External Site Assistance

Request amendments or pass comments on this free service.
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Carl Hibbard
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External Site Assistance

Post by Carl Hibbard » Sat Jul 21, 2007 5:31 pm

It's not really advertised but there is an external link that webmasters can use to incorporate a lookup onto their own web site - you have to know what you are doing of course!

Instead of this URL to lookup a club:-
http://grading.bcfservices.org.uk/getcl ... =Stratford

You can embed this one:-
http://grading.bcfservices.org.uk/getcl ... =Stratford

If you want more assistance then just ask

Cheers
Carl

Bill Wilson

Post by Bill Wilson » Sun Jul 22, 2007 11:29 am

Nice one :)

Thanks Carl

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Carl Hibbard
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Post by Carl Hibbard » Tue Jul 24, 2007 7:14 am

If anyone is actually using this facility then please feel free to publish a link and include some help on how you got it working etc. as this might help people

Also feel free to pass comments or requests changes as usual etc.

Cheers
Carl

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Greg Breed
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Post by Greg Breed » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:03 am

This will probably be of service to me once I get our website up and running.
I'll definitely ask for assistance when I get round to it.
Hatch End A Captain (Hillingdon League)
Controller (Hillingdon League)

Ian Kingston
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Post by Ian Kingston » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:39 am

This is definitely a welcome feature. It's going to save me quite a bit of time in the future, as I won't need to re-do the list of players' grades by hand every time the list changes. I've got it working for West Nottingham Chess Club at

http://www.westnottinghamchess.org/04_05.htm

using the following code:

<p>
<object data="http://grading.bcfservices.org.uk/getcl ... tapleford)" type="text/html" width="1000" height="2200">
</object>
</p>

There was a bit of trial and error involved (mostly figuring out that the <object> tag was needed).

The entire club name has to be included. I took the precaution of encoding the spaces in the club's name as '%20', although that doesn't appear to be necessary. The width and height parameters are set deliberately large to avoid unnecessary scroll bars appearing (although a completely useless vertical scrollbar still appears in IE). I'd love to hear from anyone who has a more elegant way of doing this.

The actual appearance of the table varies between browsers. For example, Firefox and Safari retain the background colour of the page for the table, while IE 6 and Opera give it a white background. (If you already have a white background that's not much of an issue.) On at least one occasion, IE tried to block the table as potentially unsafe external content. None of the other browsers objected, but I do have my IE security settings turned up fairly high, so I don't know how many people this might affect.

I like the way that a player's individual page replaces the main table when you click on the grading code.

Feature requests:
  • * Some way to modify the table's appearance (e.g. to alter the background or the table borders)
    * Access to the inactive players
Both would be nice; neither is particularly necessary.

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Carl Hibbard
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Post by Carl Hibbard » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:47 pm

Ian Kingston wrote:<p>
<object>
</object>
</p>

There was a bit of trial and error involved (mostly figuring out that the <object> tag was needed).
That doesn't actually work here in IE although Firefox is fine

You might find that
<iframe src=
</iframe>

Works better

I will have to spend some time looking at the other questions you raised

Cheers
Carl

Sean Hewitt

Post by Sean Hewitt » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:53 pm

Carl Hibbard wrote:
Ian Kingston wrote:<p>
<object>
</object>
</p>

There was a bit of trial and error involved (mostly figuring out that the <object> tag was needed).
That doesn't actually work here in IE although Firefox is fine

You might find that
<iframe src=
</iframe>

Works better

I will have to spend some time looking at the other questions you raised

Cheers
Carl
Ian - doesnt seem to work in IE7. I use iframe and that appears to be fine.

Ian Kingston
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Post by Ian Kingston » Tue Jul 24, 2007 2:21 pm

(Skipping lightly over the obligatory anti-Microsoft rant for yet again breaking something...)

Thanks - iframe does work. I did try that on Sunday, but I suspect I also had a bit of the syntax wrong somewhere else, which convinced me it didn't. And IE7 is on my laptop while IE6 is on my desktop machine, and... good thing I don't do this for a living.

So what I now have is:

<p>
<iframe src="http://grading.bcfservices.org.uk/getcl ... tapleford)" type="text/html" width="1000" height="2200">
</iframe>
</p>

which seems to work everywhere that matters. It also doesn't trigger IE's security warning.

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Carl Hibbard
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Post by Carl Hibbard » Tue Jul 24, 2007 2:41 pm

Try changing it from this:-

width="1000" height="2200">

To this:-

width="1000" height="2200" frameborder="0" scrolling="no">

I haven't tested this since I am at work - but it might make it look better losing the frame etc.

I will check changing the style this evening

Cheers
Carl

Sean Hewitt

Post by Sean Hewitt » Tue Jul 24, 2007 4:46 pm

Carl Hibbard wrote:Try changing it from this:-

width="1000" height="2200">

To this:-

width="1000" height="2200" frameborder="0" scrolling="no">

I haven't tested this since I am at work - but it might make it look better losing the frame etc.

I will check changing the style this evening

Cheers
Carl
I can tell you that works perfectly. Ian, you should then be able to play with the 2200 height as it seems a bit big to me!

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Carl Hibbard
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Post by Carl Hibbard » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:51 pm

Ian Kingston wrote:I like the way that a player's individual page replaces the main table when you click on the grading code.

Feature requests:
  • * Some way to modify the table's appearance (e.g. to alter the background or the table borders)
    * Access to the inactive players
Both would be nice; neither is particularly necessary.
Glad you like the way it works - that was the plan with that one, looks ok doesn't it!

On the others:-

1. Not even sure you can change the presentation of an inline frame - still checking...
2. I did not think anyone would want inactive on that one - want it as a seperate URL or as a switchable thing as per the main site?

No promises just when (or if...) I next get some free time

Cheers
Carl

Ian Kingston
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Post by Ian Kingston » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:52 pm

Thanks.

The reason for the big height value is specific to my Firefox settings, which make the club name - West Nottingham (formerly Stapleford) - occupy two lines instead of one on my system, which in turn makes the table much deeper. And because Firefox picks up the background colour of the page (which IE doesn't) having an excessively large height isn't very noticeable.

It looks as though if I use

<p>
<iframe allowtransparency="true" src="http://grading.bcfservices.org.uk/getcl ... tapleford)" type="text/html" width="1000" height="2000" frameborder="0" scrolling="no">
</iframe>
</p>

then if you (Carl) can include

<body style="background-color:transparent">

in the table source, then the background colour should show in all browsers and I can get away with the big height value. A quick test of the idea seems to work. Is that feasible? Would it adversely affect anyone else?

Ian Kingston
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Post by Ian Kingston » Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:01 pm

Carl

We posted within a minute of each other and I didn't see yours until afterwards. I think my last message suggests a partial answer to point 1.

I agree that not many people would want the inactive option. I've found it useful in the last couple of days though. If you are able to implement it, I'd favour the switchable option.
No promises just when (or if...) I next get some free time
No hurry - I'm really happy to have this feature as it is. Anything else is just window dressing.

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Carl Hibbard
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Post by Carl Hibbard » Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:47 pm

Ian Kingston wrote:body style="background-color:transparent"
It's not even valid html at the moment - just a table nothing more, perhaps that is part of the problem?

I need to check further but since I am not running Windows (and hence IE) on any of the machine's here then it is a little harder than it first seems

I don't really like not been able to specify the font size and type either since it is not then similiar to your own site

Leave it with me - it's in the list

Cheers
Carl

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Carl Hibbard
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Post by Carl Hibbard » Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:48 pm

Ian Kingston wrote:I agree that not many people would want the inactive option. I've found it useful in the last
No hurry - I'm really happy to have this feature as it is. Anything else is just window dressing.
I have had no comment on the inactive inclusion (or the method on the site...) so not sure how popular it is?

Another one for the list then...

Cheers
Carl

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