Here is something which I hadn't concidered until a recent strange problem I had with a clients website. Most new Firewalls and even ISP's are now implimenting 'Pop-up & Banner Ad' blockers to a website's code before it arrives at the viewers browser software.
The story:
I was recently asked by a client to have a banner ad on his site which could be changed every few months. The site in question has over 300 pages, so to make things easier in the future, I decided to call the graphic
'banner01.gif'. This way when I uploaded a new graphic, I just renamed it to match and only had to change the URL for the link. To get more on this,
click here.
The whole thing worked fine off-line while previewing through Dreamweaver, but once uploaded and tested - the banners located on pages which were not in the root of the directory, were not appearing... This stumped me for days - I even tried using standard HTML rather than JavaScript - the same result was occuring. Then I asked a freind to try out the site - he reported that everything was ok and the banners were visable on all pages.... So knowing this - I knew it had to be my network that was creating the problem..
I have installed a proxy server and Norton PF 2004 (only been on a few weeks) - both of these programs have built in blockers.... After searching the default rules, I discovered that both the file name '
?banner?.gif' and the folder name
'banners' were being blocked..... and guess what I called the folder and the file..... Yep - my own system was blocking the graphic from appearing.
My point to all this - is that a growing percentage of Internet users now have these blocking programs in use. So when designing or expanding a website, be very careful what you call your folders and files, cos a high percentage of surfers may never know they are there.......
Stay safe - use the green cross code.... (????)