Help with Borders

**Connie** · 04-11-2002, 08:46 PM

Currently we have over 200 web pages. We have a left, and bottom border. Is there any way to update these borders so that they are displayed on all pages when ever we make a change to the border?

I do not want to use a graphic to display our borders.

Is there any way to do this without using a graphic for the borders.

**dkadave** · 04-12-2002, 12:16 AM

More info would be helpful!

But here is a guess at what you are asking for:

What I would suggest is to make a blank graphic about 2x2 or 3x3 that is transparent! And then make tables:

Example for table with a width of 600:

Code:

<table border="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" width="600">

<TR><TD width="2" bgcolor="#000000"><img src="blank.gif" width="2" height="2"></TD>

<TD width="598"><TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="5" CELLSPACING="0" width="598"><TR><TD>

BODY / Text

</TD></TR></TABLE></TD></TR>

<TR><TD colspan="2" height="2" bgcolor="#000000"><img src="blank.gif" width="2" height="2"></TD></TR>

</TABLE>

**jason** · 04-12-2002, 07:39 AM

I think what you want to do is update a section of your pages that changes frequently one time instead of having to do it on every page individually. It is pretty easy to do that with Server Side Includes (SSI). All you have to do is place the portion of the page that you want to change in a separate file and name it something like "leftside.inc" or "top.inc." Then, just replace the code that that file contains with a tag that looks like this:



You'll also need to change the name of the file that contains the above tag to use an extension of .shtml (and update all of the links pointing to that page...) to tell the server to look for the tag and replace it with the contents of your .inc file.

If you need more help, let me know.

--Jason

**Connie** · 04-12-2002, 10:24 AM

Thanks Dave and Jason

I did a poor job explaining what I was looking for, but
Jason has the idea. We have main navigation links
in a common left and bottom border. When we make a change
in those links it means every page has to be manually edited
and uploaded.

I'll do some experimenting, but may be back for more help.

**dkadave** · 04-12-2002, 10:28 AM

oh, I didn't know that's what you meant!

I do that with php, Cause I hate when I change a layout I have to edit every single page! I just do it once!

**Connie** · 04-15-2002, 08:38 PM

Jason,

You solution for changing the Apache settings to parse .htm
made what I am trying to do a lot simpler. I need simple answers.

I can now use ssi to add bottom borders, or side borders. I am not
having any luck at adding 2 codes to a web page so that both side and bottom
borders are called.
An example would be:




slinks.txt is at the top of the page under <body>

blinks.txt is at the bottom of the page after the last table
but before </body>

Feel free to e-mail me at cshelton@condells.com. I will appreciate
any help you can offer.

**jason** · 04-16-2002, 07:09 AM

I'm not sure if this is the problem, but I think you need a space between the <!-- and the #include. Try that and let me know if it works.

--Jason

**pahowes** · 05-09-2002, 04:04 AM

As was said in a previous post, this is what the PHP scripting language is good for. In fact, I took it one step further: I wrote a template engine in PHP. Basically, you supply an HTML page that is used as a base. You can specify "tags", which appear as "{tag}" in the HTML file, to be replaced with some other text. As an added bonus, you can specify tags that will be replaced by a complete file, and tags that define blocks that will be repeated and filled in by a PHP function (great for dynamically generating a table!).

If this is something that interests you, I don't mind sharing the code with the JaguarPC community. I can clean up the code a little and add some documentation, and make it free to use by all. Interested?

For those who will mention it: Yes, I know about the PHP FastTemplate library, but I needed more flexability than it offered, so I wrote up a feature list, and implemented my own. One of the flaws of being a software developer, I guess!

**jason** · 05-09-2002, 07:21 AM

Originally posted by pahowes
One of the flaws of being a software developer, I guess!

LOL! I know the feeling, though. I've probably written about 5 or 6 different template "engines" for various projects I've worked on. I keep saying that I'm going to standardize it some day, or I'm just going to find someone else's that works exactly as I want it to. No one else seems to work the way I do though, so I think I'll find myself reinventing the wheel.

Pahowes, I'd kind of like to have a look at your engine if you don't mind. I can't say I'll have a chance to test it any time soon (so don't rush to get me a copy), but I'd be interestedd in seeing it just the same.

--Jason