any HTML gurus about ?

[jackal]

just need some advice about a website


cheers
R

[mike1337]

what you need?

[jackal]

its just my website

its in frames which are a bit antequated and the problem is i can never post up an external link to a specific page because then it sends you to just the frame without the index on the LHS and the header and footer etc..

I was wondering if theres an easy way to convert it all using iframes or something ?


http://www.jackals-forge.com/lotus/

apprecaite any pointers bTW

Edited by jackal on Sunday 23 May 13:08

[mike1337]

Never mind, I see what you mean now. I've used frames only a few times many moons ago and AFAIK, you can't do that if you're using frames as you're opening a page up within a page. It's one of the drawbacks of using frames unfortunately

[gareth.e]

jackal said:

its just my website

its in frames which are a bit antequated and the problem is i can never post up an external link to a specific page because then it sends you to just the frame without the index on the LHS and the header and footer etc..

I was wondering if theres an easy way to convert it all using iframes or something ?


http://www.jackals-forge.com/lotus/

apprecaite any pointers bTW

Edited by jackal on Sunday 23 May 13:08

Nothing wrong with you page, When you want to link to a new page just use target="_blank" it will open the page in a new window so..


<A HREF="http://www.google.co.uk" TARGET="_blank"> google in a new window </A>

edit: or have I miss understood what you want?

Edited by gareth.e on Sunday 23 May 13:23

[davepoth]

What you need to do is to put the menu code back into the main page. People used frames in the olden days () because it cut down on loading times on a 28.8 modem.

The way to do it these days is with DIV layers. As it happens I've been fiddling about with a club website I'm a member of, which I was putting a menu down the left on with DIV layers. It goes a bit like this:

<head>

<title>Homepage - The Official Website</title>

<style type="text/css">

body

{ margin-top: 0;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-left: 0;
margin-right: 0;
padding-left: 0;
padding-right: 0;
}

 #menu 

{

position: absolute;
left: 5px;
padding: 0px;
width: 150px;
}



[NOWIKI] {

margin-left: 200px;
padding: 0px;
margin-right: 15px;
}

</style>

</head>
<body>

<div id="menu">
<font color="blue" face = "verdana">
<li><p align="left"><a href="www.google.co.uk"><b>Join Club!</b></a>
<li><p align="left"><a href="www.google.co.uk"><b>The Discussion Forum</b></a>
<li><p align="left"><a href="www.google.co.uk"><b>Local group meetings</b></a>
<li><p align="left"><a href="www.google.co.uk"><b>Specials Register</b></a>
<li><p align="left"><a href="www.google.co.uk"><b>About the Homepage</b></a>

</ul>
</div>

<div id="content">

<BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff">
<FONT FACE = "Verdana">
<font color="blue">
This is just a test.
</body>
</html>
Which is just a really basic page if you load it into a browser. It shouldn't be too hard to replicate your page with something similar.

-edit-

Can't get this to format quite right - the [NOWIKI] should be a hashsign followed by the word "content" but it won't let me do it.

Edited by davepoth on Sunday 23 May 13:36

Edited by davepoth on Sunday 23 May 13:40

[mike1337]

I belive he wants to link to one specific page within his site (and include the side frame) but when he does he loses the surrounding frames because he's linking to the page that he's opening up inside a frame on the index page.

[Don]

There are a couple of ways you could go about this but I recommend this one:

Put a server-side "include" in each and every content page that includes the menu links. Use DIVs to lay out the menu on the left and the content on the right. That way each and every page is whole and complete and an external link will load the right thing. This is probably best and easiest.

I can think of other ways but all of them require loads of AJAX JavaScript and/or server side scripting so just including the menu in all the content pages is probably best...

[Don]

davepoth said:

People used frames in the olden days () because it cut down on loading times on a 28.8 modem.

Actually people still use FRAMES and IFRAMES because they provide automatic namespacing of application page components...DIVs are all inline and so not suitable for everything.

[davepoth]

Indeed there are specific reasons for using them. But the reason everyone used them for homebrew websites back in the day was that it cut down on the data that needed to be transferred.

[gareth.e]

mike1337 said:

I belive he wants to link to one specific page within his site (and include the side frame) but when he does he loses the surrounding frames because he's linking to the page that he's opening up inside a frame on the index page.

Ahh right! I get it...

Yep either div's styled with css or using php includes will work, but both will take a little while to restructure the site


If you're only wanting to link to one or two specific pages from external links, why not just create one or two new pages which are predefined for with the frames and targets for specific links to your site?




edit: to expand on what im saying.. Create a copy of the lotusframepagewhateveritscalled.htm

then in this section

<frameset cols="379,1653" rows="*" frameborder="NO">
<frame src="menu_main.html" frameborder="NO" noresize scrolling="AUTO">
<frameset rows="105,*" frameborder="NO" border="0" framespacing="0" cols="*">
<frame name="topFrame" scrolling="NO" noresize src="header.htm" >
<frameset rows="*,86" frameborder="NO" border="0" framespacing="0" cols="*">
<frame src="stage.htm" frameborder="NO" noresize name="mainFrame">
<frame name="bottomFrame" scrolling="no" noresize src="foot.htm" frameborder="NO">
</frameset>
</frameset>
</frameset>

just change Stage.htm to wolfrace.htm

and save the page as wolfracedirectlink.htm

then it will link directly to that section about "The WolfWagon" and will include frames you want

Edited by gareth.e on Sunday 23 May 13:51

[warmfuzzies]

Use the target MainFrame as identified, its what I do, then external links are in the main part,

http://www.encantada-vacation.homecall.co.uk thats my website, and not is not a shamelss plug beacuse its in the classifieds and more that I have paid for,.....


Use the weather link, it takes a feed from Orlando weather, and drops it straight into the main frame.

kevin

Edited by warmfuzzies on Sunday 23 May 14:04

Edited by warmfuzzies on Sunday 23 May 14:05

[jackal]

thanks a lot guys

I have got this far:

http://www.jackals-forge.com/lotus/index_div.htm


i could change every page so its like that probably quite easily

I just need to know how to insert the long menu table in my left hand side DIV as an external html file rather than pasting the actual table in that DIV

that way I only have to change the html once to add and modify the master menu


thanks

R

[JohnnyPanic]

As mentioned previously, the way to do this is with SSI (Server Side Includes). You can do this without using a server-side language (e.g. PHP) but not all servers allow it by default, and they often have different limitations. If you're lucky then you may be able to keep your existing .html URLs, but you may well have to change them to .shtml.

To test what you can do, create a new text file called test-include.shtml and write in "<h1>Include test</h1>".

In one of your HTML pages put in the following line where you want the include to appear (change the path to the file):
<!--#include file="path/to/file/test-include.shtml"-->

Hopefully that will work, but as I said before, you may need to save your .html content page as a .shtml.

[jackal]

thanks very much

it seems to pick it up if they are both .shtml

but then i get the following displayed:

"There is a recursive #INCLUDE chain"


http://www.jackals-forge.com/lotus/include.shtml

Edited by jackal on Tuesday 8th June 19:02

[JohnnyPanic]

Ah bugger, it looks as though your server may have limitations preventing this from working properly
e.g. http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/knowledge-base/?article...

[jackal]

ok thanks

ill stick with good odl frames then !