Contact me

Please read

Please take the time to read this page, it will help me deal with your requests as quickly as possible. If you do not follow these guidelines, I might not receive your email, or I might ignore it, or I might have to waste both of our time by sending it back and telling you to provide the details you failed to provide the first time.

Please see previous emails, I may have already answered your question. (You can also search them using the search field on this page.)

When should you contact me?

When you need some help with any of your JavaScripts or PHP scripts, when you need some help using any of my JavaScripts or PHP scripts, when you have a general query about JavaScript or PHP, when you have a suggestion to make about the site or any of my scripts, when you think you can help me with any of my scripts, when you find something unclear on any of these pages, when you want to use one of my scripts in some bundled software, when you want - oh, you get the picture.

I try to devote time to answering emails, but I cannot make any promises, and I do have trouble keeping up with the volume of email I receive about this site. If you can work through a problem yourself, you will educate yourself and save me some time. However, I will try to be here if you still need help.

When should you not contact me?

This is my own personal site about Web development. It is not controlled by my employer. On this site, I am not an official spokesperson for any browser. I will not answer any questions about the progress of bug reports for closed source browsers (and you can look up the details of open source ones yourself, so don't bother asking me). I will not disclose the trade secrets of any browser.

If all you want to do is ask these sort of questions, you have come to the wrong place. Do not email me.

I am not a bug reporting system. If you have found a bug in a browser, report it to them, not me. Opera, Mozilla/Firefox/Camino, Konqueror, Safari (Safari menu - Report Bugs to Apple) or WebKit, iCab, Internet Explorer, OmniWeb. I will not report bugs for you, and I will not help you progress any bugs you have reported.

I do not want to answer questions about my employer, or my employment status. Suffice to say that I am employed, and I do not need any other job offers right now.

No marketing please. I am also not interested in any advertising or affiliate programmes or cross-linking or link-exchange schemes. I also will not write any recommendations on my pages telling my readers to try any product brands of any kind, with the exception of certain browsers. Please do not submit any such requests.

I use email for communication. I do not want to join any social networking site, or use any other kind of communication. I do not want to receive any emails from a social network site saying that you added me as a "friend" or contact. Do not add me as a friend or contact on these sites. Do not send me emails from those sites asking if I want to join. I don't. Use email or use nothing, it's that simple.

UserJS users, please do not contact me directly about scripts on UserJS.org, user scripts on this site, or any other user scripting issues. Use the UserJS forums.

I do occasionally have to take breaks from email. When this happens, I will let you know. Please do me a favour, and do not email me during those times, unless you have found a very important bug (such as a bad security bug) in one of my scripts. Any other emails will simply be deleted without being read.

How long will it take to get a reply?

Other commitments are forcing me to spend less time answering email, so I will not be able to answer as quickly as I used to. You will normally get a response within a week or two. However, I do occasionally take holidays, so I may sometimes take longer to reply. Be warned that if you choose a bad subject, I may just delete the email without reading it. See below for guidelines.

How much do I charge?

Nothing. My advice is free. However, any scripts I send you by email or any other medium are subject to the same terms and conditions as any other script on this site.

Are your emails confidential?

If you ask me to keep them confidential ... maybe.

Please note that I may choose to include any email I receive in my previous emails page unless you give me a very good reason (which I agree with - such as requests to use one of my scripts in currently secret bundled software projects) why not to. The information I give is free, and if you find it useful, chances are that someone else will as well.

Attribution can be given (and usually will be given by default where possible), but can also be removed if you ask me to. By contacting me, you acknowledge that you have accepted this policy, and give me permission to use any content that you provide, as published content on my site, without any limitation.

Note: Note that I am not as draconian as that sounds, and I will try to respect your privacy to a reasonable level. I use the policy stated above to cover myself against any potential legal liability (a situation which I detest, given that I feel the Web should be open to all, but welcome to reality). I will never give your email address to anyone else for any reason (unless forced to by legal requirement), unless you specifically ask me to. Also, although I will link to URLs that I write in emails, I will never link to any URL that you provide (I will not even show it on the page) unless I think it will be truly beneficial to my readers - I am not free advertising!

Guidelines

Use a good subject. I get over 100 spam emails a day, so subjects like these are very easy for me to mistake as spam, and I may delete them without reading them:
- '~~need help~~'
- '~~question~~'
- '~~thank you~~'
- '~~useful~~'
- 'Hi'
- '~~I have a question, can you help~~'
A better choice would be something like these:
- 'Using Movable Mini Windows Script on a commercial Web Site'
- 'problem with CSS box models'
- 'script error in Safari'
- 'Thanks for HowToCreate script reference'
Note that I always delete emails with no subject, or with 'Hi', 'Hello', 'Yo' etc. as the subject, no matter who they are from or what they contain. I will also delete any email whose 'SUBJECT IS WRITTEN IN UPPER CASE'. In the world of the internet, 'UPPER CASE TEXT' is considered to be shouting, and I don't like being shouted at.
Don't send me HTML emails if you can avoid it. I do not like HTML emails. Send plain text instead. Never send me emails using the "Outlook Rich Text Format" - I cannot, and will not read them. Outlook users, see the instructions for enabling plain text emails.
It is OK to include a small amount of script/CSS/HTML in the email, but don't include the entire source of a script, CSS file or web page in the email - attach it or (even better) send me the URL. If at all possible, please send me the URL of a live Web page.

Help requests and error/problem reports

Please don't ask me to write your entire site. I expect you to do most of the work and just ask me when you have problems. I have a job and a family and I cannot afford to spend all of my free time writing your page for you. However, I am happy to help with most requests that you might have.

If you are asking for an enhancement to one of my scripts, tell me:
1. Which script you would like me to improve
2. What improvements you think I could/should make
Please also see my terms and conditions page for details of what I will or will not do.
If you are asking for help with one of my scripts, tell me:
1. Which script you need help with
2. A URL where you are trying to use it
3. What you want to do with it
4. What you are having problems with
5. Any script error messages (see below for what browsers to use)
If you are telling me about an error that you have detected in one of my scripts, please say:
1. What browser(s) you were using (see below for what browsers I ask you to test in)
2. What operating system(s) you were using
3. What doctype tag you use with your page (more important than you realise!)
4. A URL of the page where the error occurred (if possible)
5. What you did to produce the error
6. A description of what happened
7. Any script error messages (see below for what browsers to use)
If you are asking for help with one of your own scripts, I am usually (but not always) able to help. Tell me:
1. A URL where you are trying to use it
2. What you want it to do
3. What you are having problems with
4. Any script error messages (see below for what browsers to use)
I will give an honest response, so I may just tell you that your script is no good, and you should re-program it a different way. That would be only my opinion, but it is my opinion you would be asking for!
Sorry, but I usually cannot offer help with someone else's scripts. I did not write them, you did not write them, so I cannot be expected to understand how they work. I also have enough of my own scripts to support, without having to support other people's as well. If you are having problems with someone else's script, please contact them for support.

Testing in multiple browsers

If you are asking for help with something that works in one browser, but fails in another, or something that is just not working the way you wanted in any browser, please test all applicable browsers, not just one or two. They are all free, and do not require registration, and some are available on multiple platforms. That means:

If you are using Windows, please test in Opera, Mozilla/Firefox/something Gecko based, Safari/Chrome, and Internet Explorer.
If you are using Mac, please test in Opera, Safari/OmniWeb/iCab 4+/something WebKit based, and Mozilla/Firefox/something Gecko based (you can also test in iCab 3 and Internet Explorer for Mac if you want).
If you are using Linux or UNIX, please test in Opera, Konqueror/something WebKit based (if it is on your system), and Mozilla/Firefox/something Gecko based.

If you do not have the browsers installed on your system, please do not try to use that as an excuse not to test in them. Install the browsers and test in them. Please do not try to use stats as an excuse for not testing in them. I am not interested. Please just test in the browsers that I ask you to test in. If you do not take the small amount of time needed to do this, you cannot expect me to use my time to help you. I will not be impressed if you do not test in Opera, or if you say that you will not be supporting Opera. If you cannot be bothered to make your code work in the browser that I choose to use (because it suits me best), you cannot expect me to be interested in helping you :)

Please test in the most recent public versions of the browsers that you have access to (unless the problem relates to specific older versions), and tell me exactly what browsers and versions you tested. (If you want, you can also test some of the other browsers, like ICEbrowser, Escape, or any of the older browsers or emulators. See my list of browsers for more details.)

This is useful because it will save me some time (I am not a browser checking service), it will make it much more easy to work out where the problem lies if two browsers share the same undesired behaviour, it may show you where the problem lies (especially if it only works in one browser - usually a pointer that you are relying on a bug or a non-standard extension), and best of all, many of the non-IE browsers have excellent JavaScript consoles or debuggers, helping you to quickly identify the cause of scripting errors.

If you are having trouble with a script that is not working, please check it in Opera (enable stacktraces first), and copy any error messages from Opera's Error console (Tools - Advanced - Error console), as this is very helpful for me when tracking down the cause of problems. You might also want to send the message from the (JavaScript) error console in Firefox, Konqueror, IE, or iCab 3, but Opera's is usually the one I am mostly interested in, since its backtracing is the most detailed and useful. (Safari - even with debugging enabled - does not produce anything helpful at all. The related OmniWeb is more useful - but no more so than any of the others, but it also fills the JavaScript console with the source code for all scripts, and I do not want to see the entire log in an email.)

Just get to the email!

Please see my previous emails, I may have already answered your question.

Make sure you:

Check all the browsers that I ask you to, not just the ones you are interested in (no excuses - see why this is important)
Follow my guidelines about subjects, HTML emails and attachments
Provide the right details
Check my email privacy policy

Ok, then you are ready to: contact me

Note, if you are contacting me, I am a human too. I do make mistakes. Keep stuff constructive.

NTL customers

Note, I do not work for NTL, and I cannot help you with your problems relating to NTL's email service. It seems NTL are filtering and blocking a large amount of incoming mail. For a while, this included all of my incoming email. If they are blocking your email, you need to contact them, not me. Their customer service leaves a lot to be desired (in other words, they were completely incompetent when dealing with this problem), so I suggest you send an email to postmaster@ntlworld.com - they are the ones who actually run the email system, and they are required to read the email in that email account.