Help for a beginner

[maritimes]

Hi all,

I`ve been running a site for a month or so, mostly based on html and php. That`s about as far as my knowledge takes me. I`m still learning the basics through books and the like.

What I was looking for is:

The site I run is about the weather, I wanted to grab some content from another weather site, namely latest weather warnings. The site in question allows copying of their materials as long as the source is aknowledged.

The warnings are displayed in text format on their site, where as I was hoping to show any warnings on my site using the marquee text effect because space is limited.

Does anyone understand what I`m going on about because I`m terrible at explaining things:) and new to web design etc.

[MstrBob]

If you provided us with the other website in question, we could help you grab the information. But don't use a marquee because ONLY users with Internet Explorer will see it, the many disabled users and users using real browsers like Mozilla, Opera, Safari, Netscape, ect don't support the invalid marquee tag - plus, its annoying. But we can help with grabbing the info.

[maritimes]

Thanks for the reply.

Okay here`s the site and the content I was hoping to grab.

http://text.www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/warnings/warnings_e.html

[spufi]

Originally posted by MstrBob
But don't use a marquee because ONLY users with Internet Explorer will see it, the many disabled users and users using real browsers like Mozilla, Opera, Safari, Netscape, ect don't support the invalid marquee tag - plus, its annoying.

Annoying? Yes. Mozilla/Firefox users not seeing it? Not true.

[MstrBob]

I should correct myself, I was misinformed that it was IE proprietory, though it might have been nevertheless, it isn't valid and its annoying. Opera and Mozilla, I've discovered upon testing, do indeed supporting. Though I'm not sure of Safari/Netscape.

[steelersfan88]

I don't believe Netscape does. (It was always the Ie marquee and Netscpae blink tags that were used together for an effect on both browsers)

I've written many articles, and it is best to use a marqueee feature, not necessarily the marquee tag, but a marquee to prevent news or Weather information, to have the ffect of a marquee scrolling at the bottom of TV news and weather stations.

Dr. Script

[Charles]

Dumping the marquee effect is a great idea, but that doesn't really help here. First you need to grab the information and you can't do that client side, you will need to do some server side programming. And to do that you will need to know what scripting is available to you.

Now, grabbing from an existing web site is rather involved and you would be sunk if they ever re-did their site without telling you. But those guys get their information from somewhere. And that should be in some consistent and easily manipulated format (SOAP, perhaps). Get in touch with the folks that run that site and find out where they get their feeds. You might even try Googling for SOAP feeds directly.

[metal5]

Hi there;

I've been in this situation before. Since the website you want to borrow material from says its okay to borrow from them as long as you acknowledge their site, do this by all means, but provide a link on your website with the address to the website your borrowing from right at the same location where you use their image/material, etc.

Look in a web building book's index for links and learn to make links.

borrowing material honestly is also a good way to network with other websites and builders. If you always use ethics this way, you won't run into any trouble, because it can catch up with you later if you do use other website images and material, without finding out if they would allow you to first.

Also, there are a lot of websites that provide some nice free graphics and images. Just plug in 'free images, graphic or icons' into the address bar in a search engine and it will find all sorts of free things on websites for you.

I hope this helped.

metal5