You came here when you clicked my e-mail link

Most likely this happened because you have javascripting turned off on your computer. There's also the vague chance that your browser is so old that it doesn't support javascripting, although that is now pretty unlikely. Whatever, if you want to e-mail me, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way, by typing my e-mail address into your e-mail program's "to" field. The address is webmaster[_at_]irfp[_dot_]net. Replace the things in the brackets by what is normal. I've gone to all this trouble to foil spambots.

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You clicked the e-mail link and nothing happened

My guess is that if nothing happened when you clicked the link, you either don't have your e-mail preferences set up properly, or else you have a problem with the javascripting in your browser. I tested my javascripted, clickable e-mail link in Opera (7.23 and 7.54), Mozilla (1.7), Firefox (1.0), Netscape (both 4.8 and 7.0, the latter equivalent to Mozilla 1.4, I believe) and IE (5.0 and 6.0). The only place I had a problem was with IE 5.0. I'm sure that the method will work in any newer browser versions that come along.

In the case of IE 5, I'm not sure if the issue is that I have a defective installation, or if it truly doesn't work in IE 5.0. My guess is that the problem was my particular installation, which is known to have problems (e.g. one day it decided all on its own not to allow me to set bookmarks anymore.).

I also had a problem with Opera 7.50, but I think it might have been something stupid that I did. Whatever, it's fine in the latest version, 7.54. That's a good thing because Opera is far and away the best browser.

To set up your e-mail preferences properly, you have to specify a base e-mail program (e.g. Agent, Thunderbird, Outlook Express) and then specify an address to your internet service provider's e-mail computers (an smtp address).

Or, you can always just e-mail me the old fashioned way, by sending an e-mail to webmaster[_at_]irfp[_dot_]net.

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You were curious

I decided I didn't want to make it easy for spammers to find my e-mail address, so I removed it from my web pages. This is not a good idea per se. I believe that people who publish web pages should make themselves available for comments, praise, or abuse.

So my first solution was to make up a nifty graphic image of my e-mail address. I could have made the image clickable, but then I would have had to put my e-mail address in the underlying html or make up a javascript. Putting it in the underlying html wouldn't have protected me from spammers. At the time I didn't know the first thing about java scripting.

Once I learned some javascripting, I figured out a way to make the page look exactly like it would have had I just put in a standard html mailto link. But, when the spambots read my page, all they will read is mail me. The words mail and me are variables in the javascript. For the curious, the exact script is

<a href="./Oops.html" onclick="parent.location=mail+me; return false;" class="bottomnav" title="e-mail to webmaster[_at_]irfp -dot- net"><script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">document.write(me)</script></a>

where, the variable mail is the string mailto: and the variable me is my e-mail address. The variables are defined in an external script file (identified in my pages' headers) and are the concatenation of several subvariables comprising the various parts of my e-mail address.

There were two problems with this approach. First of all, the link to this "problems" page didn't work. Also, if JavaScripting is not working, you won't see anything to click. So I came up with the less aesthetic approach you see here. The script for this approach is as follows:

<a href="Oops.html" onclick="parent.location=mail+me; return false;" class="bottomnav" title="e-mail to webmaster@irfp.net">webmaster@irfp.net</a>

If you want to borrow this script, please feel free to do so.

Oh, by the way, I can't really take credit for any of this. I stole ideas from several sources to come up with my solution. I should give proper credit if I could remember who the bright people were from whom I borrowed so shamelessly.

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You are lost

If you got here by mistake, all I can do is say I'm sorry. The links at the bottom will take you to several of the other pages on this site.

If, for some reason, you're desperate for something to do, you can always check out my own personal pages. They are a rather an eclectic mix of things ranging from travels to Japan to dogs to religious topics to mp3 downloads....

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