To know what HTMLCombine is you need to understand the problem it solves. Chances are you already know the problem. It is the age old "frame or not to frame" problem.
Here you are an HTML maven and you want to build a new web site. The site will contain several pages and you want to make sure navigation is a breeze. The solution is to put a menu on each page. Navigation is solved but maintenance is now a problem. You know that the site will be changed and added to frequently. That means every time a new page is added you have to change the menu and you don't want to change it on every page.
Now the solution seems to want frames. Yes that is it put the menu in a separate frame. Now the menu is a separate html document that you can modify easily. Oh the problem is solved, but wait what about bookmarking?
No you want maintainability.
But what about search engines handling frames?
Screw the search engines!
But then no one will find your site.
Oh but the maintainability of frames.
Ah server side processing! Yes write some php code to add the menu.
But the server is already taxed heavily.
Oh the inhumanity of it all....
Da ta da daah! HTMLCombine to the rescue.
HTMLCombine solves a difficult problem with simple solution. HTMLCombine is an HTML preprocessor that combines multiple HTML documents into one. It does this in less the 400 lines of Java code.
I must admit that I got the original idea from the HT2HTML project. The problem I found with their solution is that it was to rigid. I want to design my own layout.
So now that I have your attention please see the other links at the top of this page to find out how to use HTMLCombine and where to get it.
