Next to this forum, my favorite part of this place is the tutorials. I can't get enough of 'em. When I have a problem I check those after I read FAQs and TFM, before I post here for help. Having had experience as a technical trainer, I know how incredibly difficult it is to write one that is effective and works. When I find a good one that really helped on a project or even a well written one that I enjoyed, I try to send a note of appreciation to the author. My hat is off to those who attempt writing them, Thank You, your efforts are greatly appreciated. BTW, the Angie portrait one is awesome, everyone should check it out. Now that I've laid down the appropriate suppressive cover fire of accolades to a potentially hot LZ, I'll commit with my question and minor complaint. Since 'osity doesn't host them, just the links, is there someone who QC's the links? I understand people move to different hosts or just plain fold up shop, but some of the bad links have been around for quit awhile. Probably just me, but it is frustrating to try to go back to a good tut and get hit with a 404. When that happens in the free stuff, the links seem to get fixed pretty fast, nature of the beast maybe, but I consider a tut just as valuable as a freebie. What's the story on the process of maintaining that section? If I've posted in the wrong place, I apologize. C&D seems more of a place for thermonuclear strikes, this is just a minor issue. Oh, and thanks to everyone here who has helped on anything, keeps me coming back, can't be said for other sites that I've quickly forgotten. Jbear

Like you, I appreciate a good tutorial. And like you I have known the frustration of a deadlink. Cleaning these up would help in maybe avoiding the frustration of deadlinks but the real shame is that some excellent tutorials have fallen by the way. I suppose this is inevitable. Nevertheless, when I come across one anymore that I like, I save it to my hard drive. That way, I can pull it up at a later time for a refresher without having to worry about the dreaded 404.

Attached Link: http://www.archive.org

Well, this is gonna sound odd, but a lot of times you can use the Wayback Machine to dig up an old site or tutorial that you like.

You can also see what web sites looked like a long time ago.

Here is a link to Renderosity in March of 2000. ;)

I used to save 'em that way (to HD) but a few site admins asked me not to, felt I was stealing their site. Guess I'll go back to doing that but asking first. sigh

Stealing their site? uh, you have to download it in order to view it anyway. If you put something on the web, it will be downloaded.. this attitude about "stealing" really bothers me.

Kieraw - wow that's neat. Thanks for the link.

Kieraw- Thanks for the link, great stuff. Yeah, stealing. Have a long email ranting on theft of code, design and such. Wasn't poser related. Apologized and haven't been back since. She did have the tut as a PDF download, I missed it. Error in the interface between the ears. I did point out that if I was stealing something I wouldn't have left comments in the guest book, but you can't please everybody.

That goes along with those really stupid anti-theft javascripts that disallow right clicking. As soon as I hit a site like that, I leave. I don't care who they are or why they put it there. I use right clicking for MUCH MORE than say, stealing images and source code that are already downloaded to my harddrive that I could browse at ease with any cache browser. I have a ton of custom scripts in my context menu that allow me to check links, save a list of linked documents, validate HTML, change the web site's colors and design, format the document for printing, etc. If a webmaster won't let me use them, then I have no interest in their site--or their products. As to the original issue. Yeah.. removing 404'ed tutorials is a good idea. Why not post a suggestion in the Community Ideas forum? They seem pretty responsive to stuff that's possible. ;)

Attached Link: http://www.ronknights.com/tutor/

I've had some difficulties search for and finding good Poser related tutorials. In fact, I had printed out some pages from the "official Poser tutorial," and left them on a shelf, forgotten for months. I was shocked when I finally pulled out the tutorial. The damned thing was mostly useless in my regard. It took you somewhere, dumped you without helping you figure what was going on. I did a frantic search, and found some of those same dead links. Then I found people who didn't care about spelling, grammar, or any of those niceties. Heck, I sent a very supportive letter to one guy, "constructive criticism." He bombarded me with a profane response, not once but twice. Some other tutorials are fantastic. These people know their stuff and can communicate. But they are beyond my meager comprehension. Or I get so far, and panic, and don't go back. So I started making my own tutorials when I learned something. I shyly presented my tutorials here on Renderosity, hosting them on my own site. Wow, people liked them! I intend to convert these tutorials to Adobe Acrobat format as soon as I find the easiest way. I may take down the HTML format, and just have the Acrobat downloads. If you haven't already checked out my tutorials, give them a look. They will be around a long time. Eventually I will do more. I just have a lot of personal business (job hunt, ugh) to do right now.

Kieraw- Thanks again, I will ask in Community Ideas. Agreed on too much concern over code theft. Gave the owner benefit of the doubt, maybe she had a bad day, whatever, her loss, not mine, I didn't go back. Ron-Have a few of yours, thank you for the time invested in them. Your "Vicki texturing" is duct taped to the side of my graphics box, right next to jimball's guide to file placement. (Greatest Invention since fire, that duct tape)

First off, since this is my first post in this forum, let me say hello to everybody. I am just starting out in Poser and trueSpace, and I agree that a good tutorial can be a lifesaver. I really appreciate all the work put into these. You can learn so much from them. I, too, have had the frustration of encountering dead links. Especially when the topic is something you really want to find out more about! Like shadownet, I, too, started to save the good tutorials on my HD (also, this way you can access them any time). It never occurred to me that I was "stealing" their stuff. I always thought that they want to help people learn these things, so I don't understand why it matters if people read their tutorial on their website or on their own hard drive. As for code theft, unless they have patented something and are selling it I don't see why it would be a crime for somebody to check out their code if they like it so much. But maybe I'm just naive... Anyway, a big Thank You to ronknights and others who help us by putting all that effort in their tutorials. Speaking of tutorials, I think that some time ago I saw one titled something like "Wet Lips, Shiny Eyes" or something like that. I thought I had bookmarked it or saved it, but I can't find it anywhere. Does any of you know where I can find it again? Greetings, Sue

Attached Link: http://www.petersharpe.com/Tutorials.htm

Peter Sharpe's tutorials are what you're looking for.

I am so thrilled that I could help people with my tutorials. I am even more thrilled to hear all the great things you say about them! You can save my tutorials to your hard drive. You can print them out, and duct tape them to your computers. You have my permission to do anything with them. Just promise me that you won't try to pass them off as your own work. Otherwise I will have to send my friend Super Marlin after you. He will make you laugh to death!!!

kieraw, Thank you! That's it! It turns out the tutorial I was looking for is actually titled "Bright Eyes - Moist Lips" and it's right there. What a great site. Thank you again! ronknights, Oh no! Not Super Marlin! I promise I'll be good!

Attached Link: http://www.ronknights.com/what/

I've decided to redo my tutorials from scratch, using Microsoft Word. Then I'll "print them" to Adobe Acrobat Format. The first new Acrobat tutorial is "What is Poser?!" It's pretty basic, aimed at rank beginners. But I'm doing them one at a time, in order. If you don't by chance have the free Adobe Acrobat reader, look for the download button on my Tutorials Contents page.

Please don't take this the wrong way, Ron (and keep that Marlin guy at bay, willya ;o) ) ...BUT why on earth does everyone and his brother want to put their stuff in Adobe format? The Adobe format was never intended for the www and e-material in general. It's great for making stylish magazines like Vogue and the like, but for the www, it's simply a very fancy way to waste your time. Any tute can be written in html. It can be saved as html. It can be read in any browser and on any kind of machine in html. It can be printed from html. It can have pictures in html. It can look GREAT in html. You don't even have to KNOW html (take it from me, I don't - Frontpage Express is free, easy to use, and up to just about any challenge, if you give it the chance). So if you are generous enough to take time to share your knowledge with the community, why waste that time fiddling with a format totally unsuited to the task? Don't get me wrong, I love tutes - that's why I hate to think of all the tutes that are never written because the author spent so much time making his web material fit for print. Hope that's not Super Marlin in the horizon... ;o)

I would think saving a site to hard drive just to keep the content at hand is no different than checking the "save this site to work offline' option in most browsers. I, too would like to express my great appreciation for all who generously share their expertise by creating & posting tutorials. I've bookmarked nearly every site I've found a poser tutorial of any kind on, printed out quite a few of them. There's a "down&Dirty trick I use for the really excellent ones - works for especially illuminating threads here at the forum, too; When I have a page open in my browser, I click on "File->Send->Email to..." and EMail it to myself. That way I can sort and organize them into subfolders by subject for easy ref later. They're easy to review, easy to delete, and (usually) easy to print if needed. Kind of bloats the EMail folders, after a while, but I only keep a dozen or so at a time, & only until I've thoroughly reviewed the content. btw - I prefer tutorials in plain html, also. I've had trouble with Acrobat locking up browsers on 3 computers, and tutorials in frames are nearly impossible to print for reference (I don't keep my browser open when I'm in poser, so printouts are the only way I can follow them through). Again, many, many thanks to all!

Personally, I like having the option to download a file to my hard drive as a .pdf file, just because they are so self-contained. I like .html files too, of course, but my Scrapbook is bloated enough!

I'll likely go ahead and do at least a couple more tutorials in Acrobat format. I hear a lot of the points about HTML being a great way to do things. I just had a bug in my ear that some folks considered Acrobat format more professional. Personally, the way I'd suggest to handle Acrobat files is to download them to your computer, and open them from there. I'm thinking some HTML tutorials are not done with printing in mind. The pages are too big. Personally, I prefer to print a tutorial so I can see it while I concentrate on doing the work on my screen. I don't like flipping back and forth between screens. Some of the tutorials I've seen are horrendous in that regard.

Maybe the best approach is to have the tutorials both in HTML and PDF format, if you have the time to do both. Then people can choose which one to go with. I'm not sure which one I like better. The good thing about the Acrobat format is that everything is within one document, and it's pretty easy to download. Just right-click on the PDF icon, and select "Save Target As". This is great if somebody wants to save the tutorial on their hard drive. However, if they just want to read it, it is kind of a pain to have to wait for the program to load. One drawback of a tutorial in HTML format is that if it's on several pages then you have to save and later open each page individually. And, like leather-guy said, frames can cause problems. Whichever way you choose, we will really appreciate it! :)

Thanks. And just when you thought no one noticed.

Oh, by the way folks, I have a pet peeve against web sites with frames. It's like looking at the world through a picture frame that is too small. And half the time the webmaster doesn't even bother to notice that things don't fit right in the frame, or that a visitor will be stuck inside the frame even if the visitor tries to go elsewhere. That's just my NOT So Humble Opinion. And I'm sticking to it. Ouch, Marlin hit me.

Ron, To piggyback off Sue88, if you're using freePDF to "print" those files, couldn't you also do it with a browser (vice Word). In other words, do the tut in html and "print" the PDF file for those that prefer that format.

I noticed Dreamweaver doesn't have a print option. I thought that was weird. So that leaves me in a bit of a pickle. The only solution I can see is to do the tutorial in Microsoft Word, then print to PDF. By the way, I am using "the real" Adobe Acrobat version 4. Hey, it may not be the latest, but I have it!

Ron, You can create and publish the HTML version of the tutorial and then with Acrobat 4 you can use File -> Open Web Page option to convert web pages to a PDF. Mark

One thing that occurs to me is that whenever you visit a web page, 1. it's already completely downloaded into your computer, saving it to the HD is just moving it from one storage medium to another, and 2. it's saved to your HD anyway, in cache, so every visitor is already 'stealing' the page. In sum, complaints in that regard seem quite silly and ignorant of how web browsers work. Just my 2 Pfennig Wert. Mark

yggdrasil: I do believe I mentioned earlier that I tried to do just what you stated. I entered the URL of each tutorial, and got only the first page. Unfortunately that doesn't work. Now are you saying I should point Adobe Acrobat to the web page on my hard drive? I think I already tried that.

kieraw, Thanks for the link, that's really usefull, (and I can forsee it will be a great time sink too) it's just a shame they don't go all the way back to 1994 :) As for the pfennig, 'tis sadly, all but history, I've still got four 1949 10 pfennig bits in my pocket, (got a mate who collects them :) but after that we're stuck with cents, which is the worst of both worlds, a French word with American connotations :P later jb

Ron, Looking at your site, you have a tutorial on Vicky/Mike in the /what folder. To grab this to a single acrobat file, the settings in the Open Web Page dialog box would be: URL: http://www.ronknights.com/what/index.htm Levels: 6 (no of pages) Only Get Pages Under Same Path : ticked If you have a local web server (e.g. Personal Web Server that comes with FrontPage or IIS in Windows Server or XP Pro) then you can convert from your local copies (change URL to http://localhost/what/index.htm assuming that your local copy of the web site is stored in the root directory of your local web server c:inetpubwwwroot by default). Otherwise you will need to do it over the Internet. Hope this helps Mark

Mark, You helped me a great deal. Thank you very much.