One thing that doing it by the body id method doesn’t give you is removing the link to the current page (as is recommended) — you either have to have that link to the current page, or insert the menu code seperately on each and every page, making it a nightmare to change.

I (already) use similar code on my site — not really intended for updating by a non-coder, though I don’t think it’s /too/ bad: (the spans are for the css)

‘/’, ‘name’ => ‘Home’),
array(‘url’ => ‘/fiction/’, ‘name’ => ‘Fiction’),
array(‘url’ => ‘/museblog/’, ‘name’ => ‘Muse Blog’),
array(‘url’ => ‘/maps/’, ‘name’ => ‘Maps’),
array(‘url’ => ‘/art/’, ‘name’ => ‘Artwork’),
array(‘url’ => ‘/links/’, ‘name’ => ‘Links’),
array(‘url’ => ‘/search/’, ‘name’ => ‘Search’));

while (list ($key, $item) = each ($menu))
{
echo ‘

• ‘ . $item[‘name’] . “

n”;
}
?>

and on the begining of a page
I have something like:

A Coldfusion version of this is simple. Here it is (a copy of the article’s code in CF).

set page variable at top of page:

included navigation ():

A more graceful way, assuming you’ve organized each section into its own folder, would be to parse out the URL. If the folder name following the URL is /products/ then set the appropriate id, and so on. This would save you from setting a variable on every page…which is just as much a pain in the backside as remembering to set the id on every page. In addition, it would be a lot easier to manage assuming you’ve placed your navigation file as an include.

my understanding is that require() is faster than include().

I too prefer to use $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’]; rather than hand coding the page title for each page (isn’t that the point of server-side coding?), however some of the comments here have given me some good ideas about better using CSS rather than relying on ‘echo’ing out each list item.

While the majority of comments on this article may seem critical to some degree – it has brought forward rewarding discussion.

You can take advantage of the fact that echoing empty array members sends an empty string. This makes the code (and the markup within the code) much cleaner:

function nav($pagename) {
$a[$pagename] = ” id=’currPage’ “;
echo <<

…

EOD;
}

A lot of the comments are offereing “better” PHP solutions. They probably are, but only if you have a good level of understanding of PHP.

The technique shown in the article is the solution I have used myself when starting out with PHP, because it is has a logical structure and it reads like plain language.

Also you don’t need to code elaborate error trapping routines, to correct mistakes that can arise from bookmarks, e-mailed links with or without ‘id=’, people fumbling with ‘id=’ statements to try something out, cookies going weird and other scenario’s that could break the user experience of the website seriously because the user get loads of PHP error messages because the uri request is not completely correct.

The code may be ‘ugly’ from a programmer’s point of vue, but from a webmaster or designer’s point of view this is a nifty little solution that makes maintenance of the website a little bit easier.

I complicated it probably (I’m new to php) a little bit to adjust my needs. I use Eric A. Meyer’s css tabbed menu (http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/talks/2003/commug/commug.html) on my site http://hostinspace.com. It works fine and makes my pages even smaller.

Here’s my code, if some want to take a look:

>Home
>About >Galleries >Webdesign >Contact

Thank you for this articles, that’s what I was looking for.

After years of combining PHP with xHTML/CSS my preferred way of outputing code is like so:

‘ . “n”;

?>

Due to the volume of double quotes in HTML, in my mind, it makes sense to enclose in singles.

Don’t forget this output method too:

‘ . “n”; ?>

If the user were prompted to use PHP includes for the navigation, one can readily assume that some form of server side includes were also used for the main content of the site, rather than having a multitude of pages for different content.

The problem arises when the main content holds the $page variable and is loaded after the navigation (main content after navigation seems logical). The id tag will not be included in the navigation.

Dynamic markup differs from XHTML in that, while there are only one or two best ways to mark up a static list, there are countless ways to build dynamic pages, each with advantages and disadvantages.

Whenever ALA publishes an article on server-side technologies, we get comments that the code is too complex and other comments that the code is too simple or does not cover some contingency or another. This is especially true when we publish an article on PHP. Such comments make the article more useful in the same way that footnotes can add depth and amplification to an essay. So keep them coming.

(this is what it should read above)

compare your example:

One issue that I haven’t seen anyone mention in all these discussions of navigation techniques is the fact that the nav item for the current page remains linked with these methods. It’s fairly important to not only visually indicate the current page by styling it differently, but to also turn off the link.

On a practical level, if you’re already on a page, why would you ever need a nav link to it? On a usability/ accessibility level, to someone who’s browsing without visual css enabled (for whatever reason), there’s no obvious difference between the current page and the other pages in the nav bar–you can’t tell where you are in the site by quickly referring to the nav bar, since all items are linked and some, including the current page, may be appearing in the visited link color.

I guess this is a problem with the Sliding Doors ( http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slidingdoors/ , http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slidingdoors2/ ) articles, as well. Obviously, you need to be able to select two elements for that method to work. You could substitute for , but of course, that introduces non-semantic muck into your code, but I’m not sure which is worse–an unneeded link that has a lot of unneeded markup (href=”…” class=”…”), or a span tag that, while of no semantic value, has less unnecessary markup.

The technique introduced is useful for sites which are a bit more complex than the example given, but of course a simple example is needed to demonstrate the technique. If your site was as simple as the example, css selectors are a better choice.

Regarding the PHP implementation – using arrays is a good idea, but I would suggest going a bit further and using an array of hashes:

$contents = array(
array(“url” => “http://…”,
“name” => “Index”),
array(“url” => “http://…”,
“name” => “Links”),
…
);

Then, the printing stage is simpler because:
1. the active page can be determined by examining the current URL and comparing.
2. the link tag can be constructed in its entirety- href and name are there in the hashes.

This technique can be combined with CSS selectors, if you are using them for page-identification already (e.g., ALA’s changing image), you either add a new hash entry for the selector name, or use the same selector name as page name (not suitable perhaps if the page name has spaces in it)

This technique can also be extended to pull info from a database, which is great for large or changing index sites, and for sites with nested contents-structures (then you can do tree-walking and all sorts of fun compsci stuff). An example (in horrible HTML4, I apologise, revamp on the way) of a dynamic, nested contents system written this way using PHP is at http://www.dur.ac.uk/st-johns.jcr/ .

However if you have alternative scripting languages available (e.g. python, asp, jsp, ruby, perl…) I’d consider looking into them too, as PHP has a few serious design issues.

If you are using dynamic pages (ie: using query strings to find your pages, like http://url.com/?page=about) you dont need to add the whole $thisPage = “About Us”; stuff into your html. Rather than do this, you can accomplish it by simply having a page that sorts out your information. Example:

switch ($_GET[‘page’]) {
case ‘about’:
include(“about.php”);
default:
include(“index.php”);
}

Just another way to accomplish the same thing, in what i think is a more organized manor.

(note: i used the $_GET[”] array for people who dont have registered globals turned on)

my example http://www.alistapart.com/discuss/keepingcurrent/3/#c5448
removes the href=”..” from the for the current page (leaving an for the css to style – the default skin for my site, which that codes from, does indeed use ‘sliding doors’) — it could be modified to use a different tag completely or be nothing but the text if so desired.

This is a good article, i recommend you use this way, but it’s too much complicated for big sites or even medium sites, i recommend people use arrays instead of IF’s, this make the code more easy to mantain, can be slow? maybe, maybe not, but you don’t need to bother what section you are, you just need to define one array for the entire site, or maybe, make a script that construct this array based on your site files.

Hope this idea helps. I can give examples here, but it’s take much time from me and other people, but is something like
$array[‘home.php’] = “site-style”;
$array[‘…samething above
or even you can do bi-dimensional arrays like
$array[‘home.php’] = array(‘site-style-1’, ‘site-style-2’, …);

or if you are not familiary just make
$array[‘home.php’][0] = “index-0-style”;
$array[‘home.php’][1] = “index-1-style”;
etc…
Just imagine, arrays are powerfull.

Hope this help.

I have AppServ installed locally and I get following error messages:

Warning: main(/phpincludes/navigation.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in c:documents and settingssimemy documentsprojectsnetiquetteindex.php on line 19

Warning: main(): Failed opening ‘/phpincludes/navigation.php’ for inclusion (include_path=’.;c:php4pear’) in c:documents and settingssimemy documentsprojectsnetiquetteindex.php on line 19

Note: All other PHP scripts works well, I don’t know where I’m wrong, I followed instructions exactly.

Hi,

I code a Little PHP Script.

rene@grassegger.at

//Definition Function “footer”
function footer($hl, $hl2) {

//1. directoryname: e.g. home/
//2. Title Tag: e.g. “Zurück zur Startseite”
//3. Link name: e.g. Home
//4. call name: this is the name you use in the website, to highlight the right link.
$navidata = array(
array (“directory/”, “Title”, “Steuerprofi”, “Steuerprofi”),
array (“directory/”, “Title”, “Bestellen”, “Bestellen”, “U”),
array (“directory/”, “Title”, “Download”, “Download”, “U”),
array (“directory/”, “Title”, “Registrieren”, “U”),
array (“directory/”, “Title”, “Lohnprofi”, “Lohnprofi”),
array (“directory/”, “Title”, “Bestellen”, “Bestellen2”, “U”),
array (“directory/”, “Title”, “Download”, “Download2”, “U”),
array (“directory/”, “Title”, “Registrieren2”, “U”),
array (“directory/”, “Title”, “Projekte”),
array (“directory/”, “Title”, “AGB”, “AGB”),
array (“directory/”, “Title”, “Kontakt”, “Kontakt”)
);

//Domain http://www.example.com
$domain = “http://www.example.com”;

ksort($navidata);

reset($navidata);
echo ‘

‘;

while(list ($key, $wert) = each ($navidata)) {

//If there Is a subsection “U”
if ($wert[4]==U) {
echo (“

• “);
  } else {
  echo (“
• “);
  }
  echo (““);
  echo (“$wert[2]“);
  echo (“

“);
echo (“n”);
}
echo ‘

‘;

}
?>

########## End Code

This is the code I’m using to call the script and hightlight the right section.

If you dont have an Sublink, just enter “foo” or “nothing”.

You can use it, for what you want. Just let the litte copyright thing in the script.

It is a simple script, but with some little modifactions it fits every “needs” you have.

HTH

Rene Grassegger

What was the point of this again? Are we trying to change the style for the current link or trying to show people what page they are on? I just use php or asp to print out the current page somewhere, like in a header right above the pages content. Works fine for me.

The style does not change or course, but the point is to show the visitor where they are correct? Save the arrays and just make it obvious. Between title pages, headings, etc it is pretty simple to figure out where you on a site, and changing the background color does nothing for those who cannot see. Printing the title of the current page does.

Also, I certainly disagree with the current groupthink mandate of not linking to the current page. Why not? If a user clicks a link to get somewhere, why kill the link once the get there?

Hi I am totally new to this but i did tried Corel Draw as a web page (1 page only) but I no idea on how you guys create the e-mail pop-up once a hand-pointer is clicked on a web page (design using Corel Draw).

Any idea…?

IRT: Dominique PERETTI
there is really no point in replacing PHP tags with smarty tags. especially in this simple example!

Hello. I dont know if Im posting this on the right place but anyway. Im making a page. And I also scripted the news script. Ok all works. When Iuse click on news it show news. But when user click on one news which one would be shown in cell where is include() function but the news is shown in all window not in one cell ? How I shguld do that the only one news would be shoen in the cell of my index page to ? Is there any chance or I must include header, footer left and right blocks in each script ? I hope you understand me 🙂

Thanks