Ok I need abit of advice and not really sure where to start.

I have an excel spreadsheet with several workbooks which display my list of dvds under different headings.

I save each worksheet separately as html page and then use dreamweaver with frames to use the top frame as spry menu bar and the bottom frame displays one of the workbook pages.

Ive been told and found several problems with using frames but I just dont know if theres any easier or better way of doing what Im trying to do.

The idea is so I can EASILY save the workbook as html and upload and viola my site is updated and obviously I need a menu to navigate hence the two frames.

if anyone has any suggestions of how I can do this id appreciate it.

thanks

If you're good enough with DreamWeaver to create frames and navigation, then you're good enough to embed that navigation into each HTML page. Viola, you don't need frames anymore.

Of course, if you dislike the idea of having to use DreamWeaver to paste in the navigation each time you export out of Excel, then probably you need to keep doing what you're doing. It can't be both easy and awesome at the same time. Good things require a bit of effort.

That said, if you really care about how automated and easy this will be, you can do things like run a script after you upload all the HTML, and that script would insert the menu/header into each page for you. That way you'd save time and it'd remain easy. However, you'd have to write the script, which is non-trivial and might require you to learn Perl if you don't know it already. Suddenly it's not easy again. You could hire someone.

Perhaps somebody here would post the Perl to swap in a header on a directory full of HTML files, and also provide a walkthrough about how to install it and run it quickly each time the HTML is re-generated?

Well since you already know how to do frames... here is a little idea. Not very over the edge awesome but still doable for trying to keep it easy as far as what you already know how to to.

First create with dreamweaver a frame set with a top nav and a left side nav. Make the top nav your masthead with whatever graphics you want and then create a set of nav buttons such as 1 to 4 at the top that might say for example button 1 might say DVD Lists 1 thru 10 and button 2 might say DVD Lists 11 thru 20 and so on. Now with all three frames up on Dreamweaver that is to say top frame, left frame, and center frame, create a set of buttons 1 thru 10 on the left nav frame and save frame as nav1-10.htm Now on each of those buttons create a link which will target the center frame. So you would have left nav button 1 target mainFrame dvdlist1.htm and button 2 target mainFrame dvdlist2.htm and so on. At this point you can creat multiple left nave frames as you need them. Lets say you eventually wanted 100 dvd lists on the site but only had 19 so far, you could build everything in place with the top nav having 10 buttons. Each top nav button would link to the left nav for example button 1 would target leftFrame leftnav1.htm and button 2 would target leftFrame leftnav2.htm and so on. Now on the left frame nave sets you would create your left nave with the 10 buttons and each button targeting a mainFram 1 thru 10. Just duplicate the left nav html doc and edit to reflect new links on the buttons so that for example leftnav2.htm would have buttons linking from 11 to 20 button one targeting mainFrame dvdlist11.htm. So create these nav buttons as needed or create all 100 and for the buttons that do not have your excel dvd list page yet, create a placeholder page with maybe a graphic of a DVD and a statement something like "Thats it folks! so far we are still working to bring you more DVD lists but from this point on you will just have to keep checking back to see what is new, until then enjoy all that we have in the previous lists. Now since you have created everything before hand as far as links, all you have to do is upload a new HTML page with the new excel list and replace a placeholder page.

This is a way to do it all with the knowledge you have and still have the site easy to edit and nice looking.

Hope this round about idea finds happiness in your plans

MacJedi

Do NOT use frames ! You're on the right track when you mentioned a better way. Frames are just a mess and an search engine nightmare.

Forget the frames. That header-swap perl scripting isn't necessary either.
Your best option - use divs and CSS. For your nav area, use a server-side include and then you can use PHP to implement the include. Using includes you only have to edit your navigation in a SINGLE file - the included file - and you then have updated navigation on every single page.

Folks in the PHP forum can tell you how to do the includes. Sounds to me like you've fallen into a classic trap - using a spreadsheet as a database. If you go to PHP, you can use a REAL database, and it'll be a lot easier in the long run to maintain your lists.

Frames.. they're about as bad as tables for layout !

Originally Posted by LadynRed

Forget the frames. That header-swap perl scripting isn't necessary either.

Sure, the Perl script isn't necessary, but it IS superior to the alternative you suggested. Don't forget the guy is exporting fresh files each time, so they will lose any code (like a PHP include function call), every time.

With a Perl script his steps would be export, upload, run script, done. The script adds the navigation to each file automatically each time.

With PHP, his steps would be export, open each file in Dreamweaver to re-add the include, then upload, done. If he needs to edit each file each export, why not just add the header itself and stick with simple HTML entirely?

ok ive started to play about with the html workbook page and have found a few online html menus and liked the one found here -
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamici...menu/index.htm

But is there a way to get this menu to be fixed or float so that when users scroll down the 700+ lines of data in the work book the menu still stays visible, obviously this wasnt a problem with frames but Im seeing if I can do the same thing with html page instead.

Then I figure all I have to do is save the html page and then copy the code for the menu and floating part at the top of each html page and im sorted if only it was that simple eh??

If he put his collection into a REAL database to start with, then there would be no exporting necessary from a spreadsheet - and pulling the info out on a site using PHP would be pretty easy to do.

But is there a way to get this menu to be fixed or float so that when users scroll down the 700+ lines of data in the work book the menu still stays visible

You can do that with javascript. There are lots of scripts out there for this type of thing, try www.dynamicdrive.com

Originally Posted by technium

But is there a way to get this menu to be fixed or float so that when users scroll down the 700+ lines of data in the work book the menu still stays visible, obviously this wasnt a problem with frames but Im seeing if I can do the same thing with html page instead.

You can do that easily by enclosing the menu in a div tag, and adding a style to it like this:

<div style=”position:fixed”>Menu Content</div>

And I don’t encourage frames either.