[thelist] Use JavaScript includes to insert PHP into a site?

Keith cache at dowebs.com
Thu Jan 10 22:01:34 CST 2002


> Yeah, the log reports are at 55% Netscape users (mostly 4.7)... so I'd
> like to avoid iFrame for my particular case.  But I _was_ thinking
> that that would work too, and would be more practical for _large_
> clumps of html to poop out to the browser....
> 

Try both. If you place the tag for an external javascript inside an 
iframe tag Explorer will give you the iframe and ignore the js tag. 
Netscape will ignore the iframe and give you the js. I've never seen 
documentation that IE *should* ignore the enclosed js tag, it just 
does, at least in 5.5. 

<iframe src="inc.cgi?iframe" width=150 height=150> 
<script language=javascript src="inc.cgi?js"></script> 
</iframe> 

As for pumping out _large_ clumps of html... the browser reads 
machine readable output as well as it reads human readable. A 
50K page in 200 lines or a 50K page in one line makes no 
difference to the browser. The one time i've used the above tag I 
told the cgi which format to return with the query string. If it's in js 
then I strip all line breaks and escape all double quotes and drop 
the variable inside one document.write(""), otherwise just return the 
text as is. 

What's the advantage? Newer IE browsers get the iframe even with 
js turned off, all others get the js if they have it enabled. Netscape 
users with js turned off, that's a room full of people in a city of 100 
million, a smaller group than you get using just the js tag. 

The big disadvantage, you've gotta have excess page real estate 
to work with. An iframe works like a frame, it's a defined chunk of 
your real estate. If you're returning text and it doesn't fit because of 
user preference you'll get scrollbars that may screw up the rest of 
the design. Also, the contents of an iframe wont flow with the rest of 
the content. If you're embedding in a tightly laidout out page all other 
layout has to be built to flow around the iframe space. And using 
percent width and height for the iframe just aggravates the first 
objective of trying to use only the space that the content dictates. 

Anyhow, if you have the real estate, and want to enfranchise IE 
users with js turned off, it's worth trying unless someone knows of a 
browser that pukes when seeing the js tag inside of the iframe tag. 

keith 




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