[WEB4LIB] RE: HTML Referring?

[Raymond Wood]

On Mon, Oct 21, 2002 at 01:51:06PM -0700, James Hill imagined:
> Thanks for the generous responses.  I neglected to mention
> that I tried to run an SSI referring to a file, but it didn't
> work, though I never contacted an admin (It was one of the
> things I ran across while researching the topic).
> 
> As for Dreamweaver, I've done all the coding by hand in
> notepad (call me a purist).  I guess maybe it's time to step
> up to the GUIs, but I was hoping for a different solution
> because that's how I like doing it.

The phrase "step up to" conveys the impression that WYSIWYG
editors are inherently superior, which IMHO is certainly not the
case.  In fact, at the risk of offending (yet again) a portion
of my colleagues, I have always personally been of the opinion
that anyone who feels the need to rely on proprietary WYSIWYG
'web site management' tools probably never really knew their
stuff that well in the first place.  (ooooo, now *that's*
flamebait ;)

Now that we're all warmed up (!), let's step back and take a
second look at your situation.  You are seeking a solution that
allows you to change the toolbar on multiple pages, by simply
editing text in one location.  Some options are:
  1. Script-driven solutions (e.g. PHP).
  2. Server Side Includes (SSI).
  3. Frames.
  4. Search and Replace techniques.
  5. Manual editing.
(I have deliberately left the Frontpage/Dreamweaver proposal off
the above list for various reasons best left to the imagination
of the reader :)

You say that your web site has no scripting capabilities (which
would rule out options #1 and #2) but I have to ask:  why?  Have
you talked to the administrator?  Might it be possible to
activate SSI on the server (a simple procedure really) or even
better get PHP installed?  Even if you are stuck with ASP for
the moment, it will accomplish what you want until you are able
to get access to a real LAMP server ;)  So I suggest you find
the system administrator and have a chat with them.  Nothing
ventured, nothing gained :)

If for some bizarre reason you are dealing with a neanderthal
system administrator who is not interested in joining the 21st
century, then it would seem your options are reduced to #3, #4,
and #5.  We will assume that #5 is unacceptably labour
intensive, so that leaves #3 and #4 remaining.

Ironically #3/Frames would actually accomplish what you want
without all the bells and whistles.  Still, frames really do
suck for a variety of reasons, and should be avoided if at all
possible.

This leaves option #4.  This is a bit of a wild card, since the
effectiveness of this method largely depends on the specific web
site/pages you are dealing with.  Still, I am constantly amazed
at what can be accomplished with a good search and replace tool,
particularly one that supports 'regular expressions', a maniacal
but powerful set of instructions for matching chunks of text (or
text 'strings').

AFAIK the Homesite editor has a really good/powerful search and
replace tool built into it.  Also an excellent utility
specializing in search and replace for the windows platform is
'BKreplacem' -- it is freeware, and I highly recommend it.

Hope this helps in some way.  I'd be interested to hear how
things go in the end  :)

My $0.02,
Raymond
-- 
"You deserve to be able to cooperate openly and freely with other
people who use software.  You deserve free software."
 -Richard M. Stallman, Free Software Foundation, http://www.fsf.org