CSS and XHTML help

[KraKto$is8]

Okay, so I'm trying to convert my ageing site into XHTML, from HTML.

What I want to do is have a footer at the bottom of every page, a little selection of links and some copyright information. I'd like the content to be in a separate file, so I can edit that one file and then have all the links in all the pages update dynamically, instead of having to do them one-by-one (as I have been doing up until now).

How do I do this? I've tried putting this in my CSS:

#footer {
      content: url("footer.html");
}

And in my pages:

<div id="footer" />

But the Opera tries to interpret it as an image, and IE doesn't even try to process it at all. Is the content function not supported in IE? If so, how can I get this working?

[Dante Hicks]

Wasn't the whole point of CSS to seperate content and presentation?

Anyway I don't think IE does support it. See here : http://www.quirksmode.org/css/content.html

(In Opera it works, in IE it doesn't - for me at least)

[pablissimo]

Use Server-Side Includes or PHP (either knock something together yourself using simple include directives or use a template manager) instead. They're client independent, too.

[KraKto$is8]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Wasn't the whole point of CSS to seperate content and presentation?

Yeah, which is why I'm including the footer in a separate file rather than trying to throw it into the CSS... The CSS is just meant to link to it, but Opera seems to see it as a file.


How would I set up a server-side include?

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by KraKto$is8

Yeah, which is why I'm including the footer in a separate file rather than trying to throw it into the CSS... The CSS is just meant to link to it, but Opera seems to see it as a file.?

A link to a seperate file IS content imho.

[pablissimo]

Originally Posted by KraKto$is8

Yeah, which is why I'm including the footer in a separate file rather than trying to throw it into the CSS... The CSS is just meant to link to it, but Opera seems to see it as a file.


How would I set up a server-side include?

Depends if your host supports it or not. Google's got plenty of tutorials for it, this might be similar to what you need.

In PHP terms it's just as easy, to include a file in-place you'd throw something like

<?php
   require( 'footer.html' );
?>

into your HTML page, then rename the HTML page to .php so that it gets parsed. Assuming your host has PHP installed and available for use.

[KraKto$is8]

Hmmm, I think I'll try it the PHP way, thanks. I knew you could do it in PHP but I wasn't sure how easily you could integrate it into XHTML. Yeah, all my knowledge of markup languages was learned in 1996

Anyway, thanks everyone.