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Jeff,
Sorry to jump in late, but your project has, IMO, the simplicity of
project that I would recommend to start with.
I will disagree with some about learning HTML. Here's the way I look at
it: If you are creating static pages go ahead and use something like
Front-page to create it. After all, it is a static page just like
writing a letter in Word. You don't need to know what's under the
covers. But, in your situation (and AFAIK every 'real world' situation)
you will be using some language to take your report and imbed HTML code
into it and output it to disk instead of a spool file. This requires
knowing -what- to imbed to get your desired results. What will happen
is that as you add each new function or run across a stumbling block
what you have is a learning opportunity.
It would take very little to take your shipping report and make it into
a web page. Get that part working then learn about anchor tags to
create a link to the PDF documents. What will happen is when the
customers call and ask about their order, sooner or later, they will
start asking to be able to look at it themselves from the web.
I will agree with others: view the source of pages you run into and find
yourself asking "How'd they do that?". Download some simple Javascript
and dissect it.
You can get a free web server for your PC and experiment (I learned with
Netscape Fasttrack server running on a 200mhz NT workstation).
Also, try not to be overwhelmed with all the choices. By the time you
get past the HTML, CSS, Javascript and start into the next level you can
decide at that time on the appropriate path and languages for you. I
tried to stay as true to open standards and languages as possible in the
beginning because there is (was) more help. Posting a question about
using a feature of a particular proprietary approach may not get you as
many pointers as a more generic situation.
I have also found that this makes learning some of the tools easier
because I have a better understanding of what it is that they are trying
to accomplish or what particular coding issue they are simplifying.
But that's just the way that I learn, it's certainly not the only way.
J. Kilgore
P.S. In case there is anyone else wondering where to start, here is the
simplest way I found to put a report out as a web page (static, no
links) add the following to the beginning of the report:
<html><body<pre> and the last line should read </pre></body></html>
Create the report then do a CPYSPLF file to a file with a member name of
htm or html and copy to wherever you want to serve the page from or
email, sneaker network, or whatever it to the folks that need to see it.
Saves a lot of trees. :)
Jeff Crosby wrote:
<<snip>>
I've got WDSC 5.0. Wonder if I could use that? I really have a
specific "report" in mind that I'm interested in getting up. It is the
day's deliveries by route. Invariably customers call in to customer
service asking for a delivery time. By clicking on this web "report"
link, customer service could see immediately how many prior stops there
are. Next the customer will ask "Did I put fries on the order?" THEN
customer service would click on the invoice number and the .PDF of that
invoice (which I'm already storing in the IFS via FormSprint) would
immediately be displayed.
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