Hello folks,

what is the best way (i.e standard way that is supported on all browsers and probably as well followed by web crawlers)....

.... to include an html file either locally or externally in another ?

Of course , i've done the research and i also know that there are server side includes (php , asp ...you name it) but that is out of the question!

at the moment , i'm using this:

however, i've been warned that this method may not show up in some browsers as some tend to ignore this tag and that crawlers like your favorite search engine wouldn't bother reading this.

so , what is the best and safest way to do the job?

please note that browser compatibility is the highest priority , seo is a distant second concern.

and btw , the reason why i've ousted SSI's from the start is because of among other things:

1) the fact that the included file is static html and because the text is included pretty much everywhere
2) hoping to reduce load time as the code (if successfully recognized) would hopefully be treated like any other embedded external file (e.x like an image) , therefore it would be cached without the need to downloaded it over and over again for each new page on the site.


cheers

Looking at your reasons for trying to deliver the content via the client.

1. Can you be sure that the file resides on the client? If not then the file will need to be downloaded
2. How big is the html file you are trying to cache?

My point is that to guarantee that the user gets the data you will need to send it to the client from the server, using something like PHP. You approach of embedding the html in a javascript file will work if javascript is enabled on the browser. If it has been turned off (which it maybe for various reasons) or the user has a browser that doesn't support javascript then it will not work, in which case you will need to send the data from the server.

And if the file is small it may not be worth the extra overhead.

To do this the server will need to identify if the client supports javascript, for example in PHP the get_browser() function will return details about the capabilities of the browser.