*=============

Frames and paying for it 

http://www.jsworkshop.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1355

I just read in Nuts & Volts, March 2003 page 11 that SBC
Intellectual Property is trying to claim that its patent rights
to frames allows it to collect fees from any web site using
frames on their pages!

Fees: 
Code: 

Yr Earnings   Yearly       One-time    Preferred rate 
$100,000       $527         $1,851         yes 
$100,000      $5270        $15,811         no 
 

It only gets worse from there. According to the article they have
started by trying to get http://www.museumtour.com to pay up.
Also, a site called http://www.Larkware.com has some things to
say about this.

Anyone seen anything newer about this? 

From the author of that site: 

Subject: RE: Frames and paying for it 
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 08:59:18 -0800 
From: "Mike Gunderloy" 

Yeah, I mentioned it - 
http://www.larkware.com/Articles/StupidestPatentEver.html 
Last I knew it was still tied up in court, but the patent hadn't
yet been ruled invalid. Haven't seen any news lately.

Mike
_________________
Phil K 

-----

zachariah:

This page is scary, too: 
http://webshop.ffii.org/ 

Read here if you want to know more and find out what you can do about it: 
http://www.eff.org/Patent/ 

The EFF site is a great resource for all online legal issues. 

it's killing me 'cause there's a piece of software I use all the
time and their site has a big thing about this issue before you
can get to the main part of their site, but I can't remember what
it is.

-----

my advice is to ditch the frames (which are depreciated anyway)
and move to CSS

this page shows an example of the same effect of frames, but done
with CSS:
http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=037%2F037%2Ecss



*=============

From: "Davis Family" <davis@canada.com> 

Dear Phil,

> Just for you information, it works fine with IE 5.50 but does not
> work at all for NetScape 4.7x and above up to 6.0.
>

Thank you for the information.  In fact, I have given up on Netscape
Navigator.  For the coding I did, it would have to be mostly redone for
Navigator, and the interface would be more difficult.  I have seen the
opinion elsewhere on the discussion group that for reasonably complicated
code one might as well write for one browser.  According to an authoritative
source, whose name I don't remember now, a company that gathers Web
statistics for sale and gave this information as a freebie, Netscape is down
to 12% of Web traffic.  I don't remember when I last saw a Netscape access
on my Web site.

> Could you forward to me a snippet of code to allow scrolling on a
> section of a page? (Do I have to use frames? I hope not, I hear
> they don't work for all/most browsers.)

It does use frames.  The file Units_Calculator.html contains the following
HTML (which is visible to a visitor):

    <frameset id="TopFrameset" rows="95, *">
        <frame name="Heading" id="Heading" src="Heading.html" scrolling="no"
frameborder="0" />
        <frameset id="ColumnsFrameset" cols="*, 3*">
            <frame name="UnitsSelector" src="Units_Selector.html"
scrolling="auto" frameborder="0" />
            <frame name="Core"          src="Core.html"
scrolling="auto" frameborder="1" />
        </frameset>
    </frameset>

I don't think there is any way for a visitor to see the source of
Units_Selector.html.  It contains the following HTML:

    <frameset id="ColumnsFrameset" cols="112, *, *" onLoad="InitializeAll
();">
        <frame name="PowerMenu"        src="Power.html"
scrolling="auto" frameborder="0" />
        <frame name="UnitCategoryMenu" src="Unit_Category.html"
scrolling="auto" frameborder="0" />
        <frame name="ListedUnitMenu"   src="Listed_Unit.html"
scrolling="auto" frameborder="0" />
    </frameset>

There is also something new called an iframe, but I prefer old-fashioned
frames, because they adapt themselves to the screen.

To scroll under scripting control, I first used the method (in
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/c-frame.htm?/workshop/author/default.asp
under the heading DHTML References, which I HIGHLY recommend)

object.scrollIntoView( [bAlignToTop])

However, that just makes the window pop into the appropriate position.
Instead, I have

function GoTo (I_Window, ElementId) {
    var Window = Windows [I_Window];
    ...
    var Element = Window.document.getElementById (ElementId);
    var Coordinate = ScreenCoordinate (Window, Element);
    if (Coordinate [5]) {
        Window.scrollBy (0, Coordinate [5] * ScrollStep);
        AntPointer.Refresh ();
        window.setTimeout ('AntPointer.GoTo (' + I_Window + ', "' +
ElementId + '")', LinearInterval);
    }
... .

and

function ScreenCoordinate (Window, Element) {
    var Coordinate = new Array (6); // Screen coordinates: [0] and [1] are
top left,
                                    //                     [2] and [3] are
bottom right,
                                    //                     [4] and [5] are
visibility: -1 = too little; +1 = too much.
    Coordinate [0] = Window.screenLeft;
    Coordinate [1] = Window.screenTop ;
    var Pedigree = Element;
    while (Pedigree) {
        Coordinate [0] += Pedigree.offsetLeft;
        Coordinate [1] += Pedigree.offsetTop ;
        Pedigree = Pedigree.offsetParent;
    }
    Coordinate [0] -= Window.document.body.scrollLeft;
    Coordinate [1] -= Window.document.body.scrollTop ;
    Coordinate [2] =  Coordinate [0] + Element.clientWidth ;
    Coordinate [3] =  Coordinate [1] + Element.clientHeight;
    if (Coordinate [0] < Window.screenLeft) Coordinate [4] = -1;
    else {
        if (Coordinate [2] > (Window.screenLeft +
Window.document.body.clientWidth)) Coordinate [4] = +1;
        else Coordinate [4] = 0;
    }
    if (Coordinate [1] < Window.screenTop) Coordinate [5] = -1;
    else {
        if (Coordinate [3] > (Window.screenTop +
Window.document.body.clientHeight)) Coordinate [5] = +1;
        else Coordinate [5] = 0;
    }
    return Coordinate;
}

I suspect that that fooling around with Pedigree is unnecessarily
complicated, but I couldn't make it work more directly.

The effect of the above code is that a window scrolls gradually into
position, at a rate determined by ScrollStep and LinearInterval.

Thank you for your interest in my code.  I'm sorry that the source code is
encrypted.  That's not against you, but there are a lot of thieves on the
Internet.

Regards,
Ron Davis


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phil Karras [mailto:ke3fl@yahoo.com]
> Sent: 2001 June 20, Wednesday 17:29
> To: Ron Davis
> Subject: Your calculator
>
>
> This is a message from Phil Karras at JavaScript Forum (
> http://www.jsworkshop.com/forum/index.php3 ). The JavaScript
> Forum owners cannot accept any responsibility for the contents of
> the email.
>
> Please do not reply directly to this email. To email Phil Karras,
> you can use this online form:
> http://www.jsworkshop.com/forum/member.php3?action=mailform&userid=326
>
> OR, by email:
> mailto:ke3fl@yahoo.com
>
> This is the message:
>
> Just for you information, it works fine with IE 5.50 but does not
> work at all for NetScape 4.7x and above up to 6.0.
>
> In IE there are three scrolling items on the left and one big
> area on the right, In NetScape only one one the left shows up.
>
> Phil Karras
> ke3fl@yahoo.com
>