[Resolved] dynamic navigation & php

kubik

hey everybody!

i'm about to put together a "mini cms" for my site (using flat text/html files - no time to learn mysql 🙂 ).

i already have a pretty good idea on how to accomplish this but one point has me stumped a bit - i would very much like to create the site navigation only once and load the content from the text file dynamically into a div in my template page.

each navigation item is supposed to have three states:

1 - normal (gif w/black text)
2 - mouseover (gif w/green text)
3 - active (gif w/grey text)

the first two are plain rollovers and are easily accomplished with a simple javascript - the third one however, is supposed to become grey after a user has clicked the link and the content loads - as an indicator that the user is in that particular content area. also, i want that link to become inactive (= not clickable).

i'm a bit at a loss here - is this something i should do in php or in javascript?

any tips and/or links on how to do this would be very much appreciated! 🙂

thanks a bunch,

kubik

mzanimephp

Hi, I'm not sure what function in PHP can detect the URL of the page your on, but using javascript I think it'd be something like this:

if (window.self.location.href="item3.html") {
 [document.write("Nav item 3")] 
}  

elseif(!window.self.location.href="item3.html") {
 [document.write("<a href=\"item3.html\">Nav item 3</a>")] 
}

You'll have to modify/tweak it of course. And keep in mind I'm horrible with javascript. 🙂 I would prefer to do this with PHP, but I'm such a newb, and don't know how yet.

Basically just make your (included) script detect what page the user is on, and if the user is on the link which is selected, display that link, as not clickable.

kubik

hey mzanimephp,

thanks a bunch for the quick answer - i'll give this a shot first thing tomorrow morning 🙂

i was kind of hoping, though, that this could be done in php ... if anyone has an idea as to how i might go about this, or even a link of a site where a nav system like this is implemented that would be great!

thanks again + cheers,

kubik

correctclick

What I would do is make all the links absolute on your site (i.e. /somewhere/something.php, not somewhere/something.php). Then you can just compare each url with $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] (see http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.php#reserved.variables.server) and output a different image / html if it matches.

Good luck.

kubik

hey correctclick,

thanks a a lot for the pointer - that's a good start 🙂

i have one more question, though ... kubiklooksatphpmanual always results in facialexpression = 😕

does anyone by chance have a link for a tutorial/article that explains this topic in somewhat normal english?

that would be most wonderful! 🙂

thanks in advance + cheers,

kubik

eternalprophet

Use css. The properties of a...
A:link {color: #ff1111; background: transparent;}
A:active {color: #ff1111; background: transparent;}
A:hover{color: #005500; background: transparent;}
A:selected

blah blah 🙂

It's easier then javascript or PHP in my honest opinion for a simple hyperlink rollover. Do a search on google for it, alot will show up

mzanimephp

Originally posted by eternalprophet
Use css. The properties of a...
A:link {color: #ff1111; background: transparent;}
A:active {color: #ff1111; background: transparent;}
A:hover{color: #005500; background: transparent;}
A:selected

blah blah 🙂

It's easier then javascript or PHP in my honest opinion for a simple hyperlink rollover. Do a search on google for it, alot will show up

CSS is only the beginning. Remember CSS is static, so even if he does decide to use CSS inside a PHP include - the CSS that he puts in that include will come out as-is. Visited links may look a different color, but he wants to make the link itself not-clickable if the user is on that particular page.

CSS can not change the state of HTML code itself, only the STYLE of it.

eternalprophet


<?php
//make all the links into an array

$link[0]= //index.php;
$link[1]= //secondpage.php;
$link[2]= //info//infopage.php;

//can just do this until you have all the possible links for the navigation

$opena = '<a href="';
$closea ='">';
$finala ='<//a>"';

$currpage = $SERVER['PHP_SELF'];

for ($i=0;i>strlen($link);$i++){
if ($link[$i] == $currpage){
echo "what you want nonclickable text to read here";
}
else
{
echo $opena . $link[$i] . $closea . "what you want clickable text to read here" . $finala;
}
}
?>

I probably have alot of screwed up // and "" but hey, im dead tired and have no way to test it. It should illustrate my point though.

a. Put the links in an array
b. get the current page the visitor is on
c. compare it to the item in the array
1. If the same echo the whole <a href="//linkthinghere.ext">yeah</a>
2. if diff then just echo the text you want to appear
d. rinse and repeat

Javascript could work too, just compare the link to location.href

kubik

eternalprophet (and everybody else, of course!)

thanks for the help - the array approach looks pretty darn good to me!!

i I'm dead tired and (...)[/i] - same here, so i'm going to give your suggestion a go tomorrow 😃

just need to see that i get the images for the links (not text) fiddled into this ...

if anyone has seen/worked on something like this - a link where i could peek at a similar solution would be greatly aprreciated.

thanks again for your help + time !! 😃

cheers,

kubik

mzanimephp

Bravo!! I've seen it done, but statically. Not dynamically.