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Pulp Figures
Being A Short Discourse on Miniature Wargaming
Specific Programming & CGI examples
JavaScript
JavaScript has a number of versions of the language itself, and even worse - it has some infuriating implementation differences between the major browsers. Still, JavaScript can be used effectively for client-side scripting, if you are aware of the cross browser issues.
Navigation throughout this next site is accomplished by the use of tabs on a navigation bar that is consistently placed across the top of each page. Rollovers on the navigation tabs are used to enable the viewer to quickly determine an active link. Behind the scenes, another JavaScript routine is used to preload the "rollover" tabs, to allow for instant image changes.
In an interesting blend of languages, PHP was used to create a webpage containing dynamically generated Javascript, which was then used to print truncated descriptions of some thumbnailed pictures. Why go to so much trouble? The Javascript routine uses an array of strings called from a common .js file, which means that the array is then cached in memory. When a user clicks on the thumbnail, a PHP script is called to display both the picture and the Javascript routine that displays the text. Since the array is already memory resident in the user's computer, this means one less connection to make, thus speeding up download time. Believe it or not, it also makes adding new pictures and descriptions very easy.
A relatively recent development, this new open source language is immensely powerful, robust and fast. In concept it is akin to Microsoft's Active Server Pages, and includes the ability to integrate relational databases, such as MySQL, as well as an increasing number of powerful modules for other tasks.
perl5 The granddaddy of open source languages, perl has evolved to become the most popular language of choice for CGI scripts. Despite the relative opacity of perl's regular expressions and other syntactic quirks, its fast development time makes perl a very useful tool indeed.
ASP Like PHP, Microsoft's Active Server Pages uses a scripting language to generate code on the fly, and to also handle various CGI events.
The webhost was running MS Windows2000, so I rewrote the pages into ASP. Using the Microsoft AdRotator component made adding banners to the site simplicity itself. All of the banners' specifications are located within a common text file, so future additions or changes will be easy and fast. Since I was recoding the pages to ASP, some common functions (like the date, the banner code and the common header bar) were also reworked into a Server Side Include, again to facilitate future updates. Java Created by Sun Microsystems, Java has the great advantage of being platform independent. No matter the system, a Java program should run across a number of different operating systems.
A cousin of Postscript, the Portable Document File or PDF, is rapidly becoming a web standard for displaying documents across a variety of different platforms.
Developed by Macromedia, Flash has become a nearly universal (at last count: 497 million internet users) plugin for browsers. With vector graphics and the increasingly powerful ActionScript, some amazing displays can be deployed using Flash.
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