Posted by dorayme on 11/21/06 20:56

In article <WISdnTYGHIUePP_YRVnyvQ@eclipse.net.uk>,
"a human person" <ahum@nperson.com> wrote:

> "dorayme" <doraymeRidThis@optusnet.com.au> wrote in message
> news:doraymeRidThis-C59912.10552821112006@news-vip.optusnet.com.au...
> > In article <vO-dnX7XW6IWo__YnZ2dnUVZ8sqdnZ2d@eclipse.net.uk>,
> > "a human person" <ahum@nperson.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > includes are great - i have a site with 40(more) pages each of which
> had a
> > > menu on - so everytime i needed to change the menu i had to do it on
> every
> > > page, so i sat down one day changed all the content to php and made the
> > > header and menu and footer into includes. sorry for gushing but its
> saved me
> > > so much time in the long run.
> >
> > No, do please gush some more:
> >
> > How did it save you so much time with 40 pages?
> >
> because now when i change the menu i only have to do it once. instead of 40
> odd times.

Nope... I am not seeing the evidence that you have saved so much
time? What time?

Look, I am not trying to be awkward here or troll or provoke
anyone. I appreciate the theoretical, even the practical savings
in time over a long period or with many large sites. But what i
am wondering about is how could you possibly be so pleased about
the time you have saved when it could hardly be measurable?

Every time includes are discussed, someone says how you don't
have to edit lots and lots of files on your own machine. For
starters. But this paints a completely false picture of any
intelligent approach to altering even huge numbers of files
considering there really is only one action you need to take,
that is: use any decent text editor's Find and Replace to change
all the files in any given directory or folder. Modern machines
take no time at all to do this.

As for uploading the changed files to a remote server, yes, this
is definitely more time consuming, especially for dialup (I was
on it for years and damn hell, I wish I had looked into
includes!) But on broadband, it is hardly a significant time
thing - especially if you have your file structure well managed
so you can grab all the html...

In your time savings you need to factor in all the fiddling about
to get includes going, issues to do with file names, server set
ups and prior bookmarks. The experienced will find these things a
breeze, for sure. But not everyone!

As for energy savings, elegance, avoiding a "stupidish" approach,
this is different altogether. These things are real! But I doubt
there can be any time savings for the web developer to speak of
with most sites.

--
dorayme

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