Oscar van Eijk

Oscar,

Looks a lot like my mini windows, but using iframes ... hmmm ....

I'm afraid I currently have too many projects to get involved full time,
but I am always willing to help if there is a specific problem that needs
solving. Could you tell me what parts of the scripts don't work, and I will
try to see why? There is so much there so I have no idea what is not
working. However, here are some pointers:

You are using eventObject.which for your resizing etc. IE does not support
which. see:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/tutorials/javascript/eventinfo
The reason I think your JS is not working is that you are using
measurements that don't work cross browser. see:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/tutorials/javascript/browserwindow

As a result, it also does not work in Opera.

I am running Mozilla on Windows XP with 1.8 GHz processor and 512 MB RAM,
and your page runs FAR too slow. It works OK on linux, but I guess you are
registering too many event handlers.
[ED. It is actually due to the fact that browsers don't like handling so
many iframes on one page - especially if they are supposed to move]

I'm not entirely sure why, but when I tried using anything except Mozilla
on windows (NOT linux), it just showed a whole load of PHP errors:

Warning: main(/_path_/TTinit.pinc) [function.main]: failed to create stream:
No such file or directory in /_full path to script_/TTabout.php on line 17

Fatal error: main() [function.main]: Failed opening required
'/_path_/TTinit.pinc' (include_path='.:/_path to_/php') in
/_full path to script_/TTabout.php on line 17


Mark 'Tarquin' Wilton-Jones - author of http://www.howtocreate.co.uk

My tutorial is not available as a pre-printed version, but you can view it
all as one page to make it easier to print for yourself:

When viewing any part of the tutorial, click on the blue 'JavaScript' link
on the left (just above the 'Important stuff' link). This loads the entire
JavaScript tutorial as one page. Now select a better style combination for
printing using the 'style' dropdown on the left. I would suggest 'no style'.
Now when you print it (over 100 pages!), it should look about right, and
you only need to hit print once.

Now I have to go, before I get snowed in - and I have to cycle a good few
miles to get home!

Tarquin

> I know you can rewrite the contents of your miniwindows as well, but as
> far as I understand, not from the server --- at least not without
> reloading the whole page. Do you know of any other way to reload layers
> independently from the server?

Yes, but not how you might think.

My mini windows use JavaScript to rewrite their contents, so the 
contents can be rewritten at any time with whatever data the JavaScript
contains.

JavaScript has a limitation in that it cannot get updated information from
a server (a copuple of browsers can use external XML files, but not enough
to be cross-browser). Well, so it would seem. There is a trick you can use
(I have used it myself before), to load data from the server after the
page has loaded. Put an iframe on the page with its visibility style set
to 'hidden'. 

When you want to update something, reload the iframe contents.
document.frames.iframename.window.location.replace('getMore.php?data'+escape(someData));

Then in getMore.php run a function in the parent document:
parent.updateInfo('Some new data');

The function 'updateInfo' on the parent page can then use the data to
rewrite content.

A bit hackish, but it works, and although there will be an iframe on the
page, at least it will not need to move anywhere, so it should not cause
any slow-down or other problems. I have found this to be a very good way
to produce a seamless effect.

Tarquin

Ok, this is possible.

I have now written an article on how to load external data:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/loadingExternalData.html

I have also written another script for someone that also used onload to
pass the page content to the main page.
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/emails/RicCarr.html

However, I think neither of these will suit your purpose so I can propose
something else.

Note that you will need to ensure that _every_ page you load comes from
your own server. This is a limitation of JavaScript. It cannot load data
from other servers.

What you are asking for is fairly difficult, but I have included the script
below. You need to create a new iframe for each page you load (this is
because the only way to tell if the page has loaded without using the
intrinsic onload event requires the iframe to have nothing in it to start
with). You then need to repeatedly check if that page has loaded by
checking for the iframe name in the frames collection. If it has loaded,
you can stop checking and use its contents.

var ifDL = [];
function loadPage(oURL,oFunct) {
 var ifr = document.createElement('DIV');
 ifr.style.visibility = 'hidden';
 ifr.style.position = 'absolute';
 ifr.style.top = '0px'; ifr.style.left = '0px';
 ifr.innerHTML = '<iframe src="'+oURL+'" name="loader_'+ifDL.length+
   '" height="0" width="0"><\/iframe>';
 ifDL[ifDL.length] = oFunct;
 document.body.appendChild(ifr);
}
function checkLoad() {
 for( var x = 0; x < ifDL.length; x++ ) {
   if( ifDL[x] && window.frames['loader_'+x] ) {
     eval( ifDL+ '(window.frames.loader_'+x+'.window.document);' );
     MWJ_ldD[x] = false;
   }
 }
}
window.setInterval('checkLoad();',100); }



you can load a page like this:
function getPageData(oDoc) {
 //do something with the data
 document.getElementById('outputTarget').innerHTML = oDoc.body.innerHTML;
}
loadPage('mypage.html','getPageData')


hope this does what you need.

Tarquin