Hey all,

I have a horizontal menu with 3 links in it. Now when you press the first link, I want to display file "1.html" in the right column. And after you pressed 2 , "2.html" displays , and so on.

Now, what's the best way to do this ? I think this is quite easy, but I just can't figure out how to do it.

The best way is to make separate pages as you would normally. There is not a point in using frames for this, and JavaScript will be less accessible than normal content. Because of caching, shared content on separate pages will lend itself to the illusion that only one part of the page is changing.

Use Frames for that purpose.

Originally Posted by Brian07002

Use Frames for that purpose.

no.no.no.

Originally Posted by wayfarer07

The best way is to make separate pages as you would normally. There is not a point in using frames for this...

Agreed. Use some type of an include if you can. Otherwise just code it in each page because you are using doing a small scale site and it's better than iframes.

Just for arguments sake, it is actually possible to do this with an IFRAME, without JavaScript:

<a href="/path/to/page2.html" target="my-iframe">Go</a>
<iframe src="/path/to/page1.html" name="my-iframe"></iframe>

Note that the target attribute of the A is the same as the name attribute of the IFRAME. Although this method should normally never be used like this, it is nice to know the theory of how it works, in case you ever need to use it for a web application.

A FORM may also target an IFRAME, which is a real-life practical usage of the target attribute. This is useful if you want your form to submit without reloading the page. Normally you would want the IFRAME hidden in this case.

If your server supports PHP.
Here is a PHP include that I use.

This goes in the main page (index.php), in a div where you want to include the different pages.

PHP Code:

<?php
    $page = $_GET['page'];
    $pages = array('content', 'contact', 'links' );
    if (!empty($page)) {
        if(in_array($page,$pages)) {
            $page .= '.php';
            include($page);
        }
        else {
        echo 'Page not found. Return to
        <a href="index.php">index</a>';
        }
    }
    else {
        include('center-home.php');
    }
?>

This line needs to be edited, each of the files you want to include need to be named here:

PHP Code:

 $pages = array('content', 'contact', 'links' ); 


So you may have pages named include1.php and include2.php - so you would change that line as:

PHP Code:

 $pages = array('include1', 'include2' ); 


Then your menu link would be:

<a href="index.php?page=include1">Link</a>