I helped a friend create a web page for his business, and because his clientele still uses primarily dial up I have to keep it as basic as possible. His site host doesn't allow scripting, but I have no java or CSS experience anyway. Would iframes be a good alternative?

The entire web site is a basic 3 row table that has been used as a template and modified for each page. The top row is a single column for the banner. The middle row is a two columns, the left column contains all the site links, the right column is the content. The third row is a single column that contains copyright and other general contact information.

Last night I went through the entire set of files to update the copyright information to reflect the change in year, and thought there has to be a better way. I use Notepad as my editor and have decent web editing skills for things like tables, images, links, etc. What would be involved in converting the right column in the second row to a frame, then adding the target information in the left column on the second row? All content on the website is the same, except for the content in that right column. I personally don't care if that column/frame has a scroll bar, and believe I could convince the owner that it will work just fine. Am I on the right track with the iframes idea, or is there a better way to do this?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Grifterlake

Few things:

-JavaEE is not scripting, it is server side programming.
-Your ability to use css cannot really be limited by the host. You should be able to use javascript and css just fine.
-Your decent web editing skills should have smacked you in the head for even thinking of the words "frame" and "website" in the same sentance.

Frame are nasty. They are confusing and often lead to you producing really undesired results. iFrames/Frames are NEVER the answer for any question.

You should use css (it's client side, not server side), and you should also use javascript (also client side) to pull in the information into the areas that do not change. You should be able to find some AJAX solution for this. You should also get a half decent editor, seriously.

Few things:

-JavaEE is not scripting, it is server side programming.
-Your ability to use css cannot really be limited by the host. You should be able to use javascript and css just fine.
-Your decent web editing skills should have smacked you in the head for even thinking of the words "frame" and "website" in the same sentance.

Frame are nasty. They are confusing and often lead to you producing really undesired results. iFrames/Frames are NEVER the answer for any question.

You should use css (it's client side, not server side), and you should also use javascript (also client side) to pull in the information into the areas that do not change. You should be able to find some AJAX solution for this. You should also get a half decent editor, seriously.

While I agree with the basic concept of what you're saying here, I don't agree completely. There are uses for frames, even if they're not the best solution.

And Notepad is a fine editor - I used it for years and it served me well.

Thanks. I've heard both good and bad things about frames, but had never used them myself. I've never used CSS, either and between the two I thought iframes might be the easier to learn quickly. If the only thing on the entire web site that changes is the contents of one cell in a 4 cell table (1 column top row, 2 columns middle row and 1 column bottom row) what is the best way to approach it using CSS?

As for using Notepad as an HTML editor, I've caught grief for years because of it. I don't like the WYSIWYG editors because they leave so much garbage code behind. And beyond that, to me all generic text editors are pretty much the same. I like nice, tight web pages with comments dividing and explaining every section, which is easy to do with a generic text editor.