dynamic page sizing

[jadeddog]

hey there,

so this is prolly a dumb question, but here goes anyhow

i am going to be using php to "remake" an HTML frames website... the reasons are obvious, and i dont think i need to get into them ... what i want to be able to do is have a "banner" title bar at the top and a navigation section down the left hand side of the page with the links to the pages contents..... then when you click on one of the links on the left hand side, it will open a page on the right (under the banner and to the right of the navigation section)

i have done some research and it seems that doing this in tables is a common way to accomplish my goals.... my problem is that i want the size of the "display" portion (under the banner and to the right of the navigation) to be dynamic in its width, so that people viewing with different resolutions will see the same thing .... the only way i know of doing this is by assinging % to the table size, is this the correct way to do this? or is there some other better way?

i hope im being clear here.... let me know if you need anything explained more fully... thx for any help

[bastien]

Yes, percentage is the correct methof

[jadeddog]

ok thx, i was hoping thats what the answer was

another thing with this plan... im thinking that i will need three tables in total...

table 1: will be the "banner" bar at the top of the page, spanning the entire page (so width 100%) aligned middle and with only one column and row

table 2: will be the navigation bar on the left hand side, aligned left and width of prolly 180 pixels or so.... it will have one column and as many rows as needed for all my links (prolly around 10 or so)

table 3: im not sure about this one, but .... it will be the "content" table consisting of one column and one row... no alignement and it will be 100%, so it takes up the rest of the screen correct?

the other thing that im a little lost about is how the links are coded in the navigation table so that they open up in the content table? with frames you just specify what frame you want them to open up in, is there something similar with tables?

also, instead of coding each one of these tables for each page, i was going to just use include statements for each, does it matter what order i put my include statements in?

again, thx for all the help, this site kicks a$$!!

[bastien]

If you want to use tables to manage the layout, use one table as the catchall for the actual elements (nested tables), but really you should be using divs.

table ex

<table id='frame' width'100%'>
<tr>
   <td>
     <table id='banner' width='100%'>
        <tr><td width='100%'> banner content</td></tr>
     </table>
    </td>
</tr>
<tr>
   <td width='180px>
     <table width='100%' id='menu'>
       <tr>
         <td width='100%'> menu content...</td>
       </tr>
     </table>
   </td>
   <td id='maincontent'>
     <table id='mainconentarea'>
        <tr>
           <td> content</td>
        </tr>
      </table>
    </td>
</tr>
</table>

divs ex

include("common.php");
<div id='banner' style='position:absolute; top:0; height:100;' >
  <? banner_content(); ?>
</div>
<div id='menu' style='position:absolute; top:100; left:0; width:180px;' >
  <? menu_content(); ?>
</div>
<div id='maincontent' style='position:absolute; top:100; float:left;'> 
    <? main_content(); ?>
</div>

Links and buttons do not open up the content table, in most cases (other than maybe some clientside js) they would refresh the entire page with the new desired content. Everything gets redrawn

To include your content with includes, they would need to be placed in the appropriate areas and called in the correct order that they are placed on the page with. In the div example above, common.php is a page that holds the menu and banner functions which you can simply call to have them echoed out onto the browser

hth

[jadeddog]

well i ran into another problem anyhow with tables.... i have a search function that will be in the website "content area".... these pages have quite a bit of php code on them and there are a few location jumps, where you cant have any html output or you get that "Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by.." error.... so when i put the include("xxxx.php"); statements in the search pages, since these files that are being included are outputting html, i would then get those header errors

would your div solution get around this? because i cant think of a way (other than frames) to have a banner and navigation sidebar without echoing some html code out, thus disabling my location jumps... can anybody help with this?

[bastien]

One way I would attack this problem is to place all the page generation code into a function...then you can do all your requested etc and then pass that data to the function to be parsed out to the browser

[jadeddog]

but wouldnt calling the page generating function beore the header(location"xxxx.php") code also cause the header sent error?

maybe im not following you correctly?

[bastien]

so call it after, or redesign the process so that it makes sense

[jadeddog]

yeah i think im just gonna redesign it so that i dont use any header(location) jumps, they are such a pain in the ass anyways.... thx for all the help

[jadeddog]

yeah i think im just gonna redesign it so that i dont use any header(location) jumps, they are such a pain in the ass anyways.... thx for all the help