Maria Sills

Cool. Thanks. I'll check it out.

--ms

Thanks for the link, Eric. I skimmed it Friday, and I think it will help me a lot.

--ms

Sadly, you would have blown your million right there. Actually, I believe West Virginia is #50, Mississippi #49. Probably, the only thing keeping MS from being #50 is there are a few people here that make a great deal of money, which skews the numbers. Mostly, the people making the money are PI attorneys. It seems like I heard/read somewhere that Jackson, MS has a corner on the market of richest law firms in the country.

Anyway, to make things worse, the cost of living here is ridiculously out of proportion. I've lived in other states where the cost of living was comparable, but average salary was higher. Unfortunately, a lot of things are out of balance here. I grew up here. I call it home. It's a beautiful state, and, I think, has a lot to offer. But it's very hard to live here.

Probably more than you ever wanted to know, but there it is anyway.

Regards,

MS from MS

Jules,

Thanks for the info. So far, my CSS experience has involved "borrowing" a coworker's CSS file which contains only font descriptions. I am scheduled to attend a two-day CSS class the first week in Oct., so maybe after that I will know of better ways to lay out my pages.

This whole project (using HTML, JSP, Java, Struts -- 44 Use Cases) has been a huge learning experience for me. My biggest problem is that every time I learn about something that may have a significant impact on my application, I want to go back and redo everything to incorporate what I've just learned about. I have no doubt that this will be the case after learning more about CSS.

Regards,

--ms

Thank you, Bear & Eric. That helps.

Regards,

--ms

Thanks for the info, Eric.

So, what's the accepted "best" practice? Just accept these limitations, and work around them as best you can? Surely, it's not to string all/most HTML tags on one long ugly line?!

--ms

Sonny,

Thanks for that tip. I have a form with a textarea coded for readability like that. It hasn't been fully tested yet, and I'm sure that would have come into play at some point or other.

Regards,

--ms

Thanks for your reply, Homer.

Couple more questions:

Depends a lot on your appearance.

Is that based on the theory that the interviewer makes up his/her mind in the first few seconds of an interview?

Six years experience would make you about 28 and that's good.

Actually, I was out of school for a few years before I went back to get my degree, so you're off by about 7 years. Is that going to hurt me?

You need more Java experience.

How much more Java experience would it require before I can go job hunting without looking like a starry-eyed teenager in Hollywood for the first time thinking she'll get an acting job in the first week?

I have a fear that the Java development will not last long here. As I said, it is a pilot project, and could be pulled at any time. Or, even if this one goes into production, they could decide there will be no more Java development. I don't want to wait until that happens to start my job search.

If you work for the Feds, then of course you have seniority.

Nope. State worker.

Look for a job while you continue to work. If you find something, then you just have the risk of losing your new job.

That's exactly what I plan to do. I just hope the Java development is not yanked anytime soon. I'm not sure I could ever go back to mainframe dev.

Again, thanks for your reply.

Regards,

--ms

Hi all,

I have been having a problem with my HTML rendering as it should. I'm
using tables as containers to organize the home page of my application.
It contains a lot of images, text boxes, Submit buttons (all on the same
page). Well, the rendering problem was that IE appeared to ignore the height attribute on the <td> when height was specified at anything less than 15.

Now, I don't know about everyone else, but the importance readability of
code has been pounded into my head since school. So, of course, I've been
trying to make my HTML code as readable as possible. For example:

<table>
<tr>
<td height="5" width="100">
<img src="imageName">
</td>
</tr>
</table>


DO NOT do this! Whitespace is the reason my smaller cell heights were not rendering correctly. Do not use spaces or line breaks between the
<td> tag and the contents of the cell!

I changed my code as follows:

<table>
<tr>
<td height="5" width="100"><img src="imageName"></td>
</tr>
</table>

and it renders beautifully.

I'm sure there are a lot of HTML experts out there who knew this,
but I posted this in hopes that I could save someone (even
one person) some time and frusteration.

fear

I am a programmer with an AS degree in Computer Programming Technology. I have 6+ years experience, mostly in mainframe-related technologies (COBOL CICS, etc), with about an 18-month foray into Lotus Notes development. I then moved, and had to take a job doing mainframe work again. I was beginning to experience severe burnout/boredom with the mainframe stuff, and was considering changing my career.

Then, I lucked-out and was asked to be one of two developers on a sort of pilot project. So, for the last 8 months, I've been developing a Java web application using the Struts framework. Now, I actually look forward to coming to work, and am tremendously excited about Java development. I have even been motivated to begin preparing for the SCJP exam.

However, circumstances are far from ideal. Among other issues, I work in a government position (typically low pay) in the 2nd lowest paid state in the US (according to the US Census Bureau). I do not enjoy living here, and am seriously considering moving to another state sometime within the next six months or so.

My questions are: 1) What are my chances of getting a job as a Java Developer with my mainframe/Lotus Notes experience, plus what little Java experience I have? 2) Will having the SCJP significantly increase my chances?

I had a similar problem and the reset method was not appropriate (can't tell you why right now -- I don't have my books and notes with me), but my solution was to code a utility class which I called ClearForms in which I explicitly set each of the form's elements to "" (empty string). I call the appropriate method (ie, ClearForms.clearApplicantForm) just prior to displaying the form. It works great. If you want more info on why reset didn't work for me, I will be glad to post another reply after reviewing my notes at work tomorrow. Good luck.