[Mitch]

The Journal of Chemical Education has been reviewing books for Chemists and chemical enthusiasts for several years now. I've added the past 2 years worth of interesting titles from their list to the featured book block on your left. I wrote the code by hand and I am very happy with the way it looks. The block will show a  random book from the current collection of 60 titles, you can expect me to add some more when I have free time x-mas break.

Although I don't like advertisements in general, I think the block does a succesful job staying out of the way of regulars and being highly-visible to the guests. Plus, I just like clicking refresh to see which one will pop up next. Anyways, just wanted to introduce the new addition.

[Mitch]

78

[billnotgatez]

Is there going to be a way to see the whole list.

[movies]

I had just noticed that the book thingy was changing.  I think it's great!!

What would be really neat would be if you could link to the J. Chem. Ed. reviews from that box too.  Is there any way to do that?

[Mitch]

billnotgatez: Although we don't have competitors parse, I don't want to make their life easier. You can always click refresh or go to the journal and read through the articles.

movies: Good idea. I would set it up, but most people wouldn't have access anyways.

[Mitch]

Hmmm, apparently you can read them if you don't have a subscription. I'll make the "read more" link forward to the appropriate review, but not today. I'll post in this thread after I finish doing that for the 78 titles now listed. ::sigh::

[Borek]

Is iframe forced by amazon? Or was it your selection?

BTW: I took a look at the page code - are you preparing UTF-8 files with Windows noetpad?

[Mitch]

I don't use the code Amazon gives, I wrote my own. But, Amazon usually keeps their ads in iframes. The reason I'm using iframes now, which wasn't how I use to do it, is so that the forum software isn't bogged down by reading 1000s lines of code. So, I keep the code for the random feature block, still on the server(mitch.chemicalforums.com), but not on the forum. If you need the code let me know.

I don't know what UTF-8 is, but if you recognize the formatting, it must be the way Amazon encodes their affiliate links.

[Borek]

I don't use the code Amazon gives, I wrote my own. But, Amazon usually keeps their ads in iframes. The reason I'm using iframes now, which wasn't how I use to do it, is so that the forum software isn't bogged down by reading 1000s lines of code. So, I keep the code for the random feature block, still on the server(mitch.chemicalforums.com), but not on the forum. If you need the code let me know.

I am thinking about becoming Amazon affiliate one day and I wonder how the urls look alike - and what does Amazon provide (picture?). But I even didn't bothered to sign and read about the code yet.

If you are ready to share the code - I will be happy to look at it

I don't know what UTF-8 is, but if you recognize the formatting, it must be the way Amazon encodes their affiliate links.

UTF-8 is a way of encoding unicode characters in text files (well, perhaps that's not the correct way of stating it, but I don't mind). W2K notepad adds some formatting characters at the beginning of the UTF-8 files and they are later often misinterpreted by browsers - I thought that's what I was seeing; but in this case everything is OK - I have just realized that the W2K Wordpad is stupid and doesn't recognize UTF-8 properly. What I have seen displayed as trash were bullets from the left menus.

You, Americans, are not aware of such things - you don't use characters like ??ó??? when writing, for your simple language 96 ASCII characters are enough

[Mitch]

Code is in the Staff Forum

[Mitch]

If you are ready to share the code - I will be happy to look at it :)UTF-8 is a way of encoding unicode characters in text files (well, perhaps that's not the correct way of stating it, but I don't mind). W2K notepad adds some formatting characters at the beginning of the UTF-8 files and they are later often misinterpreted by browsers - I thought that's what I was seeing; but in this case everything is OK - I have just realized that the W2K Wordpad is stupid and doesn't recognize UTF-8 properly. What I have seen displayed as trash were bullets from the left menus.

You, Americans, are not aware of such things - you don't use characters like ??ó??? when writing, for your simple language 96 ASCII characters are enough

Better?

[Borek]

Better?

You mean - with dashes instead of bullets? Well it looks as good as previous version, just the code looks better under Wordpad. I dont' suppose many peaople will check that feature

BTW: why these side menus are not done as unordered lists? They will be bulleted in a more natural way.

Speaking about UTF-8 and bullets... What code do you use for symbols near "previous - next" (visible in bottom right corner when you read any thread)? My Opera displays them as question marks.

[Mitch]

The block code for menus isn't a simple html file, its rather complicated.

As for the question marks, they look like question marks to me too.

[Donaldson Tan]

for some reason, the picture of the books no longer appear.

i can only read the title. I am using firefox 1.5 btw.

[Mitch]

157 books in the random book list now.