a little html help?

[WendyWelton]

Re: a little html help?

Scott,

My images ARE my data - so I don't want them in the images folder in the A5Webroot. That's why I want to display them directly from the grid where the IRFs can grab them from an images folder in my data folder. And I specifically don't want to handle an images or other data in any place other than the primary plans table. I have 396 plans to date, each one with a minimum of 5 images, usually more - I learned with my old web site and our in-house management to be a dog-with-a-bone about this.

[WendyWelton]

Re: a little html help?

Found the thread - http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/al...ad.php?t=93493 - will try it later.

[aburningflame]

Re: a little html help?

It doesnt matter where you store the image. Instead of using <img src="myimg.jpg"> use something like

<img src="showimage.a5w?imgid=21309123"/>

and code the showimage.a5w page to check if the user is logged in etc etc. and if he is - send the binary data back.

If you really want to - you can try this:
<img src="data:image/gif;base64,xxxxxxxxxxxxx...">

where xxxxxxxxxxxx is the binary data for the image and the data: is the mime type.

Also, if you wanna do things the right way.
You should have 2 tables.

plan
------------
plan_id
otherfields

plan_images
------------
plan_id
img_data

This way you can attach an infinite amount of images to plans.
Plan 1 can have 10images. Plan 2 can have 5images. In a year you may have Plan 20931 which has 100 images - and you wouldnt have to change your database.

SELECT * FROM plan

SELECT * FROM plan_images WHERE plan_id=x (this query will retrieve all the images for 1 plan)

Without being harsh and just from a purely advice point of view:
I really think you should just watermark your images - as people have suggested to you before. I think you're over-complicating things by trying to overprotect your images. A water mark would possibly prevent unlawful usage. Just slap a big 'Plans by Blablabla -DEMO PURPOSES ONLY'

[Steve Wood]

Re: a little html help?

Thanks Scott, I was trying to remember how to do that outside of a grid. I see now I actually have similar code in several places.

[WendyWelton]

Re: a little html help?

There's a famous quote attributed to Ted Kennedy, but I think many before him - something to the effect of "don't let perfection stand in the way of progress"


1 - I'm aware that I've "denormalized data" to a certain extent by having my images in the same table as the other plan data. In my particular case I know exactly what image fields I need - will never need infinite number. One man's "simpler" and "more correct" is another woman's "more tables, extra clicks during data entry, etc". These images are 100% part and parcel of my plan data. They are the data as much as any numbers.

2 - I'm already set up with tables and grids and such. The tables are set up. The grids are set up with all my work done to put this here and that there. We're 233 out of 396 plans through the data entry.

3 - I did review this system with more than one thmart A5 person before proceeding in my horrifically denormalized way. I'm not normal or well behaved. I'm not breaking the rules just to be a rogue devil. I'm breaking them because we discussed it and decided in this case it was the right thing for my application.

4 - Even if I had the images in a different table, I'm still left trying to click on an image and have it function as a link. And I'm still left trying to display an image as a one-field grid and not have A5 adding white space at the top or bottom for some phantom fields or padding or margins when any and every place I've found to set such things all say zero, zero, zero, zero.

So - we're not turning that boat. The images fields are staying in the plans table. I'm moving on to solving my current dilemmas, not backtracking in the name of perfection or rightness.

[WendyWelton]

Re: a little html help?

While I take a break from my "real" work - closing the loop on a couple of things:

1 - I tracked down some of my bullet problems. When sending a grid to a page, I was selecting "Set page background to match style used in component. So, when I couldn't figure out why the heck it was using CSS from a grid, The grid was designed for "full bleed" images, with 0 padding and 0 margins every place I could zero, so, it was 0 padding and 0 margining my buleets. "doh". ;-)

Lesson - everything you check off matters.



2 - In earlier iterations when I had problems with it not using CSS changes - another User "doh" moment - I had "tucked away safely" experiments and prior versions of my application, higher up my directory tree. Don't do that. A5 can and will go get CSS there, will even upload the wrong dbf files to your server! I caught it red handed a week or two ago when my application was using Z-this and Z-that - including the main dbf file.

I have no doubt that's in the "get started video" or someplace else, but I had either missed it or forgotten. So - just throwing this out there for some other poor soul to find who's dug a similar hole for themselves!

[Steve Wood]

Re: a little html help?

In my world: never, ever check the second option. If by accident, alpha assigns a class to the body tag (<BODY class="gradientblue"> I revert it back to <BODY>. I cannot think of any reason to have a grid, which is one of potentially many objects on the page, determine page style. You might think that it would make sense if you wanted all of your pages to have the same style as the grid (assuming you used the same style for all grids too), but it doesn't work (for me) because grid style is not totally compatible with page style. That's why all of my applications have a separate CSS file, assigned to all pages, to give the overall look and feel.

[WendyWelton]

Re: a little html help?

Without being harsh and just from a purely advice point of view:
I really think you should just watermark your images - as people have suggested to you before. I think you're over-complicating things by trying to overprotect your images. A water mark would possibly prevent unlawful usage. Just slap a big 'Plans by Blablabla -DEMO PURPOSES ONLY'

I've had just enough people bring this up (or maybe the same few many times, I haven't been making a note of names) that I want to make a point about it. There's absolutely no way to protect any image displayed on the internet. About that you and others are correct. All somebody has to do is hit "print screen" or use a snip program. So, yep, that's a fact of life.

However, to clip them one at a time takes work for each one. If my images lived in the A5webroot instead of the dataroot, my exposure is suddenly magnified. One single unscrupulous big builder who gets a clever friend to get into the A5webroot and that's it, all the lawyers in the world won't put that horse back in the barn. As a matter of fact, that big builder will be able to afford lawyer power that I can't touch. So, it would be game over.

I've been doing architecture for a long long time. The attitude in the home construction industry is that copyright is a "blue" law, and that if they make one little change it's suddenly not protected work. And - home construction is big business, can be very cut-throat, and really good design surprisingly expensive and hard to come by. So yeah, they will steal. Some of the thieves will know they are thieves and not care. Others will tell themselves fairy stories about changing a closet door making it ok (on their way to church). But, yeah, they will steal, and yes, they will go to the effort to hack into the server and get the whole catalog if they can. Or, they won't do the hack themselves, the same type of people who steal movies and music, who hack software and sell it for pennies on the dollar will do the hack and put it on web sites hosted in countries that could care a fig about US copyright law. And then it's your "honest" neighbor who buys it, patting themselves on the back for paying next to nothing, even bragging to friends.

So - to any and every developer who ever deals with a client who considers their images to be their data, it's at your peril that you dismiss those concerns. Let's just say they don't understand how this stuff works and so don't know to be insistant about it or even ask the question. They just trust you. You put their images in the A5webroot. Somebody steals your client's product, their intellectual property, and it shows up for sale on the internet. Who do you think they're lawyer is going to tell them to go after? When the images are the data, protect them like you've learned to protect the data.

[DaveM]

Re: a little html help?

I do Like your website.

.

[WendyWelton]

Re: a little html help?

In my world: never, ever check the second option...

Yeah - I think that's my world now too. I have no idea why I even ever started checking the second! I'm not even sure what made the little light go off in my head now that this was the problem. Maybe as we learn more parts of our brain are freed up to see more. But, I'm quite happy that I now don't feel like CSS is demonically possessed.

[WendyWelton]

Re: a little html help?

I do Like your website.

.

Thank you! Which one - the soon-to-be-replaced artformhomeplans.com or the beta of the new afhp.co?

I think I have too much clutter on afhp.co right now - I don't think the new visitor will understand my search at all. Simplify, Wendy, Simplify!

But, three weeks ago my eyes would have rolled back in my head at the thought of modifying what I'd done, 'cause I only barely understood it when I did it. Now I think I can clean it up and simplify without feeling like I'm just on a wing and a prayer.

[aburningflame]

Re: a little html help?

Just an FYI what I do is include my CSS files after grid definitions. I use a reset.CSS (google it) and then my styles.CSS. I put overrides for alpha classes in my styles.CSS and never have issues with CSS.

Add a class to your ul tag Nd do this:
Ul.class{
margin:0;
Padding:0;
List-style-position:inside;
}

Then style from there.

Also, didn't I post on how to make an image a link? I swear I did , maybe it was a different thread. I'll try to find it.

[aburningflame]

Re: a little html help?

Check the end of page 2 to see how to do image links. You just have to pass the data.binarydata as the image source. I don't understand why that solution won't work? If you really want to protect your images then I think you're going to have to not show them on the site as people could just right click and save. I think your options are very limited in terms of your image protection. Watermark, disable right click, and other things have been discussed but I seem to recall all those options being unsatisfactory. What exactly do you need to do with the images?

Forgive me as I try to understand

[aburningflame]

Re: a little html help?

So from my understanding your worried about someone typing the URL Nd /images to see all your images? In apache you can use an htaccess file to deny users access to certain folders and files. So essentially you could disable "directory listing". Not sure you can do this in alpha. But what you can do is store your images outside the webroot and make a pAge named getimage.a5w.

That page would need to have code to grab the filename, convert the file to binary data and then print the binary data. You could then use the getimage.a5w?Id=83748 as the src attribute in your image tag. This way your images are outside the root. Is that what you wanted?

Or store your images as blob fields instead of file paths. This way theimage isn't even part of the directory structure.

I think your options are pretty limited given the amount of security you want. Blobs or outside the webroot with a serve page are your best bet.

Good luck

[WendyWelton]

Re: a little html help?

Just an FYI what I do is include my CSS files after grid definitions. I use a reset.CSS (google it) and then my styles.CSS. I put overrides for alpha classes in my styles.CSS and never have issues with CSS.

Add a class to your ul tag Nd do this:
Ul.class{
margin:0;
Padding:0;
List-style-position:inside;
}

Then style from there.

Thank you. Now that I've stepped on a couple of landmines with CSS (good way to learn though - makes you remember!), I'm going to make myself even a little map of which things get their CSS from where.

Of the articles I find via Google, this one explains it in a way that a newbie like me understands - http://sixrevisions.com/css/css-tips...ith-css-reset/ . It says any reset has to come first, which makes sense. But here's a question. If A5 has this CSS hierarchy going from local to global to system, would a reset than have to go in the system CSS?

And when you say "overrides for alpha classes" - do you mean in your named local CSS styles you restate things that might also be in alpha system level CSS?

My CSS seems to be behaving now that I've stopped doing foolish things, like letting it pull from the wrong project and letting grids gum up my pages with their CSS. So, I probably don't need to mess with it at this point, but Murphy's Law dictates that if I don't ask, I'll wish I knew, and soon!

Also, didn't I post on how to make an image a link? I swear I did , maybe it was a different thread. I'll try to find it.

Scott,

You may have. I'm juggling my core business with developing my application. I could very well have seen it, mentally said "good, I'll come back to that" and then couldn't find the thread again.

And - I've realized today that I'm being fuzzy and inaccurate in what I'm trying to do. It seems to be not difficult to link to a page in a pop up window. I'm trying to not only link to a page, but have that page be in a new window that has it's own web address - that can be copied and pasted into an email by my builders and their real estate agent.. I think that's why at least some think I'm a broken record asking for what's been answered. I'm not being clear in my language.

The New Window option exists in the grid builder for regular links, but not for the java action component (on-click etc). If you did post that, or know where that info is - and can post a link to it without going out of your way - love it. But at this point, having not learned about custom tables yet, I'm putting this on the list for my next official tutoring session. Once I see it done once I'll be off and running. I'm watching all the xbasic videos this weekend, but somehow I think trying to learn xbasic in a weekend to do one task is probably not realistic, that I should be just getting over this initial launch before my old web sites dies entirely, then embarking on a more deliberate learning path to do the fancier stuff I have all designed in my head.