hyperlinking php includes

brian_goodman

We use PHP include files to add news items to three separate pages on our website. The include files are very simple html using only <H1>, <UL>. and <LI> and <P> attributes.

We are reusing some of the same include files on our home page with hyperlinks to the actual news pages:

<div class="newsitem1">
<a href="br.php?pg=Community_News">
<?PHP
require ('pages/news/!news_community1.inc')
?>
</a>
</div>

It works like a charm but does not validate. We tried using the <OBJECT> attribute to fetch the !news_community1.inc file, but the hyperlink does not work and the html does not inherit the home page's CSS attributes.

You can see the home page here:
http://www.beitrayim.org/index.php

Can anyone suggest a way to allow us to reuse the news items, have them hyperlink to the source page, display properly, and use proper HTML 4.01 coding?

thanks,

Brian

Weedpacket

The problem as you've hinted is that <a> elements cannot contain block-level elements like <h1> or <p> or such.

Does the entire paragraph need to be a link? Could you not instead have something like
<php include...?>
<a href="...">Full article</a>
instead?

I remember an earlier case where I was writing an icon-based page; the solution I used there was to attach onclick= handlers to the block-level elements containing the icons (in your casem the newsitem1-style <div>s), which took the user to the relevant page. But I should point out that this was in an intranet setting, where minimum client requirements could include Javascript.

brian_goodman

The goal of the home page was to be very graphical and depends on mouseover popups on every link tell the user how to navigate the site. If we use a small bit of text as the link, then the chance of getting the popup message is low.

Is there a way to make the entire paragraph link and still have proper HTML?

Brian

brian_goodman

I solved the linking problem by creating a blank.gif image the size of the news item with a z-index higher than the news item and linking the gif to the news source page.

Brian