Embedding Menu.htm into Default.htm

[WYDuane]

I have laid out my home page(default.htm) with a series of tables(brilliant!!!), one of which is the left Sidebar area. I have also created a menu.htm page which is a vertically stacked navigation bar. I want to embed the menu.htm page into the left sidebar table of the default.htm page and also all the other pages I generate. Can someone refer me to a tutorial, or whatever, where I can find out how to do this?

Thanks in advance

WYDuane

[Android]

FRAMES or IFRAMES will do it.
There's a FRAMES tutorial here at AHFB. and W3Schools has a frames tutorial http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_frames.asp
Or here's my Nutshell tutorial:
The idea of both FRAMES and IFRAMES is similar.
With FRAMES, you have to start with an HTML Frameset document (usually your index.html) and describe the dimensions of your frames and the HTML documents to be displayed within those frames (in your case it would be the menu.html in a left frame and the main content html document in the right frame. The disadvantage of FAMES is that each page of the site is composed of THREE (at least) html documents, and search engines can have a tough time with indexing all the internal html documents.
If you want to use tables, then you could use IFRAMES. This is a frame that is embedded in the TD on the left side. You would only have to set up one menu.html and in the default.html you put <iframe src="menu.html"> to call the menu.html for the iframe. The advantage of IFRAMES is that the page would only consist of TWO html documents. A disadvantage is that not all browsers support IFRAMES.

[coreybryant]

I really do not recommend frames for a lot of reasons. They are just a big hassle & search engines just do not like them as well

You can use file includes. Most servers support SSI & if you are on Windows - you can use ASP includes.

For more information on SSI:
http://www.bignosebird.com/ssi.shtml
http://www.smartwebby.com/web_site_design/server_side_includes.asp

Basiclaly - you would rename your default.htm file to default.shtml or default.shtm - this tells the server to parse the file before showing it. And then you can inlcude your main.htm file in there

[WYDuane]

I want to thank everyone for the prompt reply to my thread.
Both replies were were right on the mark. After looking into both solutions(Frames and SSI) I opted for the SSI implementation proposed by coreybryant. I went to the links he suggested and got my Nav Bar embedded right away. I have a bit of a problem getting the rollover action functioning but that due to my not fully understanding how to use scripts and I expect to get that going without too much trouble.

It might be interesting to some to know that I am using Web Matrix, it's a f*ree download from MS, as an editor and am running under IIS 5.0. Web Matrix is a bit tricky doing a strictly HTML/ASP development, but it is useable. You can't designate a new page as .asp it only allows .aspx. the work around is to create the page as .aspx and then copy it to a notepad page with a .asp suffix. Running under the Web Matrix Server is not too useful because it appears that the server caches the pages forever, but one can easily run under IIS on the browser. There are some more "gotchas" but I won't bore you with them now.

Thanks again gentlemen, you have really helped me out.

WYDuane

[Android]

LOL If I knew that you're knowledge allowed you to hedge between FRAMES and SSI, then I would have recommended SSI as well. I don't know much about SSI except includes can make life easier.
I personally don't like using frames.
Glad you got the help you needed.

[coreybryant]

Glad that it worked out. I use the includes all the time now - usually the ASP (same difference) and it make my life a lot easier when someone needs page added or deleted.