Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with webpages

Viva la Revolution?

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:58:56 -0800

IRAN ELECTION FILTER: I am looking to create a few web pages to mirror some information back in to Iran. What editor should I use that will recognize Arabic script and what tags do I need to use to define the language when writing the HTML? To clarify a bit further, I have the text already in Farsi. I am looking to take information that is on pages that have been blocked/filtered by the Iranian government and put it in a simple plain text only page which I will host on a server that I have access to. I tried to use Notepad++ to create the pages but it does not like Farsi. Also I have never created a web page in another language so I don't know what tags to put in to define the language. Please help!

Help me create a simple webpage

LyzzyBee — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:49:10 -0800

I need to put together a website for an event I'm helping organise in July this year. It needs about 6 pages, max - home page; info about the venue and order of the day; attendees list; sponsors page with an ability to add in the sponsors' logo and a link to their website (we're talking people wtih etsy craft pages who pay a tenner to support the event, not big corporate sponsors) Obviously there are MILLIONS of web hosting sites out there. I need something * cheap (£5 a month ish) * simple (no masses of moving images and weird flash stuff * easy to use (I can do some html coding but nothing fancy. We don't NEED fancy) * UK based if possible.

Can you give me concrete examples of hosting sites you use which have these features and I can get something up and running asap? There are so many I can't choose!

Please feel free to ask further questions if I'm missing something here. Thank you!

How to Create Non-Paginated PDFs from Current Webpage of Firefox?

WCityMike — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:54:24 -0800

Is there a Firefox extension, or Mac app that can work with what is currently on Firefox, which will export the current webpage as a PDF file that is not paginated and reproduces the screen appearance, such as what Saft's "Export PDF" feature offers for Safari? The Saft plugin for the Macintosh version of Apple Safari offers a feature called "Export PDF" in which the page is exported as one long PDF file. The PDF file is not like the one you might get by picking "Save as PDF..." from the PDF menu on the Print dialog; it works off the screen version of the current webpage. This webpage more accurately describes, and gives you a visual example of, the feature.

This is perfect for my archiving purposes; it retains the text as text, so that I can then highlight it or annotate it using Skim, yet leaves the result near-identical to the original. The only problem? I don't use Safari any longer. I currently use a very klutzy process of passing the URL over to Safari using Safari View and then having a macro pick the contextual menu item, do the renaming, and so on. The problem is that if the timing is imperfect due to system lag, or if a new extension has rearranged the order of items in the contextual menu, the macro misbehaves. I'd much prefer to have a Firefox-native solution, or an Apple application that will work directly with Firefox.

Saving the URL as an image, such as is currently offered by some extensions and Mac applications (such as Paparazzi), is not a useful solution to me because it does not preserve the text as text within the document.

Thanks!

Do singlepage, long copy websites work?

Hates_ — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 07:02:50 -0800

Does anyone have any knowledge/experience as to whether the single-page + massively long copy trend for a lot of websites actually work? (Examples Included) Recently we've been discussing our new company homepage redesign at work and there's been a lot of suggestion as to whether following the increasing trend for a single page with massive copy is the way forward.

These are a couple of examples of what I'm talking about:

www.marketingrebel.com
www.themagichundred.com
www.precisionnutrition.com

Coming from a design background I am massively against it as it goes against everything I "think" to be right about web-design and good user interaction. I don't believe people's attention span to be long enough to actually read these types of sites.

One argument put forward in it's defense is always "If it doesn't work, why are more and more sites doing it?" and my only argument against is that there are a load more sites not doing it then doing it and that to me it just does not portray the image I would want out company to.

Any first hand experience/knowledge would be greatly appreciated. I'm worried that if the consensus is we follow this path that we'll end up hurting ourselves as a company in the long run.

Help me save my poor eyes.

zardoz — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 03:20:06 -0800

Like most of you, I do a lot of reading online, but notice that some websites default the font size to a teeny, weeny size. I'd like to read these sites at a larger font size, but when I change the default in FF, from say 16 to 18, some pages don't display optimally (text is cut off by images, I need to scroll right to read, etc.) I believe GreaseMonkey can fix this so that the pages will read better at a larger size, but that's just a guess and I'm not sure how to use it. Any tutorials out there?

Need a little help with javascript and webpage dropdowns..

ascullion — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:26:48 -0800

Need a little help with javascript.. Say I have a page with multiple dropdown boxes, all of which contain exactly the same options. At the minute, I have to click on all of those dropdowns individually, which is very repetitive.

I was thinking that it might be possible to use javascript to add a button to that webpage that would select the same option on all the dropdowns on that page. But sadly I don't know how to do that, and google is no help.. so any help would be appreciated.

(by the way, it doesn't have to be javascript - I'm happy to do anything that would help do this.)

how to draw arrows on a webpage

mrkohrea — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:37:59 -0800

What's the lightest weight way to draw arrows between text on a web page? An example of what I'm thinking about is here.

A regular old table would be perfectly adequate for text placement, but I don't know how I'd do the arrows.

I'm pretty sure this would be trivial using any number of plugins or image generation techniques, but I would like to avoid them as much as possible.

I'm aiming to reduce download times as much as possible.

webpage for a begginer

snsranch — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:33:24 -0800

Help me to start making web pages. (I've done the search but my results, lately, are just silly.) I have XP on the rig, I have Cox Cable. If I had the money, I would use the Macromedia stuff. But I don't. Any ideas about a tool that is similar and free? I'm just a guy with some built up content with a need to share with my friends via a website.

Mefites, I know you can hook me up so that someday I might at least feel the temptation to self-link. (Although I never would!:)

Xpath problem

neilkod — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 07:16:19 -0800

XPATH hell-I'm trying to XPATH out the (xml) contents of the processVXMLReturn tag in this document. The file contains the exact XML response from a web service; I have no control over the output. I'm just interested in the nested xml payload. Hope my terminology is correct.[M to the Izzay]

Positive Oracle karma offered in exchange! I'm making an PL/SQL call to a web service; the web service returns an xml document within the main xml document. I need to separate the envelope from the payload. From there, I'll extract the other elements. If my terminology stinks, please correct me.

Is there an easy way to search through a range of web pages to find which ones are active?

neurodoc — Tue, 02 Nov 2004 11:05:22 -0800

Is there an easy way to search through a range of web pages to find which ones are active? [more inside] I'm trying to find a job posting that is no longer openly posted at a web site (the closing date was several months ago). The url for the job posting is in the format:

http://anyplace.com/aa-1234.cfm

Is there a quick and simple way for me to check pages /aa-1000 through /aa-9999, without having to type each one?

(I did do a Google search, and while the posting I was looking for didn't come up, it did hit several pages that no longer appear on the general "Jobs Available" page.)

Movable Type

solistrato — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 13:01:38 -0800

In Movable Type, how do you jigger it so the URLs of the individual entries display the title of the piece, as opposed to the entry number?

Is there a website that highlights good web design?

Tlogmer — Sat, 31 Jul 2004 19:54:14 -0800

I know about Web pages that Suck. But is there anywhere that highlights examples of good web design and goes over their features? Most of the pages I've seen offer obvious guidelines like "make sure the text is readable" and "don't be incredibly annoying" -- but how do you make, for example, a long annotated list of recommended reading that isn't overbearingly dense? (I mean, I've figured out the list-readability thing, for the most part. But it would be nice if advice of this type was widely available.)

Firefox and Unicode

PrinceValium — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 18:57:12 -0800

Why does Firefox insist on loading pages with Unicode character coding, when I prefer Western character coding? The former turns high-ASCII characters like § into question marks; the latter displays these normally. Does this happen to anyone else, and can I fix it?

Why is Amazon.com stealing my browser focus?

jdroth — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 09:10:54 -0800

BrowserFilter: Sometime during the past week, Amazon pages developed an annoying habit. When they're finished loading, they take the focus away from whatever page I'm reading. For example, if I'm typing a question in AskMe and an Amazon page completes its load, IE switches to the Amazon page while I'm typing. This sucks. How do I stop this? It's driving me crazy!

Advice on good free CSS editors?

Termite — Sun, 21 Dec 2003 21:33:34 -0800

I'm trying out Macromedia HomeSite. It might be the best web page program I've worked with, there's only one thing I don't like: TopStyle, the CSS editor. Do you know any good, free CSS editors?