Page looks different in Firefox and Internet Explorer

[arthurk]

I've just started to try out Firefox, and have immediately noticed that the website I'm working on looks different - see, for example, this page (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~arthurk/bartle/bartrutt.htm).

I wrote the page while using Internet Explorer exclusively, and (as it appears in IE) I intended the labels for each individual (Husband, Born, Baptised etc) to be close together, so that the entries against them look more or less like consecutive lines of text. Now I look at it in Firefox, everything is much more spaced out - and if you look at the navigation bar at the top of each page, you'll see that that has extra space in each cell.

Please could someone who understands these things take a look at the pages (plus source code and style sheet) and offer an opinion as to what's happening, and how I might fix it?

(I'm aware that I've been advised here before that tables weren't really a good idea, but because of Rootsweb's banner ads, using layers and absolute positioning just didn't work when the pages were uploaded. All pages have been validated with two separate HTML and CSS validators.)

Thanks for any help,
Arthur

[Mythology]

I don't have Internet Explorer unless I reboot into Windows (and it's a very old and crippled IE anyway), but it looks the same in Opera and Konqueror as it does in Firefox.

At a quick glance at the code for the page, without getting into the CSS, I'd start by getting rid of all those paragraph tags - I nicked the code for that page, took them all out and that improved matters no end.

[MarkJ]

The page validates using the w3c validator - so thats good :)
A cursory glance at the code didn't show any real problems - but I haven't looked too deeply as yet. I can see what you mean regarding the extra space though, I am using Firefox on a Linux system and can see the text seems to be left or right spaced rather than centred.
I tend to not use css myself, but I wonder if using the CENTER tag may help? In theory, it should align the text to the middle of the boxes.
Not that I am a web page expert by any stretch of the imagination!
I may pass the query over to my wife - she is the web page person here ;)

Mark

[Mythology]

"I nicked the code for that page, took them all out"

... then I put a couple of them back in, because it dawned on me that you do want the paragraph tags in a few places like the "Other information" bits, as you are genuinely using paragraphs here.

There is another minor problem that I came across.
In the "Married" and "Children" bits, instead of three columns 20%/45%/35% you have two columns 20%/80%.
In some browsers, the yellow box doesn't line up with those above/below, which seems to be because the omitted third column has 6 pixels left padding, so I bunged in a dummy column there.

I don't know what it will look like in Internot Exploder, but which looks OK to me in everything else, validates, and, if I've understood you correctly, is what you intended.

If so, you might want to nick the revised code and compare it. I have, of course, made the links full links rather than relative so that your images show up and links to your other pages work - obviously you'll want to put them back to the way you had them when it's in your own web space not mine!

[Mythology]

Mark, we posted together.

"the text seems to be left or right spaced rather than centred"

Unless I've misunderstood Arthur, that's not what's concerning him - apart from the main heading strip (where it is centred) he wants the text in those boxes like that. The problem is the whacking great space between each box:

Husband
[massive apace]
Born
[massive space]
(etc.)

I gather that it isn't like that in IE, and it seems to be due to the use of unnecessary paragraph tags within each cell - it's valid, but it isn't logical. I notice that Arthur hasn't actually written this lot himself, something called "Namo WebEditor v4.0" has been used, so that's probably where the problem lies.

[MarkJ]

Aha! I see what you mean Myth - comparing the two side by side the gaps are quite noticeable. I was mistakenly assuming Arthur meant the left/right alignment of the text in each box (which is controlled by the css I noticed), rather than the spacing of the actual boxes. Not having Internet Exploder, I could not actually compare the output from the two.

Edit: Managed to scrounge a system with IE to compare and Myths modded version is very similar to the IE display of the original. Nice work Myth :)

Mark

[Mythology]

Thanks - but we still have a minor problem in certain browsers at large text sizes and/or small screen resolutions.

Alternative versions 2 and 3 coming shortly. :D

[Mythology]

OK...

Having got rid of the surplus spacing *between* the boxes, there's a minor problem with the depth of the boxes themselves.

If you're looking at it in Firefox at 800x600 with normal text size, you will notice that the boxes in Arthur Bartle's section are slightly deeper than those in Nora Emily Rutter's section. This is because his section has more text on the right than hers does - Firefox has taken what is probably the most visually sensible option and spaced things evenly, so it doesn't look bad, but not all browsers do this. Opera decides to make all the boxes the same size until it gets to the last one, whereupon it fills all the remaining space, so the yellow box with "Mother" in is about three times the depth of the others!

Now, you might be able to solve this by mucking around with the stylesheet - I haven't looked at that, CSS and I are not sufficiently acquainted for me to know what I'm doing there really - but if not ...

(I'd better spilt this in case of repeating text)

[Mythology]

... here are a couple of alternative possibilities.

In both cases I've taken out the height of 189 which was originally there for that text in the right hand column. It's a nonsense - there's no point in specifying a height with a chunk of wrapping text that will make whatever it makes, and, if anything, it's liable to do more harm than good, as some pedantic browser might take it literally and dump two lots of text on top of one another when it finds that things don't fit and has to use its own initiative.

Version 2 is a bit of a bodge. All I've done here is tighten up the text by removing the paragraphing and sticking a couple of line breaks in instead where they're actually needed - this gets the text down to a height where the problem disappears. However, if somebody is as blind as a bat and using large text size at 800x600, or, on a similar page, you had even more text in that right hand bit, the problem would still be there - we've made it look OK in this instance, but we haven't actually solved it.

Version 3 solves the problem, and would be my choice - but you may not like it! What I've done here is to alter the rowspan from 6 to 7, and create a blank row in the left hand column to match. The result of this is that browsers which bung all the surplus space in the last row will be bunging it into a wodge of nothing, so all your boxes are OK, and it doesn't matter how much depth the text on the right comes to. The slight snag, visually, is that this extra row will always be there, whether it's needed or not, so there will always be a space between the "Mother" box and the "Ancestor Chart" line even if there is very little text on the right.

Short of telling you to put that Web Creator in the bin and spending more time than I'd like to redesigning the entire thing from scratch, that's about the best I can think of though.

[arthurk]

Thanks for the input, guys - and I'm sorry if this was what was keeping you up all night. I've only just got back here to see your comments, but I've downloaded Myth's versions, and it'll now take me a while to take everything in. Then I'll come back to you.

Meanwhile, many thanks,
Arthur

[arthurk]

Many thanks for all the input, especially Myth |bowdown| |bowdown|

Having checked it out, it appears that Namo does put paragraph tags in tables by default, although it also seems to let you remove them. As I prefer WYSYWYG to hand-coding, I think I'll probably stick with it for now (unless a magazine cover disc comes up with something better), and take advantage of its global find and replace to make some of the changes. As for some specific points:

I don't know where the height=189 came from, although I've found that if you accidentally click on the edge of a cell or table and move it fractionally, even if you then undo it immediately, this can be enough to add a height value. But thanks for noticing it.

Looking back at some notes I made, it seems I did once consider putting the style for the labels (Husband, Born etc) on the cells rather than the paragraphs, but decided against it because if the corresponding data was large enough to word-wrap, this would expand the label as well. I guess I might have to learn to be concise!

Probably a good idea to remove the paragraph tags completely from the data cells, and use line breaks.

The extra row below Mother seems OK to me - but I wondered what would happen if it was given a fixed height of say 5 pixels, so in itself it has little effect on the layout, other than to stop the label expanding downwards.

Not too happy with the extra column for Married and Children, since the data for children who don't have their own family page (i.e. most of them) usually includes a one-line biography and name of spouse, which extends well beyond what would be the middle column. I might need to look at the padding to sort this out.

The bottom line for each individual (Ancestor Chart/Census/Pictures) is one that I've never been quite sure about. Everyone has a chart, but only some have the others. The words Census and Pictures are really placeholders at present, indicating that I have these, and one day (??!!) I hope to upload them. At that point I will insert census years as appropriate, and these, with the word Pictures, will be links to the relevant pages. Clearly the amount to be entered here can vary considerably from one individual to another, but I'm reasonably open to tweaking the layout if necessary. Possibly I could do something in conjunction with the extra row below Mother?

Anyway, once again many many thanks |bowdown| |bowdown|
Arthur

[Mythology]

Glad it was useful. :)

It's not 100% perfect visually, but it gets rid of 99% of the problems and it's the best I could come up with short of a rewrite using nested tables so that the two left hand columns are completely independent of the right-hand column, and I'd probably get that wrong anyway unless I spent a week scratching my head over your stylesheet! :D

Using a line height of 5 as you suggest seems fine in all my browsers - I suspected that Opera might say "Oh, OK, if this line is only 5 then I have to fill everything bar 5 with the rest, so I'll go back to having all the surplus space in the bottom box", but it didn't, it's happy with your idea, so that's OK.

Have fun with the rest when you add the census data etc. :)

[MarkJ]

Must admit that for more complex pages, I look for an easy solution ;)
Easy stuff, I code by hand or occasionally design in something like Nvu for instance - worth a look Arthur, although it does add a bit of extra junk to your code, but not too bad as wysiwyg editors go - then I strip any excess stuff by hand.
Thats how I do the St Enoder pages in my sig.

For my own family tree, I use phpGedview. Take one gedcom file, add to phpGedview and away you go. You can add more gedcoms as and if you desire, edit them online and even allow members of your family to edit live if desired - with you retaining full overall control.
For anyone with a webhost which allows them to run php and a database, I would heartily recommend it. I believe someone else here on B-G uses phpGedview too - can't remember who it is now though!

Mark

[uksearch]

I have not noticed a great deal of difference between how my site looks in Internet Explorer and Firefox except in one area. In Firefox the Gallery is laid out in rows of three, whereas in IE it is laid out in rows of two with a couple of gaps. Also the lightboxes do not always appear with the first four images.

UK

[arthurk]

Once again, many thanks, Myth, for all your help. In fact in view of the alignment problems which you found when there were multiple (and varying) columns I've decided to redesign that part of the page so as to use tables with just two columns, which are of a constant width *** - though in some places I've combined a row into a single cell. I think the colours and borders (together with the cell spacing, padding etc) were also making it a bit complicated, so the new version will just be text without anything too fancy. And like MarkJ, I'll carry on with my WYSIWYG program, but I now know to check all the code as well in case it slips in nasties, and of course I'm also now in a position to do my own previews in Firefox as well as IE.

In doing this, though, I've noticed another quirk, possibly related to what Myth found. So that the top line of the table stands out I've indented the text in the rest of the left hand column cells by 20 pixels (style applied to cells). In IE the text in the right hand columns stays in the same place, but in Firefox, this too moves 20 pixels to the right. I've no idea which is the "correct" behaviour, but if I make sure the LH cells are wide enough it's not going to be a problem, and I won't lose any sleep over it.

Like with uksearch's Gallery, these things are obviously sent to try us - finding the answers takes genius!

Arthur

*** see follow-up

[arthurk]

Now that I've played around a bit more, what I wrote yesterday isn't totally correct. I'm still using tables for layout, but not to the same extent, and I've done away completely with nested tables, since the padding that browsers tend to put in was making it hard to line things up.

If anyone cares to look, the revised version of the page I mentioned before is here (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~arthurk/bartle/bartrutt.htm). You can compare it with the old design by clicking a link to a parent. One of yesterday's misleading statements was about using two columns only. It's not apparent on screen at present, but those who check the code will see that this isn't correct as I've now included a space to put a small picture.

Anyway, thanks again for all the input. Looks like I'll be kept busy for a while now.

Arthur

[Mythology]

Well, the revised one certainly gets the thumbs up here, Arthur. :)

You've got the same information into less space (so less scrolling for those of us whose fingers tire easily), and, while your original was in no way confusing, personally I'm a lot happier just reading *down* a page than skipping over to something on the right and coming back again, so I prefer the bio underneath. You might want to stick a line space at the end of the bio, but other than that I can't see anything that I'd be unhappy with if it were mine.

OK, we've lost a bit of pretty colour - but (as long as the result is legible) does anyone really care very much about colour on a site of this nature? It's an *information* site and if I go to a site looking for *information* then what I want is clear layout, obvious links, and things that *function* properly. I'm not suggesting that everything should be black on white in Times New Roman looking as if it was bashed out on a 1960s typewriter, but it isn't Tesco's, you don't have to attract people with a ton of gimmicks and bright colours to woo them away from your competitors!

Incidentally, talking of Times New Roman, I *thought* there was a problem with your css, as one browser displayed certain sections in my computer's default font, a fairly large Georgia, but the "problem" turned out to be just the usual one which can happen with any external stylesheet. I looked at your css, couldn't see anything wrong, switched back to the window which I had the page in, hit F5 and it cured itself - it's like when images don't come up properly at times, things that are being called up from elsewhere, not part of the actual page, sometimes don't get pulled quickly enough and the browser gives up waiting.

[arthurk]

Thanks for the thumbs-up! (Actually I did forget to upload the revised CSS at first and wondered why I was getting some Times New Roman, but for once that was easy to fix!)

Arthur

[Mythology]

For my own family tree, I use phpGedview. Take one gedcom file, add to phpGedview and away you go. You can add more gedcoms as and if you desire, edit them online and even allow members of your family to edit live if desired - with you retaining full overall control.
For anyone with a webhost which allows them to run php and a database, I would heartily recommend it. I believe someone else here on B-G uses phpGedview too - can't remember who it is now though!
Mark ....
Can I rewrite half the program to get rid of what I regard as surplus stuff that leaves me more confused than a £500 washing machine with 80 settings?

I ask because...
I have a new line. I thought I'd try and move into the 21st century by using something instead of writing everything myself, and I came across GeneWeb. I've rewritten a fair chunk of it, so (for example) when you click a link that says "Ancestors" on the person's page, you get a list of ancestors, not an intermediate page asking you whether you want this that or the other display. It's running fine on my own PC, everything's the way I like it now, but I'm having problems with it online, possibly because of my modifications or possibly just because I don't have a clue what I'm doing!

I've obviously done something right, because if you go to my site you get a page which asks you to put in the name of the database you want to look at. In theory, sticking "geneamnesical" in that box and clicking the button should get you the front page. Alternatively, tagging "?b=geneamnesical" on the end of the address in the first place should get you straight there.

It doesn't want to know - I've altered about every darned permission that I can think of and still all I'm getting is the
Cannot access base "geneamnesical"
message. :(

I might have another shot at it using an unmodified version, just in case it's my rewriting that's upsetting things - but I'm reasonably familiar with rewriting php stuff as I use PunBB for my little forum, so if I can *completely* alter the style of phpGedView without too much trouble, I might consider trying that instead.

[MarkJ]

Hi Myth,
I had a look at the page and, as you say, it cannot find the database.
The most obvious thoughts are - the database name is different to that, the database is in a different folder and perhaps the call to it needs the full path, permissions issues.
I see it runs on Apache, so I would plump for permissions or path error.
I have played with GeneWeb many years ago, but I can't remember now how it sets things up.
Edit: Just re-read your comments. You mention it is fine on your local machine, which again reinforces the permission or path error to my mind.
I can install a copy on my server and see if that would help, but I suspect a local setting.


Can I rewrite half the program to get rid of what I regard as surplus stuff that leaves me more confused than a £500 washing machine with 80 settings?
Of course :) Its open source! (hey - a poem!) Mind you, it is a pretty complicated codebase. My php "skillz" are very limited though!

Mark

[Mythology]

Ah - I hadn't thought of path error, so that's worth looking at. I had a problem with the whole thing to start off with, because of not realising what you had to do when running it using cgi rather than installing gwd as a "service", which, of course, I can't do on somebody else's server!

The destructions said that I had to knock up a file like this:
#!/bin/sh
DIR=/home/smith/geneweb/gw
cd $DIR
$DIR/gwd -cgi 2>/dev/null

obviously, replacing "/home/smith" with the relevant bit for me - but it didn't tell me that I had to label this file with a .cgi extension, and it didn't tell me that "bin" is actually "wherever your web host told you to dump it", which, in my case, is "scgi-bin".

I *think* I've figured that out - my database is in (using **** as my username)
home/****/public_html/geneweb/gw so, having altered "bin" to "scgi-bin" I made the second line
DIR=/home/****/public_html/geneweb/gw
which gets us as far as that "Base" page, but perhaps something in the code for that needs altering too.

I'll have another bash at it over the next week or so - if no joy, I'll give phpGedView a try.


My php "skillz" are very limited though!
Mine aren't exactly top notch, to put it mildly - I just back everything up before I start mucking about in case it all goes haywire, cross my fingers and use a combination of supposed logic and trial and error. If I'm doing stuff on the forum, I do it at about three in the morning, so that nobody notices what a complete mess I've made of it. :D
Lots of the latter - if you could see the front page of the current database, it has a little counter down the bottom, which currently says:
"4,226 database visits, 532 of them to this page, since 30 April 2007."
Admittedly this isn't php, so I found it even more confusing to start with, but that's a lot of "Oops - that isn't what I wanted, why's it done that?" |blush|

[MarkJ]

Ah - I hadn't thought of path error, so that's worth looking at. I had a problem with the whole thing to start off with, because of not realising what you had to do when running it using cgi rather than installing gwd as a "service", which, of course, I can't do on somebody else's server!

The destructions said that I had to knock up a file like this:
#!/bin/sh
DIR=/home/smith/geneweb/gw
cd $DIR
$DIR/gwd -cgi 2>/dev/null

obviously, replacing "/home/smith" with the relevant bit for me - but it didn't tell me that I had to label this file with a .cgi extension, and it didn't tell me that "bin" is actually "wherever your web host told you to dump it", which, in my case, is "scgi-bin".

This script needs to be executable - I assume you have done that (or possibly placing it in the cgi-bin may do that for you. Worth just checking that it is, although without knowing the layout for your server I have no idea if that would cause the error you are getting.



I *think* I've figured that out - my database is in (using **** as my username)
home/****/public_html/geneweb/gw so, having altered "bin" to "scgi-bin" I made the second line
DIR=/home/****/public_html/geneweb/gw
which gets us as far as that "Base" page, but perhaps something in the code for that needs altering too.


Yep, that shows a difference between the ways that servers are set up. On mine, things get placed in /var/www/, and www is symbolically linked to public_html.
I would expect the database to be being served up by something like postgresql or mysql. Or perhaps it is non-dynamic?



I'll have another bash at it over the next week or so - if no joy, I'll give phpGedView a try.


Worth installing it locally to test it out. You do ideally need a database though, but the latest version will run the tree from index files quite well I believe.
Although there are plenty of features which you may not need, I should think they are fairly easily removed if you are familiar with php. Some can be simply left out anyway - other languages and themes for example - during the install. Others can be dropped via the administration menus once it is installed.
They have a pretty active forum and wiki which has plenty of ideas and tips too.
My own online tree is at
http://www.kernowyon.org.uk/phpgedview-3.3.8/

Admittedly, I have done very little to the actual layout. I keep meaning to get it organised - but you know how it is!

Mark

[MarkJ]

Myth,
Have you found the error? It seems to be working now :)

[Mythology]

Yes - Sod's Law, of course, that as soon as I get mine going, BG Forums goes into "Server Busy" mode for hours, so I couldn't get on here to tell you! |laugh1|

Thank you! :)

You were absolutely right about the path being the problem - something I hadn't thought of. I think the layout of the folders must have been changed and the destructions haven't been updated. Once you'd mentioned it, I had a prod and tried to use some logic, thought to myself...
"Hang on, geneamnesical.gwb, which is what I reckon it's trying to get to, is not under gw - it's in a folder called bases, which is a split of the *main* geneweb folder, just like gw is. That doesn't seem right to me!"
So - never one to be afraid of crashing the whole thing by upsetting the innards, I just moved the whole bases folder, and- bingo!

I had a minor problem with the password box - the actual box shouldn't have been there at all, let alone slung over to the left, it's a pop-up one from an "Update the database" link on the local version, but I looked at the code, spotted something in a comment line that included "if not cgi", thought "Oh - OK, don't bother reading the rest of that bit then, we'll just go back to the original box idea", and shifted it to the centre.

I can live with that - I'm just pleased that I've got it going online, thanks to you pointing me in the direction of the error. Nobody's going to be actually using it yet, there's only about half a dozen incomplete entries that I threw in just to create something - but at least it's up and running when I decide to chuck people on there.

Cheers. :)

(Oh - and the error page that I mucked about with doesn't validate - but, well, it's an error isn't it, so what do you expect? ;))

[MarkJ]

Nice one :) I thought I had cracked the problem after I posted about the path issue. I tried a couple of different approaches, then tried using geneamnesical.gw and got in. Woohoo I thought - off to tell Myth! But I decided to test without the .gw to confirm it would still fail - and got in that way! So I guessed we had both been working on it at the same time :)
Then, as you say, B-G went down :(
All good exercise for the Grey Matter though ;)

Mark

[Mythology]

Yes, it all keeps the brain working, doesn't it? :)

Incidentally, I did have a look at yours, and it's a lot "better" (personal opinion) than most phpGedView sites I've seen. Some of them are so full of statistics, number of this, favourite that, most visited the other, soup of the day etc. that you can't see the wood for the trees!

Well, I'm sorry, it's probably a minority view if most modern FH sites are anything to go by, but I'm interested in the people not ruddy statistics about the site (I might even get rid of the counter on the intro page on mine, as with me updating it online, it doesn't even give me any idea of the number of visitors, so it's no use to anyone really, is it?) and I prefer things in plain English so readers don't have to be a fellow genealogical FT program robot to understand what they are looking at.

I do wonder what somebody who is interested in Family History but has no experience of using a program themselves, makes of some of the stuff.
"Gedcom" - "What's one of them when it's at home?"
"Report" - "umm... report on what?"
"Register" - "Oh, if I click that, I guess I get a transcript of the entry in the parish register, yes? Oh. No, think again."
"Henry" - which I actually saw on one site, just the word "Henry" at the top of a tree-style display - "Who's he, and why does he have a special link from every tree, I wonder?"
"Ahnentafel" - "Ah, yes, I had one of them, but the wheels fell off half way up the motorway."

Now - as a means of storing data in an "approved" format for publication by the Toffee-nosed Genealogical Society of Smugville, Cliqueshire, or for easy exchange with your fellow researchers, fine - but as a web site for the general public to read, it's complete jargon-ridden garbage, isn't it?

[MarkJ]

Yes, it all keeps the brain working, doesn't it? :)

Incidentally, I did have a look at yours, and it's a lot "better" (personal opinion) than most phpGedView sites I've seen. Some of them are so full of statistics, number of this, favourite that, most visited the other, soup of the day etc. that you can't see the wood for the trees!
Agreed! phpGedview does tend to add stuff I don't need - which I could remove I guess at some point. I suppose these things are added because people in general like to see these statistics etc. If they were not popular, the coders would not bother with them I think.


I do wonder what somebody who is interested in Family History but has no experience of using a program themselves, makes of some of the stuff.
"Gedcom" - "What's one of them when it's at home?"
"Report" - "umm... report on what?"
"Register" - "Oh, if I click that, I guess I get a transcript of the entry in the parish register, yes? Oh. No, think again."
"Henry" - which I actually saw on one site, just the word "Henry" at the top of a tree-style display - "Who's he, and why does he have a special link from every tree, I wonder?"
"Ahnentafel" - "Ah, yes, I had one of them, but the wheels fell off half way up the motorway."

Now - as a means of storing data in an "approved" format for publication by the Toffee-nosed Genealogical Society of Smugville, Cliqueshire, or for easy exchange with your fellow researchers, fine - but as a web site for the general public to read, it's complete jargon-ridden garbage, isn't it?

Even the gedcom format varies of course! Gedcoms produced in some programs add "extra" details which other programs do not use. These extras cause other programs to produce odd little lines of data - I have had that in the past.
A simple gedcom is my preferred format - that way I can import it into Gramps (the genealogy program I use at home) or even place it in phpGedview. These other peculiar formats are not a lot of use to me!
Likewise, I wish people would use a standard word processing format - ideally plain text or, at a push, rich text. So often people send me Microsoft .doc formatted items which, although I can generally read them, tend to have strange formatting.
Then of course, there are html emails..... grrrr! Photos in proprietary formats -e.g paintshop .psp files etc - why not use good old he, and why does he have a special link from every tree, I wonder?"
"Ahnentafel" - "Ah, yes, I had one of them, but the wheels fell off half way up the motorway."

Now - as a means of storing data in an "approved" format for publication by the Toffee-nosed Genealogical Society of Smugville, Cliqueshire, or for easy exchange with your fellow researchers, fine - but as a web site for the general public to read, it's complete jargon-ridden garbage, isn't it?[/QUOTE]

Even the gedcom format varies of course! Gedcoms produced in some programs add "extra" details which other programs do not use. These extras cause other programs to produce odd little lines of data - I have had that in the past.
A simple gedcom is my preferred format - that way I can import it into Gramps (the genealogy program I use at home) or even place it in phpGedview. These other peculiar formats are not a lot of use to me!
Likewise, I wish people would use a standard word processing format - ideally plain text or, at a push, rich text. So often people send me Microsoft .doc formatted items which, although I can generally read them, tend to have strange formatting.
Then of course, there are html emails..... grrrr! Photos in proprietary formats -e.g paintshop .psp files etc - why not use good old jpeg or another common format?
Having to beg my daughter to convert photos on her Windows machine is a real pain!

This is beginning to sound like it should be in the Grumpy Old Men section ;)

Mark

[Mythology]

Yes, I agree with you re proprietary formats, even when I was running Windows I used to nag people about "rubbish" that they sent me - partly because not all Windows is the same, let alone running a completely different OS. E.g., I didn't have Word on my PC, and on Windows ME, the Micro$haft site decided that I wasn't allowed to have the *latest* Word Viewer, I was stuck with the Word97 one, and stuff created in a newer version (Word 10 I think, but that's just from memory) would not display properly in that - the right hand half inch or so was always missing.

Incidentally...

I would expect the database to be being served up by something like postgresql or mysql. Or perhaps it is non-dynamic? I have no idea how it all works, but it's dynamic.
"Dynamic display
The pages that are displayed in GeneWeb are not created beforehand. Each request, even the simplest access to someone's personal records, are created dynamically, at the time of the request.
This avoids problems of filling up disk space. The data is displayed in GeneWeb-created pages, which are not kept on your computer when you leave the program (unless you manually do a "save")."

On the local version, "gwd" gets installed and shows up in the running services. Online, unless your web host has gwd installed (and there probably isn't anyone who does) you have to use the cgi option, about which it says
"In "cgi" mode, the requests are indirect, since they have to pass through the Web server, which can slow down the treatment."

I hope that makes more sense to you than it does to me - I don't understand half of this stuff, I just keep clicking the buttons until something happens! With my web host, I had to activate something called "Simple CGI wrapper" which (it says) allows me to run my own cgi scripts - hence it being "scgi-bin" in the address, the ordinary "cgi-bin" being only for their preinstalled scripts, but exactly how the script kicks things into life, feeds the request into their server and comes up with the answer, I really don't know! :D