looking for advice: shortening a page

[Jm]

Hi, thanks for taking the time to look and possibly answer this.

Background:
I am creating a website for a restaurant and he wants his menu on the site.
I was/am creating it with tables, since I do not have a strong grasp on CSS
as of yet. I have the basics but that's it. What I don't like about creating
it in tables is that it's a mile long, to correct that, I added in a
"bookmark" menu at the top of the page referencing the different sections of
the menu. Being that the whole page is comprised of a large table with three
main cells, main menu - left, body - middle and right "notes" section on the
right.

Having said that, with the menu being lengthily in the middle section, that
leaves the sides empty as you scroll down to read the menu. I tried
shortening this by adding a text box to the middle main cell and adding the
content (menu) in there. I notice I lose all formatting, I.e., bold,
bullets, fonts...

Question:

How can I display the menu with-out the viewer having to scroll the whole
page (with the use ? Can this be done with a text box and have regular tags
within the content of the text-box? I like the idea of having a link to the
particular sections of the menu but without the long scrolling searching for
say, entrées or desserts?

If I was not clear, please post back and I'll try to get my point across
clearer.

With many thanks I thank you.
Jason
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[Thomas A. Rowe]

If you don't mind limiting the site to users of IE and NS6 and up browser,
you could use the IFrame tag which would allow the content in the middle
cell to scroll.

Another approach is to have multiple pages, and split the menus into section
and insert on individual pages.

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[Jm]

I thought about the multiple pages, and then thought about frames. Neither
really jumped out at me. The IFrame sounds interesting, but being a
designer, I will opt for all browsers. Maybe I'll use a javascript tree like
menu, click on a course and it'll open the meal's list.

Wondering, anyone have a preference to whether it asp or javascript? I'm
thinking with my limited knowledge, that ASP will work on more browsers than
JS? If so, any good ideas to where I can get a snippet of ASP code for this?
I know of dynamicdrive.com and asp101.com.

Thanks,

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[Thomas A. Rowe]

Jm,

ASP is nice because it is server-side, so it is browser independent.

You can use ASP bookmarks, which only displays a section at a time, but the
page does reload for each link.

Here is a example:
http://www.jffstamps.com/customer/customer.asp

Here is the basic code used:

Links
<a href="menu.asp?D=1" target="_top">Menu Section 1</a>
<a href="menu.asp?D=2" target="_top">Menu Section 2</a>

<%
Dim Display
Display = Request.Querystring("D")
If Display = "" then
Display = "0"
End If
%>

<% If Display = "0" then %>
content - this is what the user see when they first access this page.
<% End If %>

<% If Display = "1" then %>
content - this is what the user see when select menu section 1.
<% End If %>
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[Jm]

Thanks Thomas,

I clicked on that link, didn't see an example, it may have been because
they're close or I just didn't look in the right spot. Either way, I will be
very thankful for the code you wrote. I will plug it into one of my test
sites and mess around with it. Thank you for responding and helping.

Cheers.

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[Thomas A. Rowe]

Jm,

The following links are on the side bar under Customer Services or at the
bottom of the page when you first hit the link provided.

Contacting Us
Shopping Help
Sales Policy
Shipping Policy
Angel Policy
Wholesale Policy

The content for each of the above links are all on the customer.asp page,
see you browser's address bar as you click each.

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[chris leeds]

that is a real cool idea. do you have a link that gets into the concept
more deeply? does it have an asp name like nextlink or something?
cl

 

[Jm]

That's awesome Thomas. Nice site as well.

I thank you again for the snippet. I might contact you later (week or so)
via email if you wouldn't mind if I run into any snags.

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Go Ahead, Check it out, after all, it's free!
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[Thomas A. Rowe]

Jm,

Thanks for the complement and feel free to email if you have any problems
implementing the script.

Note: You can also do something similar using CSS layers, etc.

--

==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
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FrontPage Resources, Forums, WebCircle,
MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================