corz.org faq

All the text files on corz.org are formatted in Unicode, specifically UTF-8 (no BOM). You will need a real text editor if you want to appreciate the beauty of my code structures. *grin*

On Windows, I used to recommend EditPlus; which has code-folding, dynamic projects, code snippets library and much more. It is quite excellent. However, it is not free. TextPad, which froze a long time ago, but still offers the best file comparison tool around (though that's a cinch with Editplus, too), UltraEdit; even just for its ability to perform search & replace inside multiple files, PSPad; a nice editor on its way to becoming a great editor, EM Editor; which gives you a free license if you develop free software, and has beautiful cross-platform handling, and Crimson Editor, all capable editors, and unicode savvy into the bargain.

These days, after some initial setup fun, I mostly use Notepad++, which is actually quite awesome. And free. Notepad++ has plugins for just about everything. It also has excellent search & replace in files and much, much more. Check it out.

Kate and Kwrite (parts of the KDE Desktop) along with most other Linux text editors will do a grand job, and

On the Mac, BBEdit is still excellent, and SubEthaEdit is well worth a look, too. JEdit looks good on pretty much every platform.

You need an editor you feel comfortable with, something that has all the features you need plus decent syntax highlighting. New ones pop up all the time.

Using Unicode is smart for so many reasons, and all the world's major web browsers are unicode-savvy, too, so you might want to consider putting this line...

php_value default_charset utf-8

into your php-serving Apache config file (.htaccess is fine) and just be done with it!

phpsuexec users, or anyone that has a real php.ini/.user.ini to deal with, can instead insert..

default_charset = utf-8

Ahh.. That's Arabic Start Of Rub El Hizb! Everybody knows that!

Unless your computer isn't equipped to deal with complex script, left-to-right languages and what-not, in which case you see a wee rectangle. What can I say? Get equipped!

I use it force my text editors to interpret the document as utf-8. Because, at least in the lower regions, utf-8 looks exactly like ASCII text, and with no BOM, and without some non-ASCII character in the document, the text editor would put "UNIX", as opposed to "UNIX/U8" in its status bar, and that just annoys! I want UTF-8 DAMMIT! EVERYWHERE!

If all you see is a wee rectangle, then your computer sadly lacks the ability to handle complex scripts, or else you didn't install that. For your information, it's an eight-sided star composed of two perfect squares, with a circle inside the octagon. ;o)

Sure! But if you use significant portions, please give credit where it is due, and please do not pass my work off as your own. Again. Because a little credit for my many web inventions.. adaptive CSS, site-maps, tabbed web interfaces, text-based captchas (that blind folks can use).. and the rest, would be nice. Och well.

If you want to use my images, please copy them to your own site and use your own bandwidth and server resources to display them. My Auto-Hot-Link script will ensure your visitors instead see a corz.org promo image, even if you are still looking at the pretty copy in your browser's cache. You have been warned.

In a word, NO. If you want to link to corz.org, you go ahead, but please don't consider this an incentive for me to link back to you. I only link to sites that are relevant to my content, and that I personally enjoy and recommend.

This doesn't happen often, but there are a number of reasons why this could have happened. The most likely, is that you asked a question that was already clearly explained in the article you are assumed to have read before posting a comment underneath. Or perhaps the question has already been asked by someone else, and answered. Or the question was so poorly written as to be indecipherable, in which case you are invited to try again, but first, please read this.

Bottom line: unless your question, and its subsequent answer adds something to the site, it will probably be deleted. Deal with it.

I don't use anti-virus, so I can't comment on which is least likely to throw up false positives, which this most certainly is. The truly brain-dead AVs also like to share their data, so by next week, there could be more! Their old-school methods get particularly annoyed when I use AutoIt.

As to whether or not to trust the integrity of my downloads, that's up to you. After all, you probably don't actually know me. And just because governments, schools, universities, leading corporations and professionals across the globe trust in my software every single day, doesn't mean you have to!

Feel free to rake around the site, read my blogs or whatever, maybe Google for some forum posts where my downloads are recommended, until you feel secure.

Most people, when faced with this situation will, I hope, immediately mail the anti-virus manufacturer along the lines of..

Thank you! That's way more effective than mailing me about it!

Also, I publish MD5 and SHA1 hashes for my downloads - feel free to check those.

At the end of the day, remember, corz.org site has been around for over two decades, providing (mostly free) information, tools and resources. This is my livelihood. Do the Math!

Firstly, I take no responsibility for this. If your sense of sight makes is difficult to access corz.org, that is something you will need to compensate for at your end. I have similar issues myself, with other sites. White on black nearly knocks me out, and is common in certain circles.

I take control of this issue by first using a decent browser, and by that I mean either Firefox, one of the Chromium-based browsers or amazingly, Internet Explorer 11. All browsers these days have developer tool options where you can disable styles, if required. Firefox and Chrome et al are Open Source, and can take plug-ins (meaning your solution requires only: any human with intent + coding skills). One of the Firefox plug-ins I consider essential, is called "ReadEasily", and is, sadly, fiendishly difficult to obtain online. It removes all the styles from a page, so you can see it in its raw HTML. All the pages at corz.org are coded in standards-compliant HTML, so look quite excellent when viewed in raw format, even as raw source. Text-only browsers and screen readers can see the site just fine.

You can achieve a similar effect with a other plug-ins and browser built-in functions, including the Firefox Web developer plug-in, which comes as standard with the Firefox install, and the Firefox Accessibility Extension, which even allows you to use your own stylesheets. Most of these plug-ins can also be configured to run from HotKeys (Firefox: Alt+Shift+A), so you can easily and instantly switch between a styled and non-styled state (and because they are open source, another plug-in will almost certainly be available to enable Hotkeys for those which don't.).

Opera, also free, has, or used to have, depending on which branch/version you are on, many "User Modes", which render a page in a variety of useful and/or fun ways. Because the pages at corz.org are coded in standards-compliant strict blah-blah, they will look beautiful in whatever mode you might choose to view them in. The newer Chromium-based Opera lacks the user modes (and pretty much everything else that made Opera special) but obviously picks up the Chromium-based features. In Internet Explorer you can simply do: View >> Style >> No Style.

What I'm saying is, this is MY site, and it looks the way it looks because that is how I want it to look. All the time you took complaining to *ME* about it could have been better spent installing the better browser and/or plug-ins required to compensate for your personal accessibility issues. Did you plan on mailing the other twenty seven billion web sites out there, too? As the Americans say, "Good luck with that!".

As for corz.org styles, see here, and the foot of every page!

Thankfully, I hear this one about ten times more than I hear the previous question because yes, that would be me, again. From the back-end php code up to the funky JavaScript and groovy CSS, all the HTML, images, icons, everything.

As for how to get some well, aside from these lovely words and pictures, most everything here is generated by some funky script or another. You can download most of those for free from the /machine. The major web apps can be got at here.

The styles themselves can be got at easily, feel free to do what thousands have done before - view the source and rip the code right out! Please don't pass it off as your own work, though. That's still annoying!

If you want to see the style sheets in all their deminified glory (with comments, notes, experimental sections, and so on - the stuff your browser is not supposed to get!), add ?deminify to the end of the style sheet's URL..

https://corz.org/inc/css/main.css?deminify

Tada!

Note: my style sheets are generated at run-time from a series of style "modules", so will be different if you, for example, switch color schemes.

I still haven't gotten around to fully documenting my dynamic style system, though you can get to it inside some of the releases (corzblog has a full implementation). There are some notes kicking around here.

If you want me to create something for your site, and you think you can afford me, by all means, get in touch.

Heh, well, back in the middle of the Nineties, I had a company, and I thought it might be cute to have a wee slogan under the cute company name. This was long before this practice became the norm, by the way.

Simple Solutions in a Complicated World

But I had the domain name swiped from me (my own fault for searching before purchasing - NEVER do that!) and, losing the option to take the whole thing online (my original plan), I abandoned the company name itself. I keep the business stationary as mementos, but don't really bandy the slogan about much, these days, preferring to let my smiley do the talking.

I do still live and work by it, though.

;o) corz.org