RE: Header, Footer, and Sidebars

I understand the concern, and it did cross my mind the first time noticed
style not inheriting into the included document. Still, I think the current
behavior violates the basic perception of document inclusion. If OBJECT
means some other thing (applet, what not) embedded in the page (like an
movie embeded in a Word document) then the spec is correct. But when it
comes to using this mechanism to include another document within a
document, I expect it to function as part of the main document. This is how
a word processor include works.

The behavior makes no sense for building a main document from sub-documents
if the result does not behave and appear as a whole document. How can we
take advantage of efficient HTML includes of navigational elements or
tables for contents then?

I can't guess the intentions of the designers of the HTML4.0 spec, but it
seems that the idea is to reduce the load on web servers and in general,
the number of round trips to the server that are unnecessary. It would help
a great deal to do away with SSI's in favor of client-side includes. If
they wish to retain OBJECT for "completely independent documents" then IMO
we need a mechanism of HTML inclusion separate from it and distinct from
SSI, which is wasteful of server resources and requires links be broken
when changing pages from .html to shtml and back. Should one commit to SSI
only later to have links broken when a client-side method of inclusion is
developed?

Steve

>Currently the HTML 4.0 PR states that "an embedded document does not 
>inherit style information from the main document." [1]  This is in line 
>with HTML 4.0's use of OBJECT to include complete HTML documents rather 
>than portions of HTML.

   _/ Steve Knoblock                      mailto:editor@city-gallery.com
   _/ City Gallery                            http://www.city-gallery.com/
   _/ Member NSA               http://www.3d-web.com/nsa/nsa.htm

Received on Saturday, 29 November 1997 11:48:30 UTC