[thelist] Asking newbie questions

[Tara Cleveland]

Hi all, 

As a designer type who lurks a lot I wanted to respond...

Madhu Menon wrote:
> I assure you that it's not the case and that we encourage any level of
> questions here. Nothing is "too silly".

On the other hand, for us more designer types, it is difficult to ask
newbie programming questions. I know that I'm at a beginner level in JS
and I often try to understand others posts, but I almost always think a
question will be too dumb, so don't ask it.

So, in the spirit of "there's no such thing as a dumb question" here goes:

I'm trying to set up a browser detect and page switcheroo thingy (tres
descriptive n'est ce pa?). I want users coming in on NS4.* to go to a
different page. All of the things I've found will detect what browser
someone is on, but I don't know how to take that and get the page to
change.I was using the browser detection based on Ultimate Client
Sniffer, from
<http://developer.netscape.com/docs/examples/javascript/browser_type.html>.
I'm guessing it would be something like:  if btype==nav4  then go
"hereURL", (or some such incomprehensible JS stuff).  I haven't seen
anything that has all of these functions in one script. I guess what I
need is a function that will redirect the page that adds on to the
browser detect, but I haven't found any simple ones (read: ones that I
could decipher). Does anyone have one, or know of one that I could use.

Okay, so now I've asked a dumb programming question, all you brilliant
coders can ask me "dumb" colour theory questions.

AND

With regards to this topic,

> 11) The business of web development (Dealing with clients, writing
> proposals, etc.)
 
I've recently decided to go it alone and become a freelancer again. Have
any of the other freelancers used some of the online freelance
marketplaces like guru.com or elance or any of the others. If you have,
was it successfull and a positive experience or not? Also, any idea of
strategies to pursue to get these clients? From what I've seen,
decisions about who to hire are based on a few sentances for a proposal.
It seems like a bit of a crapshoot to me. Thoughts? Anyone?

Thanks everyone for being so smart!

Tara Cleveland