Eric Brannan

Eric,

> I am trying to use your falling snow effect on a small business
> homepage, but cannot get it to work

1. put the script before the </body> tag (note the / in it)

2. your src="foo" is pointing to my local disk (and does not use a valid URL
anyway - local disk URLs start with file://). The script is not on my local
disk. It should be on your Web site. The src="foo" attribute behaves exactly
like the src="foo" attribute for images.

> knowledge of Java

Note: it's JavaScript, not Java - they are completely different, totally
unrelated languages :)


Mark 'Tarquin' Wilton-Jones - author of http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/

Eric,

> Do I need to use my own snowflake image

You need an image, or you can grab a copy of mine:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/tutorials/jsexamples/snowflake.gif

But even if you fail to get the image right, you should still see
_something_, since it falls back to using an alt text of '*' if the image
does not load.

Next, you got the name of the script wrong, it is snowscript, not snowcsript
- that does not matter, of course, it should work no matter what you call it
:)

Lastly, and this is the important one, you removed my comments from the
script source, which is a violation of my license terms - please read them
and abide by them if you plan to use the script:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/jslibs/termsOfUse.html

When you removed them, you made a mistake, and broke the script. Try it in
Opera and see the error console - it gives a nice error message that shows
what the mistake is. Please download a new copy of the script, and keep my
comments intact this time:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/jslibs/snowscript.js

Eric,

> BTW, the link you gave for your example snowflake seems to lead to a blank
> page - perhaps a white snowflake on a white background.  How do I find it?

It is a white image, and your browser chooses to use a white background when
displaying it :)

Once you have opened it, use your browser's 'file' menu to save it.

> Still had to delete some bits to get it to work without error messages - I
> think all your comments are still intact.  If I have inadvertantly deleted
> anyting you would rather I have included, please let me know and I will
> amend it as you wish.

You need to put back the commented section at the top, that gives
instructions for use, and (most importantly) links to the license. Since you
are not making any changes to the script code itself, you should just use
the script file, without removing anything at all. If you use an exact copy
of the script file as it appears on my site, it will work.

Eric,

> The bits I removed are the following lines at the top of
> the code page: ... as these lines gave specific
> errors in Opera's Error Console and prevent the effect from running.

They _really_ shouldn't. The script works perfectly fine when running on my
site, and there is no reason why the exact same script file should not work
on your site.

But if that is the only way you can get it to work, then ok. But I am at a
loss to understand why you are unable to just take an exact copy of the file
from my site, and serve it from your own. I even live edited the file in
Opera while it was on your site to put the correct content in it, and it
worked just fine.

But if you are sure that you have not made any mistakes when putting the
code back in the file, then I can only assume there is a problem with your
server malforming the content while trying to send it (such as if the server
is trying some weird processing on it, treating it as a server side script
or something). Blame the server - it will make you feel better in any case
;)

Eric,

> As you say, perhaps a server-side issue, but can't imagine why that would
> be the case.

Well, maybe it thinks that <script* inside a .js file (which is in my
comments) should be processed as ASP, since ASP can be processed inside
special script tags too. Most ASP servers have only specific file extensions
(asp, aspx) associated with ASP processing, but yours may have _all_ file
types. This will be placing extra undesired load on your server, so if this
is the case, you may want to get it fixed.

> It sounds from your last msg that you would authorise such an alteration.

Yep. I do not want a server issue to prevent you using the script. Please
just make sure that there is a comment in the script saying the author name,
and the two links that say where the script comes from, and where the
license can be found.

Enjoy.