HTML page generator
There are lots of reasons not to use frames. They aren't supported by lots
of browsers, and they don't present information in a device independent
form, and since multiple documents are open at once, and its harder to keep
track of where you are. Try bookmarking a page with frames...lots of times
you can't even get back. etc. Many people use frames when they are not
needed because they make creating a web site so much easier. eg. you add
pages regularly, and there is a navigation bar which is on all pages. With
frames, all you have to do is change one navigation page. With tables, you
have to change the navigation cell on EVERY page.
This is a simple program written in quick basic which allows you to create
a template page. On the template page you mark include points for your
navigational and content sections, or anything else you want. Then
you can edit any section that effects multiple pages, run the program,
and within a few seconds have your entire site regenerated.
This is similar to the server side includes approach presented on the
Web Design Groups HTML Help Page
but some servers don't support this. In fact, one could VERY easily
change the include line to match the server side include syntax (just change
one line). Then you could use server side includes or my program at your
leisure. This program is taylored to my needs (i use the dos editor in
windows 95 to edit pages on my hard drive, then upload them), but the
program can easily be modified or rewritten for any operating system.
Let me know if you need any help with these sorts of things.
To run the program, type
qbasic inc.bas
at the Windows 95 dos prompt. (If qbasic isn't in your path, you may need to
find it.) The names of the text files are entered in the f$ array at the
top. Change these to the names of your HTML pages. Don't forget to change
the array indecies and the numf% variable to the number of pages you have.
When the program encounters the body.txt include in your page, it looks
for the txt file with the base name of the page (i.e. home.txt is entered
for body.txt in the home.html page). The head$ is optional and places
anything you want right after the title line in the header (like javascript
code). Press [SHIFT] F5 to run the program from quick basic. Several quirks
of the program are only use one line titles (it can break up multiline ones),
and only put spaces (no tabs) before your include line (it will indent inserted
text the same amound the inc was). One last note is the program uses a shell command to
rename the file from a .htm extension to a .html extension. This is because
qbasic does not support extended file names at this time. The easiest way to
see things work is to unzip this file in its own directory and try it out.
Have fun...
Kristian Olivero aka fireshaker
My Directx, games, and HTML help page