Quick questions that don't need a dedicated thread

[Starfighter]

If this isn't a good thread idea then I'll change the title to "Netiquette: button links" or something like that because the question I want to start off with is:

If I want to link to some other sites on my site, should I tell them I'm doing so?

It seems like such a "marketing by not asking any questions first" move, because that puts a small pressure on those sites to "perhaps link back" and so on. And perhaps some sites would hate to be featured on my site and so on and so forth.

(Edit: I'm aware of the Useless thread but this'd be more geared towards quick questions related to our sites and stuff like that.)

[milkchan]

If I want to link to some other sites on my site, should I tell them I'm doing so?

It seems like such a "marketing by not asking any questions first" move, because that puts a small pressure on those sites to "perhaps link back" and so on. And perhaps some sites would hate to be featured on my site and so on and so forth.

I would put the link even without asking. It's flattering to discover that you're on someone's links page. And I feel like asking them puts pressure on them too, because it confronts them with an awkward yes/"no means i'm a dick" question. If someone in the rare case doesn't want to be featured on your site, they can email you but I think it's highly unlikely.

[qt3.14]

QTDDTOT are great.

Link with abandon. The internet is a public forum. It's fine to link to places. No different than telling folks about a cool café you like. If you feel like asking, ask! People are more likely to be flattered than anything else.

Another good thing is to just tell people you like their site. Just shoot them an email or a message in their shoutbox letting them know. Gives people the warm fuzzies and of costs ya nothing :p

[Starfighter]

I would put the link even without asking.

Link with abandon.

Thanks for your input, I've now gone ahead and put up the links without telling the people I linked. I might leave them a message later only to tell them I like their stuff.

[tsvety]

Link with abandon. The internet is a public forum. It's fine to link to places. No different than telling folks about a cool café you like. If you feel like asking, ask! People are more likely to be flattered than anything else.

I think a notable addition to this would be to ask when they ask you to. There is one obscure japanese site that hasn't been updated in over 20 years that I asked to link to -- and he said no, because he hasn't updated the site in a very long time. (a little shocked the email is still current)
I archived the site, and at some point in the future I will put a link in the appropriate section with reason and explain the situation I think.

[Starfighter]

I was thinking about copying what others have done in making index.html a content description (where I explain the purpose of the site, if there's any excessive flashing perhaps put out a warning for that and so on) and then make the main site index2.html. Is this something you've appreciated when you've come across it or do you find the extra click ("enter here" etc) annoying?

[Yukari]

I’m biased (I use a splashpage for my own site hehe) but I also like when other people do it because
- It usually loads faster than the ‘proper’ homepage, and if I don’t seem interested, I can just click away
- (building off prev) when I click through webrings, these splashpages load quickly, and I can open a bunch of sites in different tabs without my computer going ballistic

[OppositeKeith]

Whats the most healthy cereal i should eat? i have mini wheats but i don't know if thats good enough.

[Starfighter]

I’m biased (I use a splashpage for my own site hehe) but I also like when other people do it because
- It usually loads faster than the ‘proper’ homepage, and if I don’t seem interested, I can just click away
- (building off prev) when I click through webrings, these splashpages load quickly, and I can open a bunch of sites in different tabs without my computer going ballistic

Thank you, that's some good points. I might go ahead and do it later on!

Whats the most healthy cereal i should eat? i have mini wheats but i don't know if thats good enough.

It depends on which country you're in! And I don't mean a "because every country has its own standard" type of thing but because there's different brands! I remember asking on an american forum once what I should do about [problem X] and they went "buy the very common household [product Y]" and I've never heard of it in my entire life.

[mrwillhorlen]

Whats the most healthy cereal i should eat? i have mini wheats but i don't know if thats good enough.

most cereals are chuck-loaded with sugar so i don't really recommend, i suggest you can learn to make your own

[tsvety]

Whats the most healthy cereal i should eat? i have mini wheats but i don't know if thats good enough.

grapenuts flakes aren't half bad, it's my go-to with added fruit when I have cereal for breakfast (it's usually rice)

[Sadness]

Here's a quick question I don't expect anyone to have the answer to but it's been bugging me for a while.

With how 'advanced' technology has gotten, it greatly disappoints me that there is still not one "good" solution for having an "independent" collection of eBooks (e.g., eBooks not purchased in some proprietary shop) which syncs annotations (highlighting, comments, etc.) across multiple platforms, for free.

The closest thing I've found is Calibre's web library, so I made one and it helps me at least sync my book collection across multiple devices, but once you "open" a book it downloads it locally. As a result I have such a messy experience with keeping consistent notes and compiling them at the end of reading something. I'd just really like to be able to read a book on my browser, make some notes/highlights, and then pick up in the same book where I left off from my phone or another PC, and view all of those there.

At the very least there should be some sort of tool that keeps your "bookmark" so you can at least pick up where you left off between devices.

So I guess my question is, does this even exist? The only tools I know of with this functionality are proprietary (like the Kindle app, which afaik only works with books purchased through Amazon).

[sacrebisous]

With how 'advanced' technology has gotten, it greatly disappoints me that there is still not one "good" solution for having an "independent" collection of eBooks (e.g., eBooks not purchased in some proprietary shop) which syncs annotations (highlighting, comments, etc.) across multiple platforms, for free.

I actually MIGHT have a solution for this??? Bear in mind I don't really know what platforms you're referring to - like I'm pretty sure this isn't gonna work for an eReader, but it'll work (I think) as long as you have a web browser to connect to...

The way my setup works is that I have my library stored on my NAS, and I pretty much exclusively access it through my home network. On each device that has Calibre installed, I follow this setup process:

1. Go to Preferences > Sharing over the net and check "Require username and password to access the Content server".
2. Under User Accounts, add a new user.
3. Exit out of Preferences.
4. Open the e-book viewer (just open any book).
5. Right click and go to Preferences > Miscellaneous and make sure "Keep a copy of annotations/bookmarks in the e-book file, for easy sharing" is selected.
6. In the box after "Sync bookmarks/highlights with Content server user" type the username you created in step 2.
7. Exit e-book viewer.

Then to actually get ready to read/annotate, I do this:

8. On the main Calibre screen, go to Connect/share > Start Content server.
9. Open the content server in your browser of choice and sign in with your user info.

At this point you can open up pretty much any book and do your annotating in the web viewer. To actually sync your changes, you're gonna have to right click and hit Sync ... Every. Single. Time. But it works! You can go back to the e-book viewer in the Calibre program and you'll see your highlights and bookmarks intact! Also, when you switch to another device, you'll need to hit Sync again for the web viewer to load in your new annotations and return to the last spot you were reading. The Calibre program itself won't keep track of your reading location, but the web viewer will, as long as you remember to SYNC!!

Theoretically, you'd probably be able to do this a lot easier if you just run Calibre (not Calibre-web, just Calibre) on a server that you can access from anywhere. That way you wouldn't have to keep setting up the content server options on each device and you wouldn't have to stay connected to your home network - you could just have the one running on your main server to connect to from a web browser on any device. My current solution is a real pain in the butt, but it does indeed work!

I hope my explanation actually made sense tho.......

[Sadness]

With how 'advanced' technology has gotten, it greatly disappoints me that there is still not one "good" solution for having an "independent" collection of eBooks (e.g., eBooks not purchased in some proprietary shop) which syncs annotations (highlighting, comments, etc.) across multiple platforms, for free.

I actually MIGHT have a solution for this??? Bear in mind I don't really know what platforms you're referring to - like I'm pretty sure this isn't gonna work for an eReader, but it'll work (I think) as long as you have a web browser to connect to...

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this out! I will give this a shot. I knew Calibre allows you to run its own server but I never understood why it'd be helpful and this is exactly it!

One frustration of mine is, I couldn't figure out a way to sync up Calibre (the software running locally on PC with no books on it yet) with my calibre-web instance (which is hosted on an internet-accessible VPS and has my library on it). I thought for sure they'd have an option where you just input the web library URL you want to add and it'd grab everything automatically.

I definitely don't mind manually importing them to my own local server for the purpose of storing annotations on my local network though. It seems like it'd be worth it for that feature alone!

Thank you again! <3

[qt3.14]

-sync troubles snip-

So I'm not sure how the writing/highlighting data is stored calbibre, but if you knew you could sync with rsync. Have an rsync cronjob rub every X minutes and check to see if any of the files have been modified, then copy over the modified file to your server. Would be a two liner script, and very straightforward to write.

[Starfighter]

Is it possible to have a certain html file being displayed on other html files without the use of scripts or PHP? A pure HTML/CSS solution? I'm specifically thinking of navigation, I'd like my nav to be one editable file instead of having to copy-paste the tag contents to every other page when I make an addition. Hmm...

[sixeyes]

Is it possible to have a certain html file being displayed on other html files without the use of scripts or PHP? A pure HTML/CSS solution? I'm specifically thinking of navigation, I'd like my nav to be one editable file instead of having to copy-paste the tag contents to every other page when I make an addition. Hmm...

You could look into iframes, i think? It's a bit like loading a different HTML page into a div. There's a bunch of caveats though, for security reasons, but for a navbar it should be perfectly fine i think. (...or you could do plain frames if you wanna be really oldschool and have a slightly worse time)

[Starfighter]

You could look into iframes, i think? It's a bit like loading a different HTML page into a div. There's a bunch of caveats though, for security reasons, but for a navbar it should be perfectly fine i think. (...or you could do plain frames if you wanna be really oldschool and have a slightly worse time)

I tried an iframe but I couldn't get it to work properly so I kind of wrote it off as "not a solution" really quick. Perhaps I simply made a mistake. I'll go back and look closer, thanks!

Edit: Yup, I was doing it wrong.