jnicol

jQuery from the site you asked about: http://www.downend.com/Scripts/menu.js The JS shows/hides the menu. The layout of each menu is just CSS. Use Firebug to inspect the elements and you'll see how they are constructed.

I wouldn't put too much faith in those stats, since they only measure visitors to the w3schools website: "W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the average user." A case in point is that the w3schools stats show Firefox having almost 50% market share, whereas most other sources put it at around 20%!

I would put a few echoes in forprocess.php to see where it is dying. e.g. if you put echo 'submitted'; inside the conditional that checks for the presence of the array key 'send' in the $_POST array, and it echoes to screen then you know the form processing got that far. Work your way through the script until it fails, then you'll know where to look for the problem. Also, you could try printing the $_POST array to see that all the expected values are actually there: print_r($_POST); My guess is one or more of the expected POST vars is missing, but since the form processing fails silently it's impossible to tell exactly which var is missing.

Agreed. I think IP banning just because they make your stats untidy is a waste of time and energy. Tomorrow there will be another hacker/bot probing your site, but the request will originate from a different IP address. Web sites are contantly being probed for vulnerabilities, it's just a fact of life. Unless the user is sucking up your bandwidth, or in some way causing damage to your site, I would just let it slide.

Most middle of the range PCs today are plenty powerful enough for web design/development work. You don't need a bleeding edge machine unless you plan on doing motion graphics, video or 3d work, or unless its a home PC and you plan on using it for gaming. Having said that, purchase as much power as you can afford - just don't obsess about it! The two applications that benefit most from more grunt are Photoshop and Flash. For me, the area I invest most in is my monitor. Your monitor should outlast your computer, so it's worth investing in a good one. If you can afford it, I would recommend buying an IPS (or S-IPS, H-IPS) panel. They are far superior for graphics work. Unfortunately, they are also more expensive, and are increasingly rare, since they are expensive to manufacture and most consumers couldn't give a toss if their monitor is any good. From Wikipedia: "Because of its wide viewing angle and accurate color reproduction (with almost no off-angle color shift), IPS is widely employed in high-end monitors aimed at professional graphic artists" (Note: I have no idea how much £500 buys, as i do not live in the UK, so an IPS monitor might not be an option for you) As for laptop vs desktop: If I had to only have one computer, I would choose a laptop because it's more flexible. There used to be a huge gap between laptops and desktops in terms of bang for your buck, but that gap has closed substantially. Still, your dollar (pound!) will go further if you buy a desktop machine.

You can't specify pixel dimensions with a decimal place. Chrome is rounding down to 95px. If you want to specify the width in pixels then you will need to make five of the nav btns 96px wide to fill that 5 pixel gap.

Try specifying a height for your header (e.g. 150px). Additionally you may need to add an overflow:hidden; rule.

I have a reseller account, which has several benefits: - only 1 hosting bill for your to pay - easier to keep track of multiple hosting accounts, since they are all in the same place - no need to learn a new control panel: every account works identically - no technical surprises - it's fast to set up new accounts/domains - only ever deal with one support team But I would recommend shopping around. I used to be on an expensive reseller plan where I made aprox $0 profit! I've since switched to a larger hosting company with faster servers, superior features, a better control panel, and much much cheaper plans - I can now resell hosting to my clients at 500% markup! I have a DH account too, but I only use it for my own sites, and for client sites that require tons of bandwidth. To be honest I find DH servers slow from this end of the world (Australia), which is why I have a reseller account with Aus servers: much, much faster for local traffic. Another big advantage of true reseller hosting is that it is "white label". You can give the client full control panel access, and they will never be aware who the real hosting company is, or that you are marking up the price. To the client it appears as if you have your own web server, and are running your own mini hosting company. To answer your question about whose contact details to use when creating a hosting account: I tend to use the client's phone and postal address, but my email address. It makes more sense to me that I am sent any outage notifications etc which would baffle the client, but are actually useful to me. I have also found that clients tend to change email address and forget to update their domain/hosting billing details, and then complain when - surprise, surprise - their website disappears.

I have always found that my best source of new clients are my existing clients. They already know and love your work, and will no doubt want to promote it to their colleagues. Let existing clients and colleagues know that you are available to take on new projects. If you have recently launched or redesigned your portfolio site, that provides a perfect pretext for contacting them, i.e. "I'm just writing to let you know about my newly redesigned portfolio website. If you have any friends or business associates who could use a talented web designer, please point them in the direction of my new website. I'm currently available to take on new projects, so if you have any upcoming website projects I'd love to chat to you." I'm not much of a copywriter, but you get the idea!

I may be way off, but I've noticed in the past that it's difficult to make page content exactly align with centered background images (in certain browsers). The problem is to do with the width of the browser stage, and whether it is an odd or even number of pixels wide. Try dragging your browser window very slowly so it gets narrower 1 pixel at a time. Do you notice that the header and background align every second pixel? If so, I'm afraid you will need to come up with a different approach to your artwork i.e. don't rely on the background and foreground artwork aligning.

Yeah that's what I kept saying too! The message didn't seem to get through though...

Your problem is the HTML - you have wrapped each form input in its own form! Obviously you should only have one set of <form></form> tags, which should enclose the entire form.

+1 for PHPDesigner. I used NetBeans for a while, but I much prefer PHPD.

I would be interested to find out what the differences are - do you have any links to hand? I dug up an official page from the IE team which lists the differences, and there are only four differences between IE7 and IE8 Compatibility Mode, and they all relate to JavaScript: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/03/12/site-compatibility-and-ie8.aspx I did find a blog entry claiming numerous differences, but the author seemed to be confusing "differences between IE7 and IE8 Compatibility Mode" with "differences between IE8 Standards Mode and IE8 Compatibility Mode", which are obviously two entirely different things!

Oh right, of course! Then just hardcode the from address.