GEEK I use linked style sheets and JavaScript source files on my pages for consistency and manageability. Do browsers have to reread these files each time a page is loaded or if the information is cached? GEEK Under Microsoft® Internet Explorer, both linked Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) files and external script files are run through the cache management. GEEK I have an ASP application in which a form page is submitted to a confirmation page. If the user chooses, this then goes to a registration page. Since the form data isn't preserved in the forms collection past the confirmation page, is it possible to pass the entire forms collection to a session variable, then reference the forms collection on the registration page through this variable? GEEK The easiest way to accomplish this is to simply continue passing the form on through the chain. As you indicate, you have what sounds like three pages that are part of this process: the entry page, the confirmation page, and the registration page.       The entry page obviously has the original <FORM> on it; this form includes all of the <INPUT> items the user fills in with confidential information. (If this information truly is confidential, then I hope you are using a secure HTTPS connection instead of a simple HTTP connection.) It then sounds like the confirmation page has a <FORM> that perhaps only contains an Accept or Decline button on it. I would also populate this form with all of the input fields from the original form, but with type="hidden". This will then allow the form to be passed on intact to the registration page as though it were a normal form submission. In fact, if at some point you decide that the confirmation page is just too much bother, you could simply point from the entry page to the registration page, and everything would still work fine. GEEK I'm creating a Web page with links to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. With a link to an .xls file like this

<a href=" help.xls"> excel </a>

how can I specify in which cell of the spreadsheet the cursor should start? GEEK Right now, there isn't any way for an anchor on a Web page to get to this level of interaction when referencing a document to be opened by an external application. There are plenty of security considerations that need to be carefully thought through when providing any form of interaction from within the browser to something outside of the browser. GEEK In my application, I allow users to enter criteria and build a SQL query on the fly, then display the results in a spreadsheet. However, there's a problem with the spreadsheet. When I ran the report the first time, it worked great. When I ran the report subsequent times, Microsoft Excel came up with entries from the first report I ran. The spreadsheet never updated the data until I closed and reopened the browser. Is there any way that I can refresh the spreadsheet file without making users exit the browser? GEEK The problem you are running into is that Internet Explorer saves the previous version of the spreadsheet in the local cache. One solution is to use a random number generator to create a new name for the file each time. Make sure that you clean up this temporary report location periodically. Another method that you could use for an intranet site would be to write the report out to a location that can be accessed via a file:// share instead of an http:// share. Since a file:// share can be accessed directly by the browser, it won't be cached. GEEK Is it possible to push a font to a client application? I have an application that generates bar codes, but if the user doesn't have the bar code font installed, they see (and print) regular text. Can I check to see if they have the font, and if they don't, automagically download it into their fonts directory? GEEK Both Web authors and users can run into trouble when displaying information that depends upon a specific font. Some font files are very large, and forcing the user to download the entire font file first can be time-consuming. Requiring the user to install your font onto their system would not only permanently decrease their hard disk storage, but would also list the font in their word processors. Your special bar code font would not be very useful to them there. Finally, there can often be serious licensing issues involved with redistributing a font to all of your users.       Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 4.0 and higher) supports a font-embedding technology that should alleviate these problems. It allows you to attach a font object to a Web page that includes only the glyphs (characters) that this particular page needs to be displayed properly. This can greatly reduce download time. It also utilizes the browser's caching architecture so it doesn't impose upon the user's normal data storage.       And since the font is installed in a temporary way that essentially allows it to be used only for displaying the information on your pages, font vendors will be able to better control the licensing of their fonts to both Web designers and individual computer users. You can find more information about font-embedding technology, as well as a download link for the WEFT tool you need to add this support at http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/embedding/weft/default.htm. GEEK I am extremely interested in Web technology and have considered changing my career path to follow this dream. I love programming and have done some, but not for quite a while. Where should I start? I understand that I need to start with HTML, but where do I go from there? VBScript, JScript, the Java language, DHTML, ASP, CSS? I am completely baffled as to the next step. GEEK The problem with trying to answer your question is that there are far too many different choices and directions to come up with a generic checklist of suggestions. The right solution for you depends on your own unique objectives, experiences, and expectations.       While many people might see this diverse collection of tools, languages, utilities, and technologies as being confusing and needing to be reduced to a simpler set of options, I heartily disagree. If you walk into a wine shop and ask a staff person, "What wine should I buy," do you really want whatever they pull off the shelf?       Just as you gradually develop your own unique and personal tastes in wine, your methods and approaches to programming depend on how you want to work out this problem. The best way to discover your own direction is to simply start working on solutions, and find out which aspects of this process you really enjoy working with and which tools best conform to your work styles.       All of the various technologies you mention are good ones to understand. Some of them overlap each other quite a bit, and so which one you end up using depends on what works best for your situation.       Look at solutions, Web sites, and applications that other people are developing. See if you can figure out how they designed their solutions. Read magazines (such as Microsoft Internet Developer), and browse through sites that focus on site development issues (such as http://msdn.microsoft.com/default.asp). I highly recommend that you try forming your concept of what is, and is not, good Web site design. There are too many bad sites out there; I would hate to see this number increase. GEEK I am a research analyst, and I do a good deal of research on the Web. Recently someone asked me if I flip URLs. I don't know what this means. GEEK "URL flipping" is a pretty awkward term. I personally think something like "URL synchronization" would better describe this, but then nobody asked me.       This term is usually used to describe the synchronization between a video playback and a Web browser. The video playback could be in a nonbrowser application (such as the Microsoft Multimedia Viewer), or it could also be happening in a frame of a browser window with a video playback component installed. The author of the video file inserts URLs into the playback stream, and when the URL is encountered, the video playback service will load the URL into the default browser.       If somebody asks you if you flip URLs, my expectation would be that you are perhaps supplying some sort of multimedia report to your customers based on your research. The query was to determine if your reports, when played back on the customer's machines, will synchronize with a Web browser and cause it to bring up pages relevant to your report.       It is also possible that the person asking the question didn't understand the term, and could have simply been asking if your reports provide URL references to where the original information came from, sort of like an inline bibliography.

From the January 1999 issue of Microsoft Internet Developer.