Re: no SSI/ASP/FP/ any other extensions - is there a way?

G'Day Ben,

At 00:48 2/10/99 +0100, Ben Bradley wrote:
>I am creating a site for a client (http://www.news-uk.co.uk) and I use
>tables. Each page displays the same table set with the same content in each.
>Is there a way, when the user clicks on a link, instead of the browser
>loading the text in the middle. So basically, the tablesets in one html
>file, then each other has the text to display in the update section, then
>each link loads the tableset from one, and the relevant text from another
>file. Similar to an FP
>include webbot, but I can't do it without FP support.

This was the intent of frames.

>I've got no specialist sever supports - includes/asp/fp nowt like that.

OK - that means there won't be any magic server-side function to solve your 
problems.  What this really means is that you will have to rely on your 
editor to provide you with templates, macros, and search/replace functions 
to achieve a time-saving effect.

>Basically, you just edit one document, and it makes global changes to the
>all the other pages. A bit like CSS, change the style sheet, then it changes
>the style of all the 'child' pages. Hopefully making design updates, loads
>easier over a large site, which this becomes every extra week. I've been
>using NoteTab's replace function, but it's hard to keep track of where
>you've made changes.

You are so close to achieving this it isn't funny!  But then, I plodded 
along like you are now for quite some time before learning how to use the 
tools at hand *grin*

What you need to discover is the Clip collection in NoteTab.  I don't mean 
the simple HTML tags it is bundled with, although they are a start!  What 
you should be able to do is edit your page to provide a basic 
template.  Then, where you need to "replace" a couple of words, insert a 
macro command to "ask you for the information" which it then automatically 
fills into the template.

Let me give you an example.  The University Style Guide which my site has 
to comply with contains numerous metatags, all of which need updating when 
I create a page using your system (copying a current file, renaming it, and 
then opening it up and adjusting it).

Instead, one of my Clips looks like this:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="maintained-by" content="Christopher Higgs, 
c.higgs(at)landfood.unimelb.edu.au">
<meta name="authorised-by" content="Web Management Team">
<meta name="expiry-date" content="^?[Expiry Date YYYY-MM-DD]">
<meta name="last-modified" content="^?[Today's Date YYYY-MM-DD]">
<META NAME="author" content="^?[Your &name]">
<META name="keywords" content="^?[Web page &keywords]">
<META name="description" content="^?[Web page &description]">
<meta name="distribution" content="global">

The "?[Expiry Date YYYY-MM-DD]" brings up a box asking my to input "Expiry 
Date YYYY-MM-DD" - when I do, it automatically gets placed into the 
resulting page.

By efficient use of these macro commands, I can quickly "create" an empty 
page which only needs one table cell populated with content.

The search/replace functions in NoteTab are great too!  I've searched and 
replaced well over 100 files concurrently, when I decided to alter a URL or 
other name change.

>Also, what are all these other html:
>shtml
>ihtml

Again, these refer to specialised forms of HTML that require server-side 
parsing before being delivered to a web browser.  The different extension 
is so the server knows which files need extra attention.

HTH

Chris Higgs <c.higgs(at)landfood.unimelb.edu.au>
Institute of Land and Food Resources
University of Melbourne
http://www.landfood.unimelb.edu.au

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