loading part of page using includes

lucie

hi,
Please explain to the total noob,
If I use includes to create a website pages, how can I make sure that the header part I where i have a flash movie, will load only once?
Thank you in advance,

Lucie

halojoy

usually you include you page in parts
most common is

header
contents
footer

all pages at a website use same header/footer
and only the middle 'contents' is different

flash movie only load once?
well, simply only include that part once in your scripts
where is your flash

not more complicated than that

🙂

lucie

Thank you for your quick answer. But I need some more😃

I seems to got lost in following.

Suppose i have pages: home, about, contact ...

When i click on a button "contact" in a menu bar on a home page with the address:

<li><a href="index.php?id=contact" title="Contac Us">Contact</a></li>

(I have include part with contact information: contact.php )

So , i click on a button with this address above- does it mean that whole page will reload again but now with this contact.php part?
If it is so, i'm afraid my flash header will load again? Or only this contact.php part will load?

NogDog

Yes, the entire page will reload (yet another good reason to avoid using Flash objects for page decoration as opposed to actual content).

An alternative would be to use some kind of AJAX implementation, making JavaScript calls to load different content, though this has the obvious drawback of depending on you users having JavaScript enabled.

lucie

I saw these Javascript- Ajax - DOM solutions and also iframes could work but i thought it would be possible with some PHP scripting ( as it gives more accessible code) to load only parts of a page which is changing on click of a button.

Thank you for your answer, I will hang around hoping for some possible php method and then we close a thread.

NogDog

An IFrame would avoid the page reload issue, but it brings its own baggage: mainly that a user cannot bookmark a anything except the home page (unless s/he opens the contents of the IFrame in a separate tab/window).

PS: Have you tried using the PHP includes solution yet? I'm not sure if browsers tend to cache Flash files or not, but if they do then you should not have any delays due to having to re-download the Flash file file on each page; the only negative then would be that the animation would restart from the beginning on each new page, which may or may not be an issue depending on what your particular Flash animation is actually doing.

lucie

I've just tested it: some small Flash in a header and pages with includes. Flash loads every time. It is not a problem when animation is small ( just a bit annoying if you click on a buttons one ofter another).
The problem is when it is a huge flash header with all kinds of effects and sounds and menu bar with sounded buttons - and it repeats every page. I think it will scare all website visitors.
So I thought if i have possibility to have this header loaded on a first page, the other could be more relaxed.

nickadeemus2002

have you looked into a 'templating' system like smarty? you can can call parts of pages (header, footer, left column, right column, etc.) from the index.php page. after the initial page load, the 'global' parts of your page layout are not reloaded every single time.

Banaticus

No, tell me more about this smarty thing. You wouldn't have a link handy, would you?

lucie

thank you for you answer,
i've googled Smarty and it looks quite promising, but me being noob, i couldnt find right away how it will work with flash movie.
Could you tell us a bit more about Smarty and may be in connection with Flash?