Emulating Frames/Targetting

[xpurtwitness]

Hi. I'm trying to make my site adhere to the "frames are bad" notion, and am having some difficulty. What I would like is to use targetting so my navigation doesn't have to reload every time someone clicks a link in the menu. The with-frames version I employ now has the result I would like. However, I'd like to have it look closer to the version I'm working on <sorry, no urls>. I'm having trouble getting the javascript menu to target, as well as dedicate the right hand section of the page to loading each menu link without using frames at all. Thanks for any help.

[edited by: tedster at 5:14 am (utc) on Nov. 27, 2003]

[davidpbrown]

If everything is in the same frame, ie no frames=one window, then there's no simple way around the menu loading each time.

Better, and remarkably simple, if your hosting allows it, is PHP.

<?php
include 'menu.html';
?>

lets you hold the menu in a separate file.

I've had a static framed site that I've switched into PHP and have had no regrets. Indeed I wouldn't go back now with the extra functionality it allows.

If you do look into PHP look into adding HTTP headers as well. Things like last modified dates that servers give bland files by default.

I don't know the best place to learn PHP, for me it's been here on WebmasterWorld, but w3schools.com is always a good bet.

I could suggest I also did this without the installing a local server+php, which might be suggested in your reading, that's only something I've just got to doing.

dpb

[xpurtwitness]

Hm... I'll definitely look into that. However, I'm fairly certain that my hosting service doesn't include that as an option. Thanks for the heads up.

While we're on the subject:
Anyone know of any free (or reeeeal cheap) hosting services with no ads that has a decent amount of webspace (more than 100MB)?

[davidpbrown]

Your unlikely to find free ones without adverts.
You could try linksky.com which are cheaper and more reliable than others I've used.

dpb