Web template

[ccandeland]

Hi

I would be greatful if someone could offer advice regarding redesigning my website. I am trying to create a template to display a vertical and horizontal menu that is consistent throughout the site, would asp be best for this?

Also I have uploaded my 10,000 products I intend to sell on the site to mySQL on my host. How would I access each page displaying the categories field of the database and how would that fit into the template.

Would it be possible to change the page by using variables in PHP of a link or search from in the search box.

Sorry I know its a lot of questions but I am pushed to find answers to these questions. If I have got it completely wrong please let me know.

[alexgeek]

use php includes for the menu throughout the site.

[ccandeland]

great thanks for your comments. should i stay away from frames or are they still regarded as ok.

[alexgeek]

they are regarding as anything but okay!
we hate them
wait there,
i'll copy and paste the the reasons again

[alexgeek]

here we go

1. Indexing programs (search engines such as AltaVista, Harvest, and
InfoSeek) do not automatically index the content of frames.

2. Bookmarks don't work as expected; you can bookmark the top-level
(frameset) page, but not necessarily what's displayed on your screen.

3. What you see on screen and what gets printed are usually not the
same.

4. Frames are harder to code, with syntax that includes frameset tags
and target windows. Pages with frames are also harder to maintain. For
instance, the number of files to track for each page with frames is the
number of windows plus the frameset page (usually 3-4 pages).

5. wher the hell is 5?

6. A few browsers can't deal with frames (e.g., some AOL versions,
lynx).

7. Netscape 2.x doesn't supply "back" navigation with frames.

8. When frames are nested within frames, text can become unreadable.

9. Frames can be coded to open a new, external window. Most systems take
quite a while to open a new window, and some viewers find this "feature"
annoying.

10. If you want to check the source code of a frame, you have to open at
least two documents.

[ccandeland]

Gotcha...frames are bad...loud and clear! thanks alex

[alexgeek]

your welcome good luck with the site.
any other questions?

[ccandeland]

Sorry. One more thing how do you enter speech marks into php for example it wont accept:

echo "<img src="image.gif" >";

or should it be:

echo "<img src='image.gif'>";

thanks

[pa007]

I think you have to escape them so something like this:

Code: Select all

echo "<img src=\"image.gif\" >";

It basically tells the PHP machine thingy to ignore the quotation marks as it doesn't really understand nested quotation marks.

Pete.

[ccandeland]

I'll give that a go thanks

[Rakuli]

A pedantic point but when you're echoing html with PHP it is better (faster) to use single quotes unless you plan to embed variables in them.

With single quotes php will simply output the text but with double quotes it checks the whole string to see if anything needs interpreting before outputting.

As pa007 says you do have to escape single quotes with \'

Cheers.

[ccandeland]

thanks for that rakuli. I started coding my new site last night and was amazed that creating templates for menus and headers in php is so easy. cant believe I didnt do it last time.

[alexgeek]

totally agree with you.
i love php and how easy it is.
i got so cocky, i tried a new language like java.
and was pretty disappointed when i couldn't even do the hello world tut

[ccandeland]

Originally Posted by Rakuli

A pedantic point but when you're echoing html with PHP it is better (faster) to use single quotes unless you plan to embed variables in them.

With single quotes php will simply output the text but with double quotes it checks the whole string to see if anything needs interpreting before outputting.

As pa007 says you do have to escape single quotes with \'

Cheers.

I had some trouble escaping the single qoutes when I echoed html the backslash appeared in the html along with the single quotation. I removed the backslash and it was ok after that. I read a bit about it here: http://www.tizag.com/phpT/echo.php

Will it cause problems across other browsers without escaping. i am currently using firefox.

Chris

[Rakuli]

If you're surrounding everything with single quotes the only thing you need to worry about escaping is single quotes.

echo 'I\'m going to have to escape that apostrope';

When you're using double quotes there are a few more special characters to take into account but you normally only have to escape double quote's

echo "Rakuli said \"Using single quotes in double quotes isn't a problem\"";

You won't experience any browser problems because you won't get that far PHP will throw a parsing error if you get the quotes wrong. What I was saying earlier is you should use

echo 'this format';

rather than

echo "this format";

when echoing a lot of HTML simply because php does it a little quicker

You may not be aware that you can also "break out" of PHP completely when you don't need to use any code.

<?php
echo '<b>Hello', $username, '</b>';
?>
<p>From here on in I don't need to worry about quotes at all.

Hope that helps.

[ccandeland]

Something to mull over thanks for the advice.

[ccandeland]

Me again...When you send a variable to a php file how long will that variable last for is it when the user navigates away from the page or is it when the browser is closed or different.

Thanks

[alexgeek]

it will only last as long as that particular script
to pass variable about there are various methods.
i'm assuming this is a sort of login system or something else
so best to use $_SESSION
a bit of googling will get you there.