Suppose that the light intensity (as measured by photon flux) is at the borderline between "enough" and "not enough". Under such conditions, I assume that increasing the blue to red ratio would be beneficial in reducing leggyness. Nope, it is a myth that internode length is increased by red light and decreased by blue light. Red light, or orange light such as HPS, produces very short internodes (ie. no legginess). The issue with such light is that they produce excessively branched and compact plants and biomass is not maximised on such small plants. There are also other biological problems with a complete lack of blue light. Etiolation is controlled very strongly by the ratio of red light to far red light, but this is rarely an issue with fluorescent lights because they just don't produce enough far red light. Incandescents do and they have even been used to supplement HPS lighting to stretch plants. One of the biggest problems with fluorescent lights is that the main red phosphors have a sharp dropoff in light at the most efficient wavelengths for photosynthesis. This is intentional since the human eye is not very sensitive to those wavelengths. The common blue phosphors do peak right at the best place for plants. Perhaps you have seen plots of photosynthesis as a function of wavelength, in which blue has a effectiveness of ~ 1/2, green ~ 2/3 (green would be about ~3/4, but has a little dip in the plot), and red ~1 (where by definition, I normalized the effectiveness of red to "1"). Such plots result when the light intensity is measured in watts per square meter. When light intensity is measured by photons per square meter (microEinstiens), the plots show that blue and red are both ~1, and the dip in the green is more pronounced. (The dip in green is more obvious with pale thin leaves or dilute algae, as compared to plants with dark thick leaves.) In conclusion, the claim that blue light is less effective than red light in driving photosynthesis is an illusion and not a real issue. You have just pointed out that a photosynthetic plot against power (watts) shows blue light to be half as effective as red light. Similar plots against photons (micro-einsteins) show that a blue photon is roughly as effective as a red photon, but unfortunately it takes more energy to produce a blue photon, hence a 40W fluorescent can produce less blue photons than red photons purely based on physics. Add in that blue phosphors are generally less efficient and degrade more quickly and you have a problem. Remember that you buy electricity and fluorescent tubes by the watt, not by the photon. Actually I am hoping for an imbalance, an imbalance that retards bolting! Now here you have a situation where blue light can be beneficial. Some plants bolt when grown with insufficient blue light. Approximately 10% blue light by photon count is sufficient to prevent this, which approximates to the 25% blue light by wattage in the good old warm white cool white combo. 6500K tubes actually produce more blue light than needed for this, but they are not wildly out of line and they are often made in "wide spectrum" forms that produce a good spread of light in the best red wavelengths. They also often have a high CRI for good colour rendition if you want your plants to look good under lights. The second real issue is whether a red lamp can put out twice as many photons as a blue lamp (given equal consumption of watts). This is a question of economics and enviornmental stewardship. I don't believe that a hypothetical fluorescent tube coated with only red phosphor emits more photons than one coated with only blue phosphor. Again, pure physics says that it requires more energy to produce a blue photon than a red one, proportionate to the frequency, or inversely proportional to the wavelength. Using blue and red phosphor peaks at 420nm and 650nm, you get a ratio of 64% of blue photons compared to red for the same power. Add in the difficulties with blue phosphors and a red phosphor most certainly does emit more photons per watt than a blue one (or even a green one). Remember that one blue photon achieves, at best, the same photosynthetic effect as one red photon. In regards to the UV component of aquarium fluorescents and metal halides, I worry much more about UV-induced degradation of household paint and fabrics than about inhibition of plants. Definitely. Metal halides degrade paint over time. Aquarium fluorescents may or may not produce enough UV to be harmful. Some, such as actinics, produce very little UV. Even some non-actinics produce just a narrow spread of blue and violet light, but others produce a wider spread including quite a bit of UV. Coral lamps in particular tend to produce a higher proportion of UV than is good for plants. Try a coral lamp on surface plants at an intensity comparable to sunlight and let us know what happens :) Maybe nothing, maybe crispy plants, but why take the risk when a saltwater aquarium lamp offers nothing extra for growing green plants. Well, they are sold as magic lamps! Magic lamps to drive photosynthesis in the dinoflagellate symbionts found in coral. Yes, that's right, they are designed for corals that live several feet under saltwater where they receive very little red light and probably wouldn't know what to do with a red photon if they tripped over it :) Coral lamps are actually designed to produce an excess of violet and UV light to enhance natural fluorescence and make the corals look nice. I have the impression that the phosphor in classic "actinic" aquarium lamps (those that emit blue at a 420nm peak) degrades quickly. Actinic lamps certainly don't have the same listed lifetimes as regular triphosphor fluorescents. I don't know how much of this is just lack of effort on the part of the manufacturers. I started a thread many months ago about apparent spectral changes in triphosphor fluorescents as they age since the blue triphosphor phosphors are the same as the phosphors in at least some of the aquarium lamps. It does seem that the blue phosphors degrade more quickly (and so a triphosphor tube becomes more red) but it is difficult to find hard data on this. Your Clemson link is interesting. It describes the primary spectral effect on plant height, which is the ratio of far red light. They also mention right at the end the possible effects of far red light at particular times of the day. This has been studied elsewhere and it appears that relatively small amounts of far red light have a huge effect at particular times, especially right before or during the dark period.

One thing that might be happening is that notepad may be adding a .txt extension to the file. By default, Windows explorer hides extensions when they're known file types, so it's possible that a file you thought was saved as index.html was actually saved as index.html.txt (even though it appears to be index.html in explorer). To change that, from the explorer (not internet explorer, but windows explorer) menu, choose tools/folder options, then choose the View tab. Uncheck Hide extensions for known file types and click either Apply or Apply to All Folders (I always set it this way for all folders). Once you've done that, you can correct the extension if that's what was wrong.

I think we have been jumping back and forth between specifics of my particular post and questions posted in general. I don't have enough experience in this computer forum to really add anything to any general discussion beyond my own personal, very minor experiences, so I will go back to the specifics of my post and my own situation. In the past, when I was a Windows PC user, I was an intermittent visitor to a number of computer forums, not this one very often, because of low traffic here, but all the forums had very friendly people who were generous with their time and expertise and seemed happy to help. Since switching to an Apple computer, I have barely stepped foot in a computer forum. I have not needed to. My laptop just works 90% of the time and when it doesn't, I have a 3 yr tech support policy in place. Something I've had with every computer I've ever had since I first started getting on the computer in 1995. It has been a big relief, because maintaining a computer and straightening out technical problems even with help was a very frustrating task that I never enjoyed. It always felt like a 'big black hole' of wasted time when some issue would present itself. Even with an 'expert' to help figure it out, you'd never know how many hours you'd have to take away from whatever task you were trying to do, to stop and figure out why the computer wasn't responding right, 'again'. Or how many days your computer would not be working. Even with a tech support policy, I might call and get the wrong information and no fix with two techs, and have to call back again and then a third tech might know just what the problem was and fixed it in about 10 minutes. So, even though I was less technically literate, it seemed like even among the technically literate, there were a lot of people who seemed as confused as I was. I always tried to understand what I needed to know. Always tried to find out what I could do using the computer that would be preventative and avoid problems. It didn’t seem to matter, tech problems always seemed to present themselves regardless. So again, I can’t even express how relieved I’ve been not to have that experience with my computer any more. My husband has a windows based computer with Vista on it and I don’t even want to touch it. Which brings me to my thread that seems to have triggered this discussion. I wasn’t even asking for help with a problem with my computer. I had already been working with my own situation for 3 days and taken steps to resolve it not only with GW but with my own Apple tech support. I was not satisfied with the responses or information that I was getting from either about whether this ‘downloaded file’ was a problem or not. That was why I posted here. And from the information that ravencajun offered, it would seem that I had reason to remain concerned about the ‘possibility’ that it could be a problem and one I wanted to take steps to avoid in the future. Even if the file that was downloaded onto my computer was not a problem, it might have been. So, what was it about my thread that has caused a negative response? What did I do or say that was wrong? I’m still here defending my thread, why? Have I even done any of the things that some of you are expressing you have a problem with? I was very appreciative for the help ravencajun gave me and I even tried to smooth over my initial response to Mike, even though I still think he was wrong in both content and attitude in his response to me, I was more than willing to give him a break and overlook it. At this point, I am at a loss to understand how what seemed like a simple question has resulted in my feeling like I have to defend myself for asking it and now defending all people who come to forums and ask questions. That doesn't seem right to me.

owbist, sorry if I mislead you with the info I have written, I am removing my own files and folders in prep for the writing in the USB thingy, these are some things that I have gathered for a long time, and am looking at them with new eyes, and I don't and haven't used them, so why keep them? You know ladies, and their needlework? Anyway, I know I read it somewhere here someone wrote in and asked about the black print turning blue, and of course, as I didn't need the info at the time, didn't even think to remember the title of the posting. Would like to know if the files/folders I have saved for posterity are still good, as some are not able to be opened, and if I can't see them, I guess I will just delete them, and start from scratch again.