Dreamweaver design issue

BadFish · #1 (**permalink**) Mar 30th, 2007, 18:37

Hello,

I am working on a site for a forum I run and I am using dreamweaver.
I am currently working on the home and have come to a roadblock.
I have created the layout and put in a menu bar that works (well at least one link does so far). however to the right of the menu bar is the area that I want
all the data to show up. Example when I click on a button on the left I want only the information in the main panel to change only. Could someone take a look at it and tell me what they think I need to do to get this to work?

here is the link to the page:
http://www.blowinsmoke.net/test/

Thanks in adance.
BadFish

pa007 · #2 (**permalink**) Mar 30th, 2007, 19:18

Not sure what you mean. If you mean that you just want part of the page to update, rather than reloading the whole page, then you could make an asynchronous request to a database which will mean that only part of the page will load up, or reload, rather than the whole thing. This can be complex.

However, you could just use some simple php (or other server-side code) and create what is basically an html template and just load the maincontent in from a database. However this will reload the side bar etc. but those images and the css should be cached by the browser so it makes no odds really.

I don't think you should use ajax for that sort of thing though. Better with php or the like. Simpler too.

There are lot of other methods too. JS would do it just hiding and showing content.

I'd load the content from a database if I were you though.

Pete.

BadFish · #3 (**permalink**) Mar 30th, 2007, 19:27

thanks for the reply,
I guess what I mean is the I only
want information (webpages) to show up
in the window that I have created sorta like
when you have frames and you can tell it
that you want the pages to show up in
a target window. except that I dont have
frames, I just used <div layers,

I'm not even sure it will work.

Code: Select all

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>BlowinSmoke.net</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript">
<!--
function MM_reloadPage(init) {  //reloads the window if Nav4 resized
  if (init==true) with (navigator) {if ((appName=="Netscape")&&(parseInt(appVersion)==4)) {
    document.MM_pgW=innerWidth; document.MM_pgH=innerHeight; onresize=MM_reloadPage; }}
  else if (innerWidth!=document.MM_pgW || innerHeight!=document.MM_pgH) location.reload();
}
MM_reloadPage(true);
//-->
</script>
</head>

<body>
<div id="Site" style="position:absolute; left:96px; top:50px; width:701px; height:802px; z-index:1" ><img src="images/site_header_2.gif" width="795" height="183"><img src="images/left_edge.gif" width="200" height="621"></div>
<div id="Menu" style="position:absolute; left:126px; top:260px; width:141px; height:383px; z-index:2"><a href="http://www.blowinsmoke.net/cgi-bin/blowin/YaBB.pl"><img src="images/forum_button.gif" width="144" height="27" border="0"></a><img src="images/cigarreview_button.gif" width="144" height="27"><img src="images/sotm_button.gif" width="144" height="27"><img src="images/botm_button.gif" width="144" height="27"><img src="images/fooddrink_button.gif" width="144" height="27"><img src="images/store_button.gif" width="144" height="27"></div>
<div id="Footer" style="position:absolute; left:97px; top:855px; width:794px; height:26px; z-index:3"></div>
<div id="MainWindow" style="position:absolute; left:296px; top:233px; width:594px; height:620px; z-index:4"></div>
</body>
</html>

I want to have the button links in div layer Menu to show up in the <div layer MainWindow

I hope that made sense.

pa007 · #4 (**permalink**) Mar 30th, 2007, 19:47

You see the problem is that with frames the different frames essentially act like two (or more) browsers that just talk to each other. Without frames (which is good) it is just one page and you can only update a portion of a page using a technology like AJAX which can be complex as I said before.

Your best bet is to use a server side technology (go with php - wide support and lotos of tutorials/info) and that means you have page like the one you've got and can then load info/content into that div or whatever. This will reload the sidebar but like i said it will get cached anyway so it shouldn't slow thing too much. I believe the idea is, you send a query to a database and extract data from it. This is then placed into the page (all dynamically and instantly). Unfortunately i'm the wrong guy for any server-side development questions so hopefully someone with more knowledge than me on the subject can help you out.

Pete.

catalystmediastudios · #5 (**permalink**) Apr 1st, 2007, 18:58

The best and fastest way to implememnt ajax is probably ruby on rails, but it doesn't have the support like php does and so it may take longer learn how to do it initially.

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