#### On-Line Address Book Readme ##### #### Latest Version is 1.0 as of 3/18/2000 #### The On-Line Address Book is the joining of Perl/Cgi & Javascript/Html code. The Perl/Cgi code 'addbook.pl' handles the reading and sriting of the database table 'addbook/addbook.db', and the creation of the Javascript/Html code in the right side tabs frame. The tabs frame contains the smarts. The content for each page of addresses is loaded into Javascript objects 'onload' of the tabs page. When a letter tab is pressed, the address page contaent is extracted from these objects, formulated into a web page, then displayed. Because its Javascript, its very fast. No slow access to the server to retrieve the selected address page. There is one danger to doing it this way. The information in the database table on the server may have updates during which the address book is being used. This would mean the viewed would be different then the actual. But hey, it's an address book. Addresses & such don't change that often. I'd say the chance of this happening is pretty slim. Requirements: ------------- The web server is required to support Cgi and to have Perl version 5.004 or greater. The browser is required to support Javascript 1.1 or greater. (See bugs) Inventory: ---------- The on-line address book has: 1. ./bin/addbook.pl .. the web server cgi script. 2. ./addbook.html .. the frameset page that sets the address book frames. Its the html file called when the link is pressed. 3. ./addbooklink.html .. sample link file. Use the code in here as the link to the address book. 4. ./bin/addbook/addbook.db .. the database of address information 5. ./addbookcvr.html .. the address book cover page. 6. ./README .. this file 7. ./images/* .. spiral, background, and tab images. 8. ./icons/addbook-icon.jpeg .. an icon button of the address book. Install (Unix): --------------- To install, 1. Choose or create a home directory for the address book. 2. cd to this directory 3. Load the gzip-ed tar file 'addbook.tar.gz' with command /addbook.tar.gz | tar xf - where is the gnu zcat program, probibly located in /usr/local/bin, and is the path to addbook.tar.gz (obviously). After installation, you will need to change a few things. 1. addbook.pl may need to have suffix .cgi for it to work. 2. Ownership and permissions may need to be adjusted. 3. The perl path listed in addbook.pl may require changing to reflect the actual location of perl. 4. The $webhome url in addbook.pl will need to be changed to reflect the actual home directory. 5. On line 171, change the "whereever" to the location of the url where the addbook top page is. Should be the same as 4. Bugs: ----- Well, there are none, just features, (or the lack there of) :). However, there is a problem with some MS Internet Explorers. It appears to be a caching problem in conjunction with its lack to properly perform redirection code. About the cache problem .. You see, IE caches the output from a server cgi script whereas Netscape never caches the output from a cgi script. The cgi perl script attempts to by-pass this I.E. problem by instructing the browser not to cache, and by setting to last modified time/date of the tabs frame to be the time & date at the moment of execution. Its apparent these don't work on some I.E. browsers. The symptons of this are: New, Change or Deleted entry are not being shown on the address page. Sometimes for quite a while even after IE closed and restarted. Solution? The real solution is to dump IE for Netscape. However, some success has been achieved by: Clearing all temporary files, by changing the 'Check for newer version or stored pages' setting to 'Automatically', or doing both. About the redirection problem. Cgi programs can instruct the browser to redirect the output to a named page or frame. IE will not follow these instructions if the page was created/loaded by Javascript code. It always puts it into the page or frame the form information is submitted from. Solution? Make sure the frame or page is also named in the anchor that links to it. Future : ------- Well this is rev 1.0 you know. There has got to be improvements. Therefore, Comming soon: 1. Javascript adapted to pre-load hi-lighted tab images so as to improve the speed of mouse over hiliting. 2. Embed the edit page in Javascript also .. maybe? 3. Create a configuration file so that database column headings can be easily changed. 4. A search engine. 5. Ability to print out each, or all pages with a click of a button. 6. Group email mailing lists. 7. Selectable email to: Well that should about do it for now. Send comments and requests to nerm@nermware.com