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@PeterPan_321May 29.2014 — #Solved it! If anyone has a similar problem, here's what to do. In my case it was a page with a mail form near the bottom, so when the form was POSTED, I wanted the updated page to scroll back to where the form was. So, down where the form part of the page is, I place an anchor tag...
<a name = "form"></a>
next, in my PHP file, I now have a variable called formAnchor, set to empty...
$formAnchorPos = "";
Now if the form has been posted, this part of the PHP code that detects the POST (to process the form) will be activated, and there I'll set my variable to "form", like this...
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST")
{
$formAnchorPos = "form";
// rest of form processing follows.
Finally, in the BODY tag (WHICH MUST APPEAR AFTER THE ABOVE PHP CODE, we add this...
<body onload="Javascript:window.location.hash = '<?= $formAnchorPos; ?>';" >
Normally, before the form has been posted, the formAnchorPos variable is empty. So in that case, the re-position is just to "#", which is just the current page position anyway. But after the POST, the javascript will scroll to the position of the "#form" anchor. PRESTO!!!! :-)
Glad I found this! Because I can use this method to reposition the scroll position to other areas, or even do a re-direct!
Starting to LIKE PHP!!! :-) @PeterPan_321May 30.2014 — #So can my form have two actions? Currently my form tag looks like this...
<form name="contactform" method="post" action="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]);?>">
But anyway... atking out my javascript and adding the #check id to a nearby element, and then changing the form tag to look look this...
<form id="contactform" method="post" action="<?php guitarLessons.php#check;?>">
Doesn't work. Page does reload, but always to the top. @PeterPan_321May 30.2014 — #@deathshaddow...
Ah Yes! Thanks for that. And even better...
<form method="post" action="<?= htmlspecialchars($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]) . $formAnchorPos ?>" id="contactform" >
where $formAnchorPos is initially defined as "#form", and later after a successful email is finally sent, and an email confirmaion message is displayed, change it to "top" (another anchor) or just an empty string, along with all my other vars. That way if some visitor is tempted to hit my submit button repeatedly, at least it takes them back to page top. away from the form. @PeterPan_321May 30.2014 — #YAY!!! I've got it. Here's my final form. Its an advertisement for my guitar lessons. If you scroll down you'll get to the form. I'm not doing a lot of validation this time... the user might want to send me a phone number instead of an email. But if there's no name or message given and you submit, it will show the errors. Or if you got it all right (feel free to send me an email... no big deal), text will display indicating the message was sent. in both cased, you'll notice the URL changed with an appended "#form", an anchor tag, to ensure the page loads to that point. And since that "#form" anchor is specified through a variable, another click on the SUBMIT button will cause the page to load at the top, away from the form, as if you started from scratch. That's just to avoid visitors that are tempted to hit the SUBMIT button multiple times.
http://pixyland.org/guitarLessons.php
Anyway, comments or reports stupid behavior on some browsers welcome. I have to go try it on my android tablet now. I don't have a smart phone yet.@PeterPan_321May 31.2014 — #
@deathshaddow
OK, well I will offer thanks, because I did ask for comments. But I will offer some of my own too. First, a few minor points, I'm not working in WebPlus. Webplus I d/ls and bought because it was $15, and would have asked for a refund had it been worth my time to bother for $15. (LOL). I don't like it one bit, and about the only "webplus" thing on that page was a background I had created and kept. Also, the file is only 1/2 week old. But if you mean the domain site itself, whose main area is actuallyhttp://peterpan.pixyland.org , that I first published in 2000, and in passing I'll say that it did win a webby in 2001.
But this brings me to an important philosophical point which probably could fill many threads. I wear many hats... electronic engineering, product design, software (started back with assembler on an ATARI!), musician, carpentry, modeling, costuming (hence the "hats" reference), and several other endeavors which all have something in common. That is, there is always a "newer" way of doing things. But newer is not always better, and since "newer" always requires time to learn and implement, there has to be a better argument for "newer" than the teasing that you might get for your choices. I *DO* appreciate the lessons and info you're offering me, but I don't buy the multiple arguments about changing things because the code style is dated.
There are many examples of things I do in web pages that in retrospect I could have done better. But by the same token there are many things I've endured critique about which I wouldn't change, because they start and end of the argument is that it is a newer methodology. The bottom line, at least IMHO, is content and accessibility.
For example, you suggested several coding shortcuts I could use unless I'm coding for an early NETSCAPE browser. I'd counter that as everyone's bandwidth has come a long way even in rural USA, and there's no reason to stop using conventions that make your page backward compatible to save a few bytes. And tables vs CSS? Yes i use both. But if my pages display properly on the browsers of today as well as 10 years back, or at least are usable 10 years back, that's not a BAD thing.
I do appreciate the power of CSS, and I like the way HTML 5 is going. But as long as I'm typically hand coding I'll likely always use a mixed bag of methods, both because its what I'm used to and because it works. And I have to elaborate on that last point. I've done things with Tables that you can do better in CSS, but fail to a point of being unbelievable on many versions of browsers that people still use. And with MS pretty much abandoning XP users with no direct upgrade path and hundreds of non backward compatible OS changes, there are going to be a lot of home users on IE 8, 7, and maybe even 6 for a long time. My point? Many is the time I'll cobble together a page using what I know to be the most up to date CSS methodology, only to find it doesn't work properly in several browsers. Tables are tied and true, and where there are bugs, I know most of them. I have no issue migrating more to divs with positioning controlled by CSS, but I do have a problem doing so just to avoid someone's teasing. judging by the many pages I've seen put out by modern CSS systems like Wordpress and Joomla that don't display right (even on some newer browsers), it tells me again that newer is not always better. The developers can blame the broswers all day, and some even resort to chiding the user to come into modern times and get a new browser.
I starts to border on arrogance after a while. I've also been criticized for using GIFs instead of PNGs, despite the fact that PNG transparencies don't work on all browsers, and can't do simple animations. I've even been criticized for still using HTML symbols like @quot; instead of the UTF equivalents. This despite the fact that some systems will render an annoying display where every apostrophe or quote is displayed as a sting of weird characters. So I continue to create pages that can be represented in 7-bit ASCII. And really... <br><br> means something is wrong? Everybody does that. They do because some browser will do the "right" thing and others won't, and its a simple way to ensure better layout in the majority of cases.
Again, if you think I'm opposed to learning new things you have me all wrong. Just this week I learned some PHP and turned out two working forms for two of my sites. So being new to PHP, my main reason for asking opinions was to find out if something didn't display right or failed to function correctly. So far, despite not using all the latest greatest formatting, they seem to look the way I'd like them too (on multiple new and old browsers), and most important WORK. (well i did have to tweak my <textarea> a little to look right on my android tablet, but that's about it).
Bottom line... content, layout, and functionality first. Not opposed to newer methods, just want to see better arguments for newer methods than to say my way is archaic. My guitar of choice is a my Gibson 1972 Les Paul. I bought it in 1972! many newer guitars have a lot of very cool new features, and many I I do like. But at least in the music world, what matters is what you play and the quality of your music and sound... not how old fashioned the electronics or style may be. See my point?@PeterPan_321May 31.2014 — #
the reason i did this...
action="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]) . $formAnchorPos; ?>"
where "$formAnchorPos" might be "#wheretogo" or might be empty depending on the program activity, is because I'd read that there are security issues that were best dealt with referencing ($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]), and then only after passing it through a function to remove the ind of suspicious characters that could be a hacker. I'm kind of new to PHP, so when I see warnings like that (and the example code works) I tend to go with it. So even if it works, are you saying its just as safe and effective to leave the action empty?@PeterPan_321Jun 06.2014 — #
I appreciate your argument, but let me hasten to add something to my premise about newer not always being better. Maybe even better than my "guitar analogy", if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound". Well of course it does, but that starts the whole line of questioning about whether it matters, and if so to who (or whom... if your picky)
I will absolutely grant you that anything you learn to do the right way (and that assumes everyone agrees on the "right way") will make things much easier. But if the point of language is to "express" rather than "impress", so too is the point of a website to display and function well in the maximum number of cases. A coded page structure that works to the composers satisfaction in a sufficient number of cases is never "wrong", even if the code looked like HELL, in the same sense if it works well, "It doesn't matter" is a phrase aptly applied to both that code and the tree that fell somewhere in the Amazon rainforest today.
Don't get me wrong... I find VERY valuable your tips like using of "label" tags instead of plain text, because as you pointed out, some browsers can make use of those tags for association with the field. I never knew that, and in the future will go that route. But taking an argument like CSS positioning of DIVs being better than tables for layout? In all cases? I've found that it does have lots of advantages, for sure. But I'm also saying those advantages are often trumped by the way some browser and browser versions interpret CSS positioning differently. Can you make adjustments to accommodate all the browsers? Maybe. But if you have to do all that, never knowing if you're leaving an stone unturned somewhere, maybe in some cases a few old fashioned table structures can save you some time.
And TIME really is the important thing in the context of this discussion. In engineering, programing, model making, music composition... carpentry... or any endeavor the conscientious designer has a constant mental challenge balancing the meaning of the word "done". When is something done? When its perfect or when it works? When it works most of the time or all of the time? I would assert that in all cases, the 80/20 rule dominates. That is, you'll get 80% of what you need done with 20% effort, but that last 20% requires 80% more effort... effort and time. And I'd further argue that as project approaches "perfection", the time to reach that goal becomes infinity. And since there isn't infinite time, we have to balance. I will shoot for 99.9% in the code of an embedded processor in a product that is going to be a nightmare to recall and fix, if the customer finds bugs. But for a web form, where changes can be easily made anytime with a simple FTP transfer, I'll probably get that 80% mark 9well maybe 90%) and leave it at that.
This probably sounds like a lot of psycho babble, but I do hope you see my point. A website, for all its interesting methodologies, is almost never an end product. We post blogs to express our opinions, not spotlight our code structure. We create websites to advertise products and convey ideas, and seldom to advertise our coding skills. So for most of us... especially weekend warriors with dreams, the limited amount of time for each task combined with the daunting number of tasks often means we have to budget our time. In my case, at least for websites, that means that "functional"="done". There can always be "done better", and certainly *I* am always interested in learning to do things better. (I've been playing that guitar for 45 years and I'm STILL learning better playing techniques!). But time is a major limitation (at least for me). This is why I have no choice but to really consider carefully when 'wrong" might really mean "could be better" and in some cases "might not matter". There is no choice but to discern the difference. Time is precious! :-)
Bottom line, please don't hold it against me (or others in my shoes) when it seems I'm slow to change something that 'works". Its not that I'm not interested in potentially better alternatives. There are just so many other things demanding my time, and its invariably the next piece of added functionality that trumps things like the decision to use a table or a DIV :-).
scrolling around a PHP page
Is it possible in PHP to force the html in the page to scroll to a specific position? I may have shot myself in the foot, taking a long page that had a javascript form at the bottom, and turning it into a PHP file.But now when I do my page validation, any errors I report forces a page load, and the page does not get re-positioned by the browser as HTML pages do. This didn’t matter in a shorter form I did where the whole page was the form.
So if I place an html anchor tag down where the actual form starts, like <a name=”form”>, is there any way within my PHP code to make the browser jump to that position? I know I can jump to it by saying header( ‘Location:’ . “#form”);, but of course that totally reloads the page, clearing my variables.
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@PeterPan_321May 29.2014 — #<a name = "form"></a>
next, in my PHP file, I now have a variable called formAnchor, set to empty...
$formAnchorPos = "";
Now if the form has been posted, this part of the PHP code that detects the POST (to process the form) will be activated, and there I'll set my variable to "form", like this...
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST")
{
$formAnchorPos = "form";
// rest of form processing follows.
Finally, in the BODY tag (WHICH MUST APPEAR AFTER THE ABOVE PHP CODE, we add this...
<body onload="Javascript:window.location.hash = '<?= $formAnchorPos; ?>';" >
Normally, before the form has been posted, the formAnchorPos variable is empty. So in that case, the re-position is just to "#", which is just the current page position anyway. But after the POST, the javascript will scroll to the position of the "#form" anchor. PRESTO!!!! :-)
Glad I found this! Because I can use this method to reposition the scroll position to other areas, or even do a re-direct!
Starting to LIKE PHP!!! :-)
0
@PeterPan_321May 30.2014 — #<form name="contactform" method="post" action="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]);?>">
But anyway... atking out my javascript and adding the #check id to a nearby element, and then changing the form tag to look look this...
<form id="contactform" method="post" action="<?php guitarLessons.php#check;?>">
Doesn't work. Page does reload, but always to the top.
0
@PeterPan_321May 30.2014 — #Ah Yes! Thanks for that. And even better...
<form method="post" action="<?= htmlspecialchars($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]) . $formAnchorPos ?>" id="contactform" >
where $formAnchorPos is initially defined as "#form", and later after a successful email is finally sent, and an email confirmaion message is displayed, change it to "top" (another anchor) or just an empty string, along with all my other vars. That way if some visitor is tempted to hit my submit button repeatedly, at least it takes them back to page top. away from the form.
0
@PeterPan_321May 30.2014 — #YAY!!! I've got it. Here's my final form. Its an advertisement for my guitar lessons. If you scroll down you'll get to the form. I'm not doing a lot of validation this time... the user might want to send me a phone number instead of an email. But if there's no name or message given and you submit, it will show the errors. Or if you got it all right (feel free to send me an email... no big deal), text will display indicating the message was sent. in both cased, you'll notice the URL changed with an appended "#form", an anchor tag, to ensure the page loads to that point. And since that "#form" anchor is specified through a variable, another click on the SUBMIT button will cause the page to load at the top, away from the form, as if you started from scratch. That's just to avoid visitors that are tempted to hit the SUBMIT button multiple times.Anyway, comments or reports stupid behavior on some browsers welcome. I have to go try it on my android tablet now. I don't have a smart phone yet.
0
@PeterPan_321May 31.2014 — #Well, it might help if you had built the form properly -- and weren't using tables for layout... or deprecated attributes like ALIGN on DIV... BGCOLOR on TABLE... anchor with name on it for nothing... non-breaking spaces for christmas knows what reason... Comment placements that could trip rendering bugs (yes, I said COMMENTS, yes... it sounds crazy, did I mention it's an IE thing?)
That whole page is a laundry list of outdated 1990's style markup. Pretty much EVERY table on that page belongs in the trash, some semantic markup wouldn't hurt.
<snip>
Silly question -- just how old is this site?[/QUOTE]
@deathshaddow
OK, well I will offer thanks, because I did ask for comments. But I will offer some of my own too. First, a few minor points, I'm not working in WebPlus. Webplus I d/ls and bought because it was $15, and would have asked for a refund had it been worth my time to bother for $15. (LOL). I don't like it one bit, and about the only "webplus" thing on that page was a background I had created and kept. Also, the file is only 1/2 week old. But if you mean the domain site itself, whose main area is actually
But this brings me to an important philosophical point which probably could fill many threads. I wear many hats... electronic engineering, product design, software (started back with assembler on an ATARI!), musician, carpentry, modeling, costuming (hence the "hats" reference), and several other endeavors which all have something in common. That is, there is always a "newer" way of doing things. But newer is not always better, and since "newer" always requires time to learn and implement, there has to be a better argument for "newer" than the teasing that you might get for your choices. I *DO* appreciate the lessons and info you're offering me, but I don't buy the multiple arguments about changing things because the code style is dated.
There are many examples of things I do in web pages that in retrospect I could have done better. But by the same token there are many things I've endured critique about which I wouldn't change, because they start and end of the argument is that it is a newer methodology. The bottom line, at least IMHO, is content and accessibility.
For example, you suggested several coding shortcuts I could use unless I'm coding for an early NETSCAPE browser. I'd counter that as everyone's bandwidth has come a long way even in rural USA, and there's no reason to stop using conventions that make your page backward compatible to save a few bytes. And tables vs CSS? Yes i use both. But if my pages display properly on the browsers of today as well as 10 years back, or at least are usable 10 years back, that's not a BAD thing.
I do appreciate the power of CSS, and I like the way HTML 5 is going. But as long as I'm typically hand coding I'll likely always use a mixed bag of methods, both because its what I'm used to and because it works. And I have to elaborate on that last point. I've done things with Tables that you can do better in CSS, but fail to a point of being unbelievable on many versions of browsers that people still use. And with MS pretty much abandoning XP users with no direct upgrade path and hundreds of non backward compatible OS changes, there are going to be a lot of home users on IE 8, 7, and maybe even 6 for a long time. My point? Many is the time I'll cobble together a page using what I know to be the most up to date CSS methodology, only to find it doesn't work properly in several browsers. Tables are tied and true, and where there are bugs, I know most of them. I have no issue migrating more to divs with positioning controlled by CSS, but I do have a problem doing so just to avoid someone's teasing. judging by the many pages I've seen put out by modern CSS systems like Wordpress and Joomla that don't display right (even on some newer browsers), it tells me again that newer is not always better. The developers can blame the broswers all day, and some even resort to chiding the user to come into modern times and get a new browser.
I starts to border on arrogance after a while. I've also been criticized for using GIFs instead of PNGs, despite the fact that PNG transparencies don't work on all browsers, and can't do simple animations. I've even been criticized for still using HTML symbols like @quot; instead of the UTF equivalents. This despite the fact that some systems will render an annoying display where every apostrophe or quote is displayed as a sting of weird characters. So I continue to create pages that can be represented in 7-bit ASCII. And really... <br><br> means something is wrong? Everybody does that. They do because some browser will do the "right" thing and others won't, and its a simple way to ensure better layout in the majority of cases.
Again, if you think I'm opposed to learning new things you have me all wrong. Just this week I learned some PHP and turned out two working forms for two of my sites. So being new to PHP, my main reason for asking opinions was to find out if something didn't display right or failed to function correctly. So far, despite not using all the latest greatest formatting, they seem to look the way I'd like them too (on multiple new and old browsers), and most important WORK. (well i did have to tweak my <textarea> a little to look right on my android tablet, but that's about it).
Bottom line... content, layout, and functionality first. Not opposed to newer methods, just want to see better arguments for newer methods than to say my way is archaic. My guitar of choice is a my Gibson 1972 Les Paul. I bought it in 1972! many newer guitars have a lot of very cool new features, and many I I do like. But at least in the music world, what matters is what you play and the quality of your music and sound... not how old fashioned the electronics or style may be. See my point?
0
@PeterPan_321May 31.2014 — #If I'm submitting to the same page I submitted the request from, I would simply leave the action empty. In this scenario the browser will submit to the current URL.
<form method="post" action="">
If I wanted to have it jump to a particular position on the page, I'd just add the # without and file.
<form method="post" action="#wheretogo">
So If I was submitting from "http://www.mysite.com/page.php ", the destination URLs respectively would be:
[URL]http://www.mysite.com/page.php[/URL]
[URL]http://www.mysite.com/page.php#wheretogo[/URL] [/QUOTE]
the reason i did this...
action="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]) . $formAnchorPos; ?>"
where "$formAnchorPos" might be "#wheretogo" or might be empty depending on the program activity, is because I'd read that there are security issues that were best dealt with referencing ($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]), and then only after passing it through a function to remove the ind of suspicious characters that could be a hacker. I'm kind of new to PHP, so when I see warnings like that (and the example code works) I tend to go with it. So even if it works, are you saying its just as safe and effective to leave the action empty?
0
@PeterPan_321Jun 06.2014 — #I'm going to answer this out-of-order, because some stuff at the top, middle and bottom can be answered all at once.
[/QUOTE]
I appreciate your argument, but let me hasten to add something to my premise about newer not always being better. Maybe even better than my "guitar analogy", if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound". Well of course it does, but that starts the whole line of questioning about whether it matters, and if so to who (or whom... if your picky)
I will absolutely grant you that anything you learn to do the right way (and that assumes everyone agrees on the "right way") will make things much easier. But if the point of language is to "express" rather than "impress", so too is the point of a website to display and function well in the maximum number of cases. A coded page structure that works to the composers satisfaction in a sufficient number of cases is never "wrong", even if the code looked like HELL, in the same sense if it works well, "It doesn't matter" is a phrase aptly applied to both that code and the tree that fell somewhere in the Amazon rainforest today.
Don't get me wrong... I find VERY valuable your tips like using of "label" tags instead of plain text, because as you pointed out, some browsers can make use of those tags for association with the field. I never knew that, and in the future will go that route. But taking an argument like CSS positioning of DIVs being better than tables for layout? In all cases? I've found that it does have lots of advantages, for sure. But I'm also saying those advantages are often trumped by the way some browser and browser versions interpret CSS positioning differently. Can you make adjustments to accommodate all the browsers? Maybe. But if you have to do all that, never knowing if you're leaving an stone unturned somewhere, maybe in some cases a few old fashioned table structures can save you some time.
And TIME really is the important thing in the context of this discussion. In engineering, programing, model making, music composition... carpentry... or any endeavor the conscientious designer has a constant mental challenge balancing the meaning of the word "done". When is something done? When its perfect or when it works? When it works most of the time or all of the time? I would assert that in all cases, the 80/20 rule dominates. That is, you'll get 80% of what you need done with 20% effort, but that last 20% requires 80% more effort... effort and time. And I'd further argue that as project approaches "perfection", the time to reach that goal becomes infinity. And since there isn't infinite time, we have to balance. I will shoot for 99.9% in the code of an embedded processor in a product that is going to be a nightmare to recall and fix, if the customer finds bugs. But for a web form, where changes can be easily made anytime with a simple FTP transfer, I'll probably get that 80% mark 9well maybe 90%) and leave it at that.
This probably sounds like a lot of psycho babble, but I do hope you see my point. A website, for all its interesting methodologies, is almost never an end product. We post blogs to express our opinions, not spotlight our code structure. We create websites to advertise products and convey ideas, and seldom to advertise our coding skills. So for most of us... especially weekend warriors with dreams, the limited amount of time for each task combined with the daunting number of tasks often means we have to budget our time. In my case, at least for websites, that means that "functional"="done". There can always be "done better", and certainly *I* am always interested in learning to do things better. (I've been playing that guitar for 45 years and I'm STILL learning better playing techniques!). But time is a major limitation (at least for me). This is why I have no choice but to really consider carefully when 'wrong" might really mean "could be better" and in some cases "might not matter". There is no choice but to discern the difference. Time is precious! :-)
Bottom line, please don't hold it against me (or others in my shoes) when it seems I'm slow to change something that 'works". Its not that I'm not interested in potentially better alternatives. There are just so many other things demanding my time, and its invariably the next piece of added functionality that trumps things like the decision to use a table or a DIV :-).