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All content on this site is © by www.wegotit.at.
Page has been designed and implemented by Richard Harb.
This site makes extensive use of:
All pages ought to be fully
compliant. If you encounter anything worth mentioning don't hesitate to drop us a line
at either of the addresses mentionned at the bottom of the page.
You should also be able to reasonably browse (most of) the site without ever needing the mouse. There are two ways to do just that: 'tabbing' through the links or using your favourite browsers access keys.
To give you an idea how some browsers handle it:
There you have it, now you can guess what platform I have been developing on :-).
Some general rules which access keys are available on this site:
You may or may not have noticed that this site makes use of cookies. If you don't know what these are... we'll explain. If you do you can skip the next paragraph.
These are small files that are saved more or less permanently (depending on the sites and your browsers settings) where bits of information can be stored. The nature of serving webpages usually does not allow a webserver know whom he is serving to, whether the user agent, or in the more common word 'browser' has been on a site before. So the server might send such a cookie that will be sent back whenever another page is requested so the server can use the information therein. By itself a cookie isn't a bad or even evil invention. As with everything in life it largely depends on what is being done with it.
Unfortunately there is no other way than to store cookies on your machine if the
address bar shouldn't look like if a cat took an extended stroll over the keyboard.
So upon connecting your browser will receive cookie named 'SESSID'.
This is not meant to be an intrusion into your privacy but is simply necessary as this
site allows for personalized content (you can have your own collection
of images for example). We need to know whom to get the images for :-).
The other cookies that might get set are those that tell the browser which state some
of the menus are in - namely if they are expanded or not.
Then there's whatever data you have been willing to share:
If you requested and confirmed a username for this site you have already given an email address,
maybe a name or other information that is largely optional.
This information is stored permanently so we are able to provide the functionality you are - hopefully - enjoying. If at any time you wish to have your data removed, send a message to office@wegotit.at, fill in the information we need and we will remove all data stored on our site, including entries in the guestbook and your collection of images.
This site also makes use of a few javascript functions. Nothing serious or dirty, just a few functions that make life a little easier. You will however be able to view all the pages with scripting disabled. The check whether or not your browser supports Javascript is done on the very first page only. It's no high tech solution but so far it works and in general this ought to be enough. Here you can enable or disable the server sending you Javascript.
Currently the site supports only two languages: english and german. The language settings
of your browser are detected and used, with a fallback to english.
If you have registered a user and are logged in you can set the language to your liking.
If you feel left out because we don't support your language send us an email so we know
there's need for more.
This site is not using a secure server so all data transmitted from and to you is sent as
plain text. If an imaginary Eve is listening to the data transmissions occurring at the login
process she will have your password (In the future we might provide a mechanism that
encrypts passwords at the client).
We suggest you do not use any password that also guards your online banking or other
sensitive areas of your life (just a little common sense for what it's worth).
Once your username has been authenticated no additional sensitive information is passed
in the open. All passwords stored on the server are encrypted so not even an admin or some
malevolent individual will be able to get his hands on it.
If you are interested in more detailed information on the algorithm have a look at
RFC 1321.
Of course if somebody knows your username and guesses the password correctly - usually because
the password chosen is too trivial like a spouses, girl-/friends, husbands or car brand name -
you're out of luck. Thus we recommend choosing something a little bit less obvious.
You can use any combination of characters - up to 32 - you find on your keyboard, so don't make
it too simple.
We also have implemented reasonable measures that an established session cannot be hijacked
so another person could pose as you.
I am not really sure if this section should be in here, but I felt that it is/was quite a
lot of work developing the page. And it didn't get easier by strange browser behaviour so
I think it might as well be in here.
I tried to build the pages conforming to well and long defined standards:
(XHTML 1.0 was published first 26 January 2000 and
CSS2: W3C Recommendation 12-May-1998!!!) I thought it should be a piece of cake.
It turned out I had to experience firsthand what zillions of sites talk about:
Funny effects everywhere...
I guess there are reasons why there have been about 4000 submitted bug reports within
a month to the guys who are working on the Opera browser...
Javascript support is there but it feels as if it were still a beta version. It's the same
with using access keys: it provides interesting entertainment on the monitor.
Internet Explorer is a bitch to adapt the layouts for, and seemingly has to be the
way it is to satisfy the corporate world.
Though I wonder if there will ever be a version that fully supports the HTML 2 tags
(<link rel...>).
Mozilla doesn't resize after the width of some box has changed and refuses to display
<div>'s more or less at random, Amaya is really great for telling you where you
f** up your code but a pain to use - let alone actually working with it. Although
I really like its concept.
PHP: Really great, but it has its limits as well:
In a previous version of this document I described that this site would be able to
'identify' sessions without the need for cookies. I was wrong...
Well, it would be easy doing just that, but with my limited experience I couldn't
get it to work (ok, I can think of at least 3 ways how to to it, but all of them are
quite a bit more work than the simple - two line - switch I had in mind).
I guess this limit is intentional, argh.
Then there are the PEAR libraries. Great idea. All the tools that are available,
ranging from benchmarking to database abstraction to parsing XML. Unfortunately
they create an overhead that is the best argument for n+1 generation server machines.
Or put into different words: If the site turns out to be popular you'll need another
server way sooner than without using the libs.
As mentionned above this site uses the Smarty Template Engine, and once I got used to
working with it, it turned out to be very powerful and efficient (ok, it
has its own limits but nothing that couldn't be quickly worked out using the supplied
functionality).
The people working on Mozilla do an incredible job making that browser... It has a
couple of features that come in handy for developing - especially in debugging / fiddling
with javascript and CSS.
Opera 7 turns out to be really stable and as fast as promised. A great browser for
daily use - but it could use some improvement in handling some of non trivial
functionality.
And then there's Microsoft who are also doing a great job - albeit only in keeping
me busy installing really important patches twice a day. I'd be tremendously bored
otherwise, I am sure.
It bodes well for the ever growing community of web designers that small companies and open source developers aren't the only ones anymore who have come to realize that standards are nice to have. So we might even have a chance to build web applications in a not too distant future that are actually usable in "Anybrowser" (Is there a ™ for that one?). Well, usable in my definition does not necessarily include ActiveX (You put on a seatbelt when driving in your car, do you?).
