Re: Web Authoring: HTML Inline File Inclusion Into "skeleton" HTM L pages?

Ulf C Brandes <ulf_brandes@hotmail.com> wrote:

> I am looking for a solution like <include src="article.html">
> where the webmaster sets up a skeleton HTML page with such
> <include> statements, while the browser would request such
> HTML snippets from the server like any .gif file, and interpret
> the result as if the included HTML code had been resident in
> the original document.

Use server-side includes! They work exactly like this, and don't
require the user-agent to do all the work. They're good! :-)

A real HTML <include> directive would cause hideous security
problems of the Client-Side-Trojan kind.

> Alternatively, <OBJECT>s would do, but they require the size
> of the article to be known upfront. Otherwise, cluttering
> the page with scrollbar'ed subwindows does not render a
> satisfactory page layout.

And of course they're not well-supported anyway, making the
content part harder to access.

You mentioned keeping HTML errors in the content part from
affecting the rest of the layout; an <object> (or <iframe>)
would be the only way of doing this. A better approach might
be to automatically validate the articles as they come in so
that you can be sure they'll not screw up the rest of the
page.

> Is there a better answer?

It sounds like you're after a content-management system. They
are lots on the market and depending on the complexity of the
articles you wish to publish you may be able to brew the
necessary server-side scripts yourself.

Alternatively if you don't mind doing more work manually,
why not use some scripts to take the article files (in HTML
or, perhaps better, XML) and convert them into the final
static HTML files? After updating the templates you could
just 'recompile' the articles.

--
Andrew Clover
Technical Support
1VALUE.com AG

Received on Friday, 14 July 2000 03:14:04 UTC