FrontPage's -Include Page- good or bad?

[SagaL0re]

I have a website that I'm redoing. The recent version uses a lot of "Include Pages" to help keep down maintenance time when I make changes to the menu, header, or body. This also allows me to create tables of custom cell width in the body without conflicting with the other tables.

I'm agressively persuing CSS, but I'm still very new to it. I know that the options available to me with CSS and custom tags would allow me to do basically what I'm doing with the Include Pages with modification.

Anyway, the question is for the web guru's out there,

Is "Include Page" (webbot component) a commonly used webmastering technique?

Is that just something that FrontPage offers people to cheat with?

Are there browsers not compatible with it's use, or is it a server-side component?

The most important answer I need above all - Does the use of "Include Page"s cause any type of performance hit on loading time?

It was always my impression that re-using the page would cache it and increase performance... but since this particular component is pretty specialized and is with only a handful of other webbot components, I'm wondering if it's actually slowing down the site.

Thanks!

 

[fr]

I've used this on a server that did not support SSI.


I think you're better off using SSI as this is only supported by FrontPage.

 

[SagaLore]

I'm not sure what you mean. What is SSI?

And do you know if using Include Page (webbot) causes a performance hit?

Once I master ASP this won't matter, but for now I have few options.

 

[911paramedic]

SSI server side include

I don't use front page, so I am talking out of my @ss when I reply to this. From your question about this "include page" it sounds like a CSS template. I use CSS all the time to retain continuity of my pages, it is the best way to go if you can.

My 2 cents

 

[SagaLore]

The Include Page is a frontpage component, accomplished by using a webbot function. I don't think's it's associated at all with CSS.

I was almost tempted to incorporate frames into my web to accomplish what I wanted, but after ready a few articles from other experts as well as experiencing some problems really quick, I remembered why I avoided frames in the first place. The Include Page allows me to insert another HTML page from my web into a cell. I use this for my menu, header, and body. If I change the menu it get's changed for all other pages.

I know this is efficiently accomplished with ASP, but I don't know that yet, and it's possible to approach this similarly with CSS but I'm not fluent in that yet either. If you take a look at my current website, http://www.hawgbuster.com and look at the HTML, you'll see:

<!--webbot bot="Include" U-Include="homemenu.htm" TAG="BODY" -->

As long as my web server supports frontpage extensions, this works fine. I just want to know if there is a better approach. In my next renovation, I'm using CSS - before I edited each page manually, and also usedstylesrc from a default page for my background and text colors.

The quasi-renovation is at http://www.hawgbuster.com/redo I love CSS, it's going to save me a lot of heartache and really improve the loading time of the site. I've been looking for webmaster tips, and some generic articles actually promote the use of frontpage's Include Page to save time designing the site. But I have a colleague at work who suggested not to use Include Page. ???