Web-N00b

How to create Contact Form? How can website visitors contact with me? Here is simple tutorial for you.

1. Download following package it contains all files which are needed for Contact Form, and extract all files into your account.

2. Now, you should move FormMail.pl file into cgi-bin folder in your account or some folder which can execute CGI and Perl scripts (if you don’t know such folder, contact with your hosting support).
Note: Formmail.pl should have 755 permissions

3. contactform.html file contain default HTML code with already ready contact form, you can check an example here

4. Open FormMail.pl in text editor and replace following lines by your information (change YOUR@MAILBOX.COM value to the name of the mailbox, where all information from the form should be sent and set your domain name instead of YOURDOMAIN.COM):

$postmaster        = qw(YOUR@MAILBOX.COM);
@referers          = qw(YOURDOMAIN.COM);
@allow_mail_to     = qw(YOUR@MAILBOX.COM WWW.YOURDOMAIN.COM);

then open contactform.html and find following line:

<form method=”post” action=”http://YOURDOMAIN.COM/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”recipient” value=”YOUR@MAILBOX.COM” />

just set your domain name and mailbox instead of these lines and thats all, save the file and now your form is ready.

How to add video player to your website? It is so easy:

1. Download player example here

2. And edit the code in index.html file, here is explanation, all you need is upload your own FLV video file in some folder of your website account and define link in the code. Default link to the movie is:

<a
href=”http://webnoob.info/video/flowplayer/video.flv”
style=”display:block;width:520px;height:330px”
id=”player”>
</a>
where http://webnoob.info/video/flowplayer/video.flv is link to your video file and width:520px; height:330px is a resolution of your video.

3. Flash player can work only with FLV files, so you should have FLV converter also, you can download it here , converter allows to convert most used video formats (MPEG, AVI, MP4 ) to FLV format.

Ok, and now an example of the FLOW-player

The actual HTML code for a typical flash animation on a website will look something like this:

<object classid=”clsid:D697CDE7E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-458453540000″
codebase=”http://active.macromedia.com/flash4/cabs/swflash.cab#version=4,0,0,0″
id=”animation name” width=”468″ height=”60″>
<param name=”movie” value=”YOUR.SMF”>
<param name=”quality” value=”high”>
<param name=”bgcolor” value=”#FFFFFF”>
<embed name=”animationname” src=”YOUR.SMF” quality=”high” bgcolor=”#FFFFFF”
width=”468″ height=”60″
type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”
pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash”>
</embed>
</object>

The “object” tag is used to embed an object within the document.  “Classid” is used to specify the location of the objects data. Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 3.0 and later use the “codebase” attribute to detect which version of the Adobe Flash Player ActiveX Control is installed on a user’s computer. If the user’s version is earlier than the version specified by “codebase”, Internet Explorer can automatically download and install the newer version of the Flash Player from the location specified in “codebase”.   The rest is pretty self-expanatory.
Fortunately, most of the web builders we talked about on the easy web design page offer a simple way to add flash to any web page without having to worry so much about HTML code: simply select a “flash” button, drag your mouse until the animation is the size you want, then browse your computer’s files to find the flash animation’s file name.  In the dialogue box that appears, you can usually specify your preferences for how the animation will look and behave, including scale, looping, and autostart properties.  Consult your software’s user manual for details.

For Dreamweaver, adding a flash animation is somewhat similar:

Select Insert > Media > Flash. This opens the Select File dialog box, where you can select the SWF file of the banner you created.

Navigate to and select the SWF file you wish to use.

Click OK. The SWF file is inserted into the web page. (See the gnome.html document in the finish folder to reference the code that’s added to the document.)

(Optional) Select the SWF file and click Play in the Property inspector to view the flash animation.

Select File > Preview in Browser > iexplore (Windows) or Internet Explorer (Macintosh), or select your preferred browser, to preview your site (which now contains the flash animation) in a browser window.

In Microsoft FrontPage, the process goes like this:

Choose Insert | Picture | Movie in Flash Format while you are on the Design tab. Navigate to and select the .swf file you wish to use.

Right Click on the flash image and select “Movie in Flash Format Properties”.

Set the width and height to the correct settings. Uncheck “Keep aspect ratio” if the size is not using the same aspect ratio.

Click Preview tab to view the flash banner.

Here is an example: