Flash menu building.
Hello good people.
So, here is my problem, well with Internet design anyway.
I have a lot of elements all cluttered on the top of my site and would like to mash everything up into one file. I assume this would be most efficiently done with flash. I am not a flasher however so I need the advice of you geniuses.
On the top of my site I have the following:
1. Awsome logo.
2. Some buttons, followed by a (Java script) watch for this particular time zone.
3. A Google (with Adsense) search box, with radio buttons for internal and external website search.
This all used to work fine, or acceptable. But then the Javascript changed and the whole design suddenly looked disconfigured.
What I would like would be to make sure everything was made into one flash file (?), so that:
1. I have the opportunity to change that part of my site at any given time, without having to change every page on my site. All I would have to do would be to change the flash file.
2. I would be sure that nothing suddenly changed it's position again, due to the Javascript.
Problem is, I haven't got the time to, or money to, buy some Adobe program and spend months trying to figure out this one problem.
Are there other programs for a Windows occupied machine that would let me build something like this easily?
If you are familiar with Adobe, or have a USB powered fridge, this should be a easy problem to solve, but I haven't got the chance to sit in front of a computer week after week to learn a new program just for the sake of this problem.
Anyone got a great idea?
It would surely be appreciated.
Thank you!
cmoyer posted this at 23:31 — 15th October 2008.
He has: 131 posts
Joined: Jun 2008
If you know php it is easy to do the menu type thing that you want using
<?include ("your_file.html");
?>
what you would do would be convert all of the pages to php and put that line on the top however if you have a large site I would not bother with it.
What this would allow you to do is have one menu.html file with the code for the menu and the code
<?include ("menu.html");
?>
would include this file on every page including it. Just make sure you put it at the beginning, before the content of the page.
If you want to learn php basics click Here.
If you are still intent upon using flash it might be easier to use coffeecup software found Here. I haven't used it but it has very specific programs for non-tech-savvy peoples.
Also could you give us the url so we can see the problem?
Hope this helps, but if not just holler
Megan posted this at 13:00 — 16th October 2008.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Using php or server side includes is the normal way of doing this for most websites. You don't really have to know a lot of php - just use the code cmoyer posted above and convert your pages from .html to .php. If you're concerned about losing bookmarks and search engine rankings you can look up how to do a redirect in your .htaccess file (ask someone here how to do that - I'm sure someone can post instructions for you).
The other option is Server Side Includes (SSI) which is similar to php includes but doesn't require a conversion to php. You'll have to check with your host to see if this is implemented and how it is implemented. In some implementations you may need to change your file extensions to .shtml instead of .html.
You can find out how to do SSI includes here:
http://bignosebird.com/sdocs/include.shtml
I would say the php approach is more common now though, and it sets you up to include other scripts on your site in the future.
Megan
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utter-incomputance posted this at 16:14 — 16th October 2008.
They have: 3 posts
Joined: Oct 2008
Thanks to both of you so far
I've just heard with Coffeecup, and none of their software does the trick.
I've never done any PHP, and only know a little about how it works. I'll look it over some more and see what I will do.
The problem is probably that the whole set up is Web 1.0-
It's old school html. Keeping up with all the developments takes too much time for me. Hence the dread of learning to use Adobe to design a mash-up as well.
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