Includes

Many of you web developers/designers are probably familiar with Includes. It's a process of literally including one file into another on your website.

For example, you could use the process to include a menu into your page. That way, you can have the same menu across many pages... and if you want to change the menu, you will only have to fix it once.

I know, this is pretty basic stuff. But bear with me for a moment here. So, Includes generally require some sort of server scripting... whether it be PHP, ASP, or similar, to perform the operation without the user knowing this is happening.

But what if you're running off of an older server, that doesn't have any of these functions? I recently ran into that problem with a contract I'm working on.

That's where those wonderful people at Dynamic Drive come in. They run a great site with all sorts of useful web scripts. Many of which you can implement with some simple cut-and-paste.

And now we bring AJAX into the picture. Or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. And specifically, DD's technique that requires no server-scripting whatsoever.