I am posting this thread to encourage those who have not used Ajax before. It is much easier than I thought it would be.

I have many lines at the begining and the end of all my pages that are constant. The obvious solution is to use a Server-Side Include for these. However, the VLE I am using (WebCT Vista) will not permit these.

Hitherto, I have either used loading a javascript file which writes the appropriate HTML (for the top lines), and a set of lines in the Dreamweaver Template (for the bottom lines).

Having read the article on 'How do I include one HTML file in another' at Boutell.com (http://www.boutell.com), I though that Ajax would do it better, and indeed it has.

Boutell provides the javascript function clientSideInclude. All I needed to do was:

Include this function in my preliminary javasacript file;
Add two calls to this function in my onload function;
Insert two named DIVs, one at the top and one at the bottom.

It worked like a dream.

In the onload function I have the lines:

clientSideInclude('BottomLines', '../../Includes/BottomLines.htm');
clientSideInclude('TopLines', '../../Includes/TopLines.htm');

and in the file I have

<div id="TopLines"><div> at the top, and

<div id="BottomLines"><div> at the bottom.

This has the great advantage that I can edit these included files without Dreamweaver telling me I cannot change the template!

John Rostron

It didn't worked for me.
I don't use external .js file for "clientSideInclude". I simply out row in the file inside <script> tag.

Then I used the function

<script>
function Doit()
{
clientSideInclude('header', '/ssi/header.asp');
clientsideInclude('footer', '/ssi/footer.asp');
}
</script>

to insert more than one includes.

I put the function here

<body onLoad= "Doit();">

..and the appropriate <div> in my file to get the includes but i get the first one ALWAYS!

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.