determine which affiliates are credited with sales.
Monday, 14th March 2005
Site Statistics With Master Form V4
The latest version of Master Form V4 makes it easy to include environment variables in emails and databases. It's a free upgrade for those who already have a license.
Thursday, 21st April 2005
Testing Your Forms for Hijacking Vulnerability
Look at this article as a "how-to" for testing your forms for a specific vulnerability, hijacking by inserting certain information into the header of email your form processing software sends out.
Friday, 7th October 2005
Things To Do With Textarea Form Fields
The primary function of a textarea field is to accept input from a form user for the form processing script to do stuff with. You see their use in feedback forms, for example.
Monday, 26th September 2005
Transition Popups
Do you have a slow-loading page, one where folks might leave before loading is done? Something that might encourage folks to wait around for your page to load is to provide a transition popup with an explanation. The popup might say "Large image, but worth the wait" or "Retrieving data from remote site" or whatever is applicable. The demonstration (URL below) simply uses the word "Loading" with an animated image of three dots.
Monday, 28th June 2004
Working... Popup for Forms
Find out how to display a "Working..." popup window to let visitors know a form submission is being processed. The popup closes automatically as soon as the "thank you" page is finished loading.
Saturday, 16th April 2005
