HTML Tips

* Sometimes a convenient way to reference many academic journal articles is with a "DOI" number, which is relatively short. (DOE stands for "digital identifier" for any "object of intellectual property"...). While sometimes they are referenced just in the form doi:10.1063/1.860014, many browsers probably don't know how to decipher this. However, if you instead use a URL link of the form http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.860014, then the web site http://dx.doi.org, will translate the DOi number and redirect you to the actual web site where the paper is. Or just go directly to the http://dx.doi.org web site and type in a DOI number.

Hidden Web Directories

An easy way to set up a somewhat hidden web directory is to do the following. These instructions assume your web pages are on a unix or linux server, and that you can get a command line interface.

# Move to the directory where your web pages are stored:
cd $HOME/public_html
# Create a new subdirectory where the hidden files will be located:
mkdir hidden
chmod go=x hidden
# The above chmod command sets the protections on the hidden folder so that
# other users can't list contents of the folder, though they can still
# look at a particular file or subfolder if they know its name:
mkdir hidden/project1_abc
chmod go=rx hidden/project17_xyz
# This chmod command gives full read access to the project17_xyz 
# sub directory.

Now put the files you want to share with just your collaborators in the hidden directory hidden/project17_xyz. This name acts effectively as a kind of password, since only people who know this hidden directory name "hidden/project17_xyz" will know where to look for these files. If the contents of $HOME/public_html are accessible on the web as www.your_host.com/~yourname, then your hidden files can be seen at www.your_host.com/~yourname/hidden/project17_xyz.

Note that this provides only a quick and dirty way of setting up a semi-private web folder, it should not be used in situations where strong security is needed since, for example, the hidden directory names are not encrypted like true passwords are when they are sent over the internet. But if you just need a light level of privacy, for example to share work in progress with some collaborators, this should be fine to keep it moderately hidden from the disinterested world (and avoid having it indexed by google).

Automatic Word Wrapping in text files

When viewing *.txt files, the default settings in Mozilla Thunderbird don't wrap long lines. To turn on automatic word wrapping, which is a very convenient feature, follow the instructions at: http://ttcs.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/how-to-apply-word-wrap-to-text-files-viewed-in-mozilla-firefox/

More tips

* Sometimes old versions of a web page will be displayed by your browser. One way to try to force access of a new version of a page is to clear the browser's cache, and then do "shift+reload" in most browsers.