Hello there - it's been a long time. Last July the death of my father, followed by several other unfortunate happenings, prompted a mental state that resulted in my almost total disappearance from Web life. I wouldn't say I went off the deep end, but I did have a foot in the water.
During this hiatus editor Florian was kind enough to assume the burden of administration of the Vienna Award and hold my place for me. Now that I have managed to get my act together, I am pleased to resume that duty and begin to review the award winners he has chosen in my absence.
This issue's site review:
KATIE'S FLUTE PAGE
Katie Morgan is a student from a small town called Llanelli, in Carmarthenshire, S.W. Wales. Although she has been playing the flute for only four years, her natural ability combined with her dedication and perseverance has won for her an opportunity to study the flute at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in London, along side her academic music studies at City University.
Her Website is another example of her perseverance and drive for excellence. Katie originally applied for the Vienna Award some time ago. At that time, we did not grant the award, due to numerous broken links and other errors. We supplied her with a detailed criticism, which she took to heart and over time she has corrected those errors and otherwise improved and upgraded her site.
By chance and misfortune, her reapplication occurred during my time of troubles. I had decided to grant her the award, but unfortunately had not done so. Happily, Florian came to the same decision and gave it to her. Applause, applause.
Besides an introduction to Katie and details of her past and present life, her site contains many pages of interest to flautists and lovers of music in general. She offers tips to becoming a better flautist, thoughts about fighting nervousness, information about her favourite flautists, essays on the historical development of the flute, fingering charts, flute jokes, a photo gallery, some inspiring music quotes, interesting links, and an impressive collection of good MIDI files.
We welcome Katie to the ranks of Vienna Award winners. Our readers will surely enjoy visiting her site!
Note: A slight change in policy
We have seen that some award recipients occasionally fail to install the award graphic on their site. In view of the time and effort that go into these evaluations I have decided to follow Florian's example and require that new award winners notify me when and where the graphic and link back to Vienna Online are displayed before posting a review here and listing the site on the Vienna Award page.
Tips, tricks and explications
It has been my custom to append to this column some morsels of advice or explanation of interest to our budding Webmasters. Indeed, some issues of Evaluating Vienna have consisted entirely of expositions of this type, at times when applications were meager. However, in this issue I have chosen to discuss a topic that applies to the majority of our readers, browser security.
I have noticed when checking my site statistics that the greater part of my visitors are running some version of Internet Explorer. A fine program, I use it too. But recent revelations regarding security holes in Explorer and its related e-mail program Outlook Express prompt me to call to your attention a critical security patch made available by Microsoft® on February 11.
In addition to patching all known security holes up to this date, this patch effectively plugs six new vulnerabilities. One of these, an unchecked buffer overrun error, allows a cleverly written HTML document to overwrite system code, which could result in loss of data, system destruction, or even the passing of complete control of the visitor's computer to the malicious Webmaster.
Another vulnerability would allow a a Web page to read files on the visitor's system.
A third critical vulnerability is a flaw in the way the HTML header fields are interpreted. This would allow a Web page to initiate a file download dialog which misrepresents the file type, tricking the visitor into opening or saving an unsafe file.
Microsoft® recommends that users of an affected version of IE should install the patch immediately.
Affected Software:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
You can find all the technical details and a link to the patch in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS02-005.
Next issue, I'll discuss some ways you can get those annoying pop-up and pop-under advertising windows under control.
I invite my readers to suggest future topics for this segment. If I use your suggestion I'll mention your name (if you wish) and provide a link to your site.
