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Posted by greencw3 on 10/21/06 22:21
Jonathan,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. After searching for and failing to
find a "magic bullet" that would solve my iframes issue, I suspected
that dumping the iframe would be the best solution. You have certainly
confirmed that suspicion.
I am a media specialist (translation: a school librarian) who has the
task of updating and advertising, via external links by email, our
school web site. It is these email hyperlinks that led me to post my
original query. The actual creation--and annual re-creation--of the
site is done by a web design teacher and her students, so I am loathe
to make any major design changes to the site.
Consequently, I am hoping to solve this issue without altering the look
of the web site. Each page on the site has the look of a three-framed
page: an decorative image on the left, an image with navigational
hyperlinks on top, and content (now in the iframe) on the rest of the
page. Given the static nature of the top and left images, could I solve
this using a cascading style sheet and link every page on the site to
this CSS? I ask this because I know nothing about PHP and fear screwing
up the site while climbing the learning curve.
Thanks again for your help.
Jonathan N. Little wrote:
> greencw3 wrote:
> > Yes, that is correct. I have no desire to show another site's web
> > content in my iframe. I only want to be able to externally link to any
> > page on my own site so that the page loads in my own site's index.htm
> > iframe with all of the visual and navigation aids showing--as if the
> > user had gotten to the page by navigating from my home page.
> >
> > Is there a way around this shortcoming?
>
> Well I previously posted them, but I will reiterate.
>
>
> #1 Your first and *best* option is to stop using FRAMES|IFRAMES to
> insert your common parts like your navigation and use server-side
> methods that would allow each page on your site to have a unique URL.
> PHP is very commonly available and can be a simple as
>
> <?php include('mymenu.php'); ?>
>
> See: All My FAQs Wiki: Include one file in another
> http://allmyfaqs.net/faq.pl?Include_one_file_in_another
>
> Advantage: Everything, it will always work regardless of the browser or
> browser settings, transparent to the visitor, separates common parts
> of page for easy maintenance, you only have to change the one file to
> change your menu, not duplication of markup. Easily upgraded to database
> served website which appears to be the trend.
>
> Disadvantage: None really.
>
> #2 Keeping your frames your other options are not so good and I require
> fudging, unnecessary complexity, and a maintainability issue. Parsing
> and processing a parameter via the URL query string to select the
> specific page:
>
> http://www.example.com/index.html?page=aboutus
>
> Then you could use server-side script to load the 'aboutus' page into
> the frame.
>
> Advantage: Transparent to the visitor's browse being server-side BUT
>
> Disadvantage: If you have server-side why bother with the IFRAME when
> you can do the first option and offer your visitors a static
> bookmarkable URL http://www.example.com/aboutus.php rather than a longer
> query string: http://www.example.com/index.php?page=aboutus. Without the
> IFRAME your inclusion does not have to be relegated the rectangular
> IFRAME and your page can have more design flexibility!
>
> #3 Keeping your frames like #2 but using JavaScript to parse the query
> string to load desired IFRAME contents.
>
> Advantage: Do not require server-side support *BUT*
>
> Disadvantage: Don't do this because: server-side support is now almost
> universally available unlike 10 years ago. This method *will fail
> miserably* if JavaScript is not enabled which is becoming an increasing
> percentage of your visitors and search engines will not be able to index
> your page resulting in few people finding you! And more so just take my
> advice, don't do it...
>
>
> --
> Take care,
>
> Jonathan
> -------------------
> LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
> http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com
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