Why do you want the navbar to stick? Only to save bandwidth?

As for techniques, have a look at this forum's Forum FAQ.

If you aren't using frames, then each part of the web page will HAVE to be re-downloaded each time the page is refreshed (The browser's cache control plays a part in this, but you cannot be sure of any such thing while making a public website).

If you are using PHP to make the websites, you can simply save the contents of the menubar or any other static part of the website in a separate page and use PHP's include() function to include the file in each of your web pages. That way, if you want to edit the menubar, you can simply edit that separate file and the changes will be seen on every page that includes it.

If you are using HTML only, then you are left with just two choices, both which aren't good enough. One, is using a frameset. XHTML 1.0 has a FRAMESET DOCTYPE, so you can be assured that it isn't invalid. The second option is if you don't want to use frames, and that would be manually adding the HTML for the menubar in each HTML page, which is going to make the code confusing as well as difficult to maintain because you will have to edit each page to make any changes to the menu.

Edit: I'm sorry if I misinterpretted your question, I may have drifted a bit off-topic...

IMO, PHP is not all that difficult if you know the concepts of programming (i,e variables, functions, and a bit about classes).

I've done PHP for almost a year now, and learning C++ for the past 2 weeks, and I can definitely say that I found PHP child's play as compared to C++. And if you just want to use it for basic stuff right now like helping it to improve your website rather than create full fledged PHP web applications interacting with databases, then I think you can pick it up in less than a week's time.

Quote:Original post by LongInteger
Hi there, im trying to design a site and im wondering . . . since everyone is saying frames are not the way to go, how would i do a site where the nav bar sticks and isnt loaded every single time i click a link on the site and a content page is the only thing that changes.

what topics should i be looking at cos im coming up empty, i know xhtml and how to use what i think atm are simple style sheets.

thanks

If you're trying to save on bandwidth by not downloading the entire page all the time, then you can only do that with Frames or AJAX.


Otherwise if you're trying to save on maintenance by keeping the layout and content seperate, PHP etc will help with that.

If you're really ambitious, I believe you can use AJAX to redraw parts of the page without reloading the whole thing.

Frames are bad for usability (forward/nack buttons misbehave), accessibility (screen readers have trouble with them) and search robots (lower google ranking).