Is it possible to load a HTML file in an area centrally located on a web page?

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patrean

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Hi all
Is it possible to load a HTML file in an area centrally located on a web page which can be scrollable. The idea is to have a list of items that I can update easily. At the moment I have a list of 10 items per page with a 'next' and 'previous' button to load the additional pages. Each item has an image and a short description with a text link. The problem is I have 100+ items and if the client wants to add a new item into the list I have to redo all the pages as the items are ordered alphabetically. I could get around it by having all 100+ items on the one page but this is results in a page too long. Now I know this should be done using a DB but the project has a limited budget and I'm basically a designer and not a programmer. I'm keen to learn and would appreciate any help. Btw I'd rather not use frames.

Thanks
 
What you need, my friend, is a database and some asp or php programming to implement your data to the web. It's much more easily editable. ;)
 
A MySQL database and a small amount of PHP would really help you loads here. Most webservers*should have this built into them. You can even install it on your mac if you're using that as your server.

But if you don't want to do that, I'd really say that a frame inside a table cell set in the middle of you're page is going to be the best bet.

Don't ask me exactly how to do it. It'd take me quite a bit of messing around - I always hated the UI side of programming, give me some backend PHP to do anytime lol.
 
Or, if it's not a lot of text and pages, just use PHP to include parts from other file(s). No need for messing with a DB that way.
 
yeah, I agree with mdnky; if you're not crazy about going beyond HTML, learning PHP/ASP *and* an SQL is an awful lot.

What you can do in PHP (and I'm sure ASP) is create a text file that contains all of your data, separated by some kind of delimiter. This can be accessed to generate your lists dynamically.

For example:

joe bloggs;11 Avenue Street;555-5678;
john smith;00 Street Road;555-1234;

could be loaded into your page, then you could write relatively simple code to break up each portion of that line and use it in the appropriate HTML. In the above example, you'd tell PHP/ASP to separate each 'chunk' at the semi-colon.

Hope that made sense :S There will still be a learning curve of course, but you could potentially just learn what you need to achieve that and nothing more.

The bottom line is doing it though pure HTML is always going to be inefficient, no matter how you set up your pages.
 
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