The Secret Life of Bees

by Sue Monk Kidd

I've heard of this book for a long while but the "bee" part in the title keeps my hand away from it. Basically, I am not interested in any title that involves animal, huge or tiny.

This is a beautifully written story, about the growing pain and salvation of a girl. It has all the elements to become a bestseller: mystery - what happened on the day that Lily's mom died? tension - between Lily and her father, black and white; romance - Lily and Zach, Julie and Neil, etc. death - Lily's mom, May; culture - southern; religion - black Mary; social changes - civil liberty act, etc. All these elements interweave and interact, and yet, the author is skillful enough to keep everything personal so that the story evolves in a sweet and subtle aroma.

I still manage to skip many paragraphs about bee keeping though.
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Web Publishing Resources

Accessibility Information



Editors



Secure FTP Clients


The CITS Division no longer supports using standard FTP to remotely transfer files with our UNIX network. You now must use a software program that supports the Secure File Transfer Program (SFTP). The links below detail free and low-cost software which you can download and install on your local hard drives.


SFTP programs conduct file transfers in an encrypted manner. For directions on how to use these FTP clients, please see the CTIS Transfer Files using Secure Transfer Program (SFTP) page.



  • Macintosh OS 8/9 - MacSFTP ($25, 15 day free trial)

  • Macintosh OS X - Fugu (free)

  • Windows - WinSCP3 (free)

  • Windows - WS_FTP Pro ($39.95, 30 day free trial)


Web Standards



  • W3C This is the governing body which sets the HTML standards Their site has LOTS of information and also code samples you can use to write excellent code.Their site contains information on the standard HTML you will learn in this class. You may have learned earlier versions of HTML such as the 3.2 standards (which include the Center tag), but it is important that you familiarize yourselves withthe XHTML 2.0 standards because older tags (like CENTER and FONT) have been deprecated. That means that they are being phased out. Newer additions and updates have been implemented which give more control (such as align= rather than center). Please look over the standards so you are familiar with them and do not use any tags which are deprecated.
  • World Association of Webmasters (WOW)


Browser Info and Code Validators





Finding Image Size without Photoshop


Question: How can I get the image sizes of .gifs, .jpg and other image files if don't have access to an image editing application like Photoshop?


If a graphic artist has created the image (if you work in a company, for instance) you can ask them for the size. There are also some freeware/shareware graphics programs on the web that you can download that will give you info.


I use one called Graphic Converter (for Mac OSX but I also used it on earlier Mac OS and it is also available for Windows). It will give sizes of graphics and convert images from one format to another.


Here are some suggestions for Windows users from other students:

I find the best one that works really well on a PC and is delivered with the MS suite (so everyone should have it) is "Paint". In case you aren't sure where to find it- the path is:



  • Start

  • All Programs

  • Accessories

  • Paint


Open your graphic, click on >Images, >Attributes, and you will see the size.


There is yet a simpler way. In Windows XP (maybe other Windows versions as well including ME), go to Windows Explorer and go to the folder with the images. Right click on a particular image and select "properties". The "summary" tab gives the size of the image in pixels.


Graphics Design/Audio Resources and Tips



Forms



CSS


CSS Compatibility Chart

Another Compatibility Chart


Quirksmode W3C DOM charts



Blogs and Related Blog Stuff


Very Cool JavaScripts, Java Applets, Flash and Other Cool Sites


Flash Examples



Try the machines on the left side - Praystation

Play Golf??


Industorious Clock


Java Applet Examples


Brock Institute for Advanced Studies

Home Page for Virtual Mechanisms
Animated by Java


Smartmoney.com

Enter a stock symbol and then click Charting and/or Competition to see various Java Applets in action.


DHTML


DHTML Game Examples


Dynamic Drive - DHTML Scripts for the Real World


Cite Sources


If you use materials (text, images, etc.) from other sources, be sure to credit the source. Here is a link which explains how to credit a source for a web site:

Modern Language Association


Citation Machine Citation Machine is an interactive Web tool designed to assist teachers and students in producing reference citations for crediting information from other people.


Special Characters


Webmonkey Reference—Special Character Codes


The Trouble With EM 'n EN (and Other Shady Characters)


Where can I find the Data Files for the book?



  • The Download page allows you to download files for the 4th Edition of the book. Files are available in PC and Mac format.

  • Student Online Companion for the 4th edition contains additional materials and tutorials..



Document Type Definition 1



"The rules for each tag in HTML are spelled out in a Document Type Definition (or DTD) . Without the DTD, a browser would have no idea how to display a page marked up in HTML. In fact, the DTD is embedded in the browser - so the browser "knows" what a < b > tag does. It doesn't need to go and look it up anywhere. "


Use the XHTML Transitional doctype statment at the top of your document:


<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">


Make sure that you follow strict XHTML coding rules (lower-case, proper nesting, closing all tags, etc.). See Carey, Appendix E and/or W3C XHMTL for more information. Note also that the DTD for XHTML 2.0 has not yet been written so we will continue to use the 1.0 transitional DTD.



If you've ever wondered why today's browsers are so big (and thus, take so long to download), it's because "each new version has to accomodate all the different DTD's and to interpret all the lax HTML syntax" 2 from the past! For more information on this interesting topic, see Beginning XHTML, Chapter 2.




General Debugging Questions/Hints


If you are absolutely, positively certain that your HTML code is correct and you notice that for whatever reason, part of your web page does not work then check the following.


Check for any spelling and typing mistakes. Sometimes an extra vowel or hitting the wrong key is all that is wrong with your web page. Remember, sometimes capital letters make a difference.


Why won't my pictures show up on my web page?




  • Check to make sure you have uploaded your image file to the correct location on the server.

  • Do you have the right filename in your Images Folder? For example, windmill.GIF instead of windmill.gif.

  • Does the Images folder name use all capital letters, all lower case letters, or is there a mix of lower case and capital letters? It helps to be consistent in naming the Images folders (or for that matter, all your folders) for all projects.

  • Remember to keep your gifs and jpegs in the proper Image folder, especially when you are working with more than one Image folder for your web site.




I can not get a particular tag name property to work right.




  1. Check your code for missing closing tags.
  2. Check for spelling errors.
  3. Check to make sure you have the correct attributes and attribute format.



What is the best way of debugging my HTML code?




  • Check your code in a very systematic way. Review the troubled line of code by taking a look at every single character of text, typing space, and typing errors. Here is a list of things to check.

    1. Spelling
    2. Tag format
    3. End tags
    4. Attribute format


  • Isolate areas for testing. Use comments to comment out everything
    except the "first" part. If it works ok, add the "second" part - and
    so on - that way, you can focus on small parts and it is not so
    overwhelming.


Fonts


Here are 2 links to pages with fonts for downloading. (Thanks to Jack Leung)!




From the Forum - Web page privacy and security


Question: I had a question about Web site management. I am building a Web site for my family and was hoping to include current contact information, and other resources, such as a family tree, and whatnot.

Some family members have expressed concern about the privacy of their information. I am wondering what the best way to give everyone the peace of mind that no one outside of the family is able to come into our site and get personal information.

I thought that a password protected page might be secure enough, but does a "web bot" or other automated information collecting program really need to open the page to get the information from the pages?


> "Web bots" won't be able to get in if the page is login and password protected.


Another friend suggested the password protection, along with SSL encryption. Is this overkill? I will never be promoting this Web site, but does that really keep it safe from prying eyes?


> Probably. But this is important if you will implement login and password protection. Otherwise, the password will not be encrypted when it's sent over the network.

> You can implement SSL without buying a certificate from a CA vendor. Just use self-signed. The only problem with this is that your browser will complain when it connects to it initially since it does not recognize the SSL certificate.

> Password protection plus SSL is easy to setup on Apache, so it's probably worth it if you are worried about privacy and security


> Here's a good document on how to setup up a self-signed SSL certificate.


> I guess the best document on Apache http server - from the source itself.



From the Forum - Web Collaboration Vendors


Question: I am looking to configure a "Yahoo Group" kind of functionality that includes forum, online chat, upload/download files etc. on our website. Has anyone configured forum software or an ftp website? If so, recommend any vendors or feedback how difficult to configure and use?


I am putting up a forum for re-entry students.
I am using http://www.phpBB.com

I don't know if you are hosting internally or
whether you are using a webhosting company...
if you are using a webhosting company, you need
to have cgi-bin access, php and mysql support.

BTW - phpbb was listed as the January "Project of
the month" at Sourceforge ( a huge repository of
open source projects ).



From the Forum - Hosting (ISP, DNS, etc.)


Question: I am looking for a low cost solution to host my web site.


I have switched my entire company over to ixwebhosting, it has saved us a lot of money and customer service and quick response to questions or concerns about setup and usage is top notch.


The Windows solution, which is slightly more expensive, allows you to do mssql, mysql, .net, .asp, and the list goes on. You even have direct access to your DNS records and have full control over pointing to external servers that you might host yourself.


Unlimited storage, unlimited email accounts and 35Gig of Bandwith per month are included. If you need more bandwidth than that then you probably need a dedicated server.


This is by far one of the best solutions I have seen. If you want to check out some others just to compare pros/cons:



  • robows.com

  • valueweb.com

  • hostway.com

  • interland.com


Really High End



  • datareturn.com

  • verio.com

  • interland.com (dedicated solution)


There are tons of solutions out there I think ixwebhosting is the best I have seen to date considering the number of features

.

From the Forum - Easy to integrate calendars


Question: I need to create calendars that can be updated by the client.


Here are three solutions, I have worked with the one provided by http://www.calendarscripts.com which is written in PERL. Try it out the documentation is great and you can easily import through the admin console (upload) from a text delimited file.


Another solution that I haven't used but have heard good things about is web calendar creator


Another one to use that is more expensive but if you get the unlimited version you could charge your clients and host for them using Now Up To Date Calendar/Contacts (NUDC) which is available at poweronsoftware.com. I use their software on a daily basis and love it, syncs with my CLIE, Entourage/Outlook, and I can go to any browser and view it online as well.


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1 Beginning XHTML; Boumphrey, Greer, Raggett, Schnitzenbaumer, Wugofski, ©WROX 2000.


2 ibid

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