Ask Dave Taylor!

What is ASP.NET? If I have to use ASP.NET, don’t I need to do JavaScript and CGI programming? And where does ASP.NET stand among HTML, XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS? If I use ASP.NET with C#, don’t I need to learn CSS, etc.?
Y’know, a lot of people talk about ASP.NET, but it’s surprisingly hard to find […]

I want to know in a nutshell how I can get to install and use Ruby On Rails. I have been to rubyonrails.org but the download procedure is not clear cut. I’m basically a C++ and .NET developer. I am interested to use Ruby On Rails for my Web apps. Please give a straightforward and […]

This is a really basic question, but I’m still just trying to figure all this Internet stuff out. I don’t know any HTML. I would like to know how to a) place HTML in my coding to turn a paragraph color to red and b) increase the font size.
Nothing wrong with being at the […]

I think I have my weblog set up properly, but someone recently emailed me saying that I haven’t set it up for “RSS autodiscovery”. But I have an RSS feed and I even have a little ‘xml’ button that links to the “index.xml” file that contains the RSS. So what am I missing?
The very latest […]

How can I protect my Web site HTML pages, graphics, etc. from being viewed, and/or manipulated by casual viewers? IOW, what do I need to set up so that if someone tries to go to “www.mysite.com/pics” (for example), they would get a “no permission” message?
There are two ways I can try to answer your […]

How can I convince the Google robot that my keywords use the word cat and my page is optimized with the word “cat” more than “cats web”. I want Google search to list me under the word “cat”: I am listed at the number 3 spot on the first page of a Google […]

I love CSS. I would like to use CSS menus. I have seen several versions on the netover the last 12months (I currently use a javascript menu system). My biggest problem with these CSS menus is that you have to put the menu code into each HTML page as far as I can see). This […]

I’m writing a webpage registration program for a local non-profit, and I’ve been trying action=”mailto:myaddr@yahoo.com” thinking that it would send me the stuff that my CGI script will get (method is POST) but I don’t see anything. Is there a way to see what my cgi script will see w/o having to do the server […]

I’m just starting out in the Web world and was just told by someone else who I respect that I should be careful with the JPEG graphics format because it’s “lossy”. I have no idea what that means, however. Can you enlighten me?
While I’m a big fan of the JPEG graphics format myself - just […]

Dave, help, how I would go about adding an eBay search field to my homepage. One that I could enter a search term in and get the results popped up on the eBay website?
First off, some background: How can I add a Google search box to my web site and How do I add […]

I am trying to make a web page and am having trouble with the HTML. I want to make some links at different places on the picture on the front page. Could you help me with the code? Right now the whole picture is a link, but I would like to make the ENTER […]

Dave, I have added Google to my webpage using the “Google free” code. Can you please tell me how can i by default place the cursor in google search box?

I’ve been reading your Creating Cool Web Sites book, and what I’d like you ask you is how do I put a picture on website? Even though you have mentioned it I am not sure what to write in the <img src=’__” />. I am not sure where you get that part if you want […]

I’m running phpBB for my site discussion forums and really like it, but I’d like to slip some advertising between forum posts #1 and #2 on my pages. For the life of me, though, I just can’t figure it out. Can you help out?

Dave, I know that the NOFOLLOW attribute was introduced to prevent PageRank bleed through blog comment spam, but now that my site is automatically creating those NOFOLLOW links, I’m afraid that the search engines might assign some negative karma to the “linked to” domain, which would be my own. Is that something I should be […]

Dave, My question is about the Technorati search box. How do I move the search box over to the right so it’s not jutting outside the sidebar?

Dave, I have a few different books and audio CDs I’d like to sell and am wondering if you can recommend a quick and fast way for me to add some sort of an online store on my Web site so it’s “commerce enabled”, even a rudimentary one?

I read somewhere that Google and others are to start searching meta keywords ‘within’ Flash animations. Is this true?
The reason is that I want to create a website using an interactive city map on the homepage, close to the top. I know that Google will only cache the first few hundred KB of content, so […]

Dave, Hi there, I noticed, on a previous entry, somebody asked how to add a countdown timer to their website, well I am also interested in one for my website, on how long until the next clan match is for Socom II, am i able to get a visual countdown timer, where when people go […]

Dave, I finally signed up and have a Google AdSense account, but I’m confused by all of the terminology in their reports. For example, what’s a Page Impression versus an Ad Unit Impression? Thanks for any help you can offer.