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Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / CSS / March 2005CSS menu - adding a new menu item
I am a total lamer clueless stupid newbie (so please flame me). Honestly, I know nothing of CSS, although I tend to pick things up quickly... A friend pointed out that my JavaScript menu prevents Google from crawling my site and told me that I need a CSS menu. Ok, I'm willing. So I looked at a bunch of examples and one thing bothers me ... What f I want to change my menu? Maybe just add a new item... Do I have to update every page on my site, or does HTML have a #include directive? Obviously; it is better to pull in the menu from a single external file, but can I do that with pure HTML? Hmmm, I could use PHP to do it; that would pull the menu in before webcrawlers ever got to see the page. Yes, that looks like the solution, unless there is a better one (this is surely a FAQ). >Honestly, I know nothing of CSS, although I tend to pick things up >quickly... Here is where you can find a description of the closest to a CSS recommendation we have... <http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/> ...and here is one of the absolute best tutorial sites. <http://www.westciv.com/style_master/house/tutorials/index.html> >A friend pointed out that my JavaScript menu prevents Google from >crawling my site... Yep; that's one thing that people generally don't understand at first. But the real truth is that Google (and other indexers) don't interpret client side scripts ("me" are you listening? my claim is that this worlds absolute biggest "web user" always runs with scripting turned off :-) >...and told me that I need a CSS menu. It would be a workable solution, yes. >Ok, I'm willing. So I looked at a bunch of examples and one thing >bothers me ... >What f I want to change my menu? Maybe just add a new item... If you have an access method to configure your own server space you might be able to use a server side include technique to assemble your pages from bits and pieces "on the fly". With that method you could keep your menu system in a separate file to be included in any page where it may be needed. If you happen to be on an Apache based server (about 2/3 of internet's www servers are based on Apache) an addition of an .htaccess config file may be all you need to use the Apache X-bit hack for server side includes. <http://httpd.apache.org/> If you can not configure your server to do includes for you, I recommend using a preprocessor when you build your pages locally. A very competent but still simple to use preprocessor is here... <http://www.cine.net/~cberry/orbinfo.html> <https://sourceforge.net/projects/orb/> ...Craig started on "Orb" some 10 years back and it is today a very stable and functional piece of software, a breeze to use. If you should be working in a *NIX environment (or one of its implementations for Windows) you already have a "make" command available in your system. That one could also be used but I admit that it is definitely more tedious to set up a "make script" than it would be to download and use Orb. >Do I have to update every page on my site... Nope, not if you follow any of the outlines above. >...or does HTML have a #include directive? Well, theoretically there is the equivalence of an #include directive in the form of "expansion of defined entities" but the idea to include such a wonderful piece of functionality in popular browsers just never made it in the competition with blinking text, marquee's, frames and status line modifications. In case you are interested in what could have been available, had there been some common sense to guide browser developments, you may want to run through the following examples... <http://www.css.nu/markup/markup-entities.html> >Obviously; it is better to pull in the menu from a single external >file... Yes of course. >...but can I do that with pure HTML? Sorry; no. >Hmmm, I could use PHP to do it; that would pull the menu in before >webcrawlers ever got to see the page. Yep; that's yet another solution that would work. But think about server generated markup (as from PHP) such a resource would be "newly created" each time it is requested. There is an impact on Internet caching of documents from that, plus an extra load on servers to regenerate the same page over and over again. The Apache "X-Bithack" for server side includes is designed in a way that still allows for Internet caching of documents. >Yes, that looks like the solution... Hmm, think twice please, for your own and your users sake. >...unless there is a better one (this is surely a FAQ). Of course it's an FAQ, here... http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/html/design.html#include-file  SignatureRex see http://dwtig.com/ All links go in the DWT file For a CSS menu see here (site not done, but menu mostly done) http://www.solar-electric.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >>Honestly, I know nothing of CSS, although I tend to pick things up >>quickly... [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] >>bothers me ... >>What f I want to change my menu? Maybe just add a new item... > For a CSS menu see here (site not done, but menu mostly done) > > http://www.solar-electric.com I would strongly suggest, however, that you avoid changing any font properties on :hover - font-weight - font-style - font-size On the above page with my particular default text size, :hover on the "Solar Charge Controls" link also changes line-wrapping. Mouseout is 2 lines, mouseover is 1 line. If the cursor happens to be on the second line when :hover is triggered, it starts continuous rapid flashing. Stuff like this can cause a seizure for some users. It's kinda disturbing for the rest of us, too. If you need to change something on :hover, I suggest sticking to colors. And please don't top-post in this newsgroup. Thanks for your cooperation. SignatureReply email address is a bottomless spam bucket. Please reply to the group so everyone can share. Thanx a 1,000,000, Rex. That is one of the most compreshensive and helpful answers which I have ever had. I will study it carefully (I would never have thought about PHP being seen as a new page every time. YTricky). Thanks, thanks, thanks! alistapart (www.alistapart.com) has some articles on using css to turn lists into tabs and menus. You could try looking at some of those... Regards, Duncan > I am a total lamer clueless stupid newbie (so please flame me). > [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > Yes, that looks like the solution, unless there is a better one (this > is surely a FAQ). |
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