Newbie: static html pages

[Stecks1]

Dear all,

I know it defeats the objectives of a database but I am tempted to create html pages with predefined search results (I only have 12 possible search categories- so that won't be too bad) and then save these pages and dish them out statically to the user. As My data only changes once a year, I presume that is feasible. I have had a good look through lots of sources but I only find the static method mentioned but not discussed. I was using Access and Front Page before and there dynamically created pages contain 600kb (!!) worth of comment,which makes the file annoyingly big. Am I okay just saving dynamically created pages from FMP? Or how does the static method work alternatively.

Thank you very much in advance for your help.

[Jeff Spall]

Hi,

are you thinking of capturing and using the .html returned from a search? This could work for you if you make your dynamic pages first, then do each search and use the html pages generated.

Filemaker returns a page where all the CDML/Lasoo tags are replaced with html, so you can capture the page easily from a browser. You'll have to do some work if you need to link from a search return to, say, a record detail because the url called from the 'LinkRecID' tag needs to be on a page called from Filemaker to work properly, but I think you could get around this by making the page a form with a find action (?? havn't tried it!)

Quite honestly, I think it'll be more work to get all the data into static pages and then make all the links and stuff work rather than use Filemaker to generate them on the fly. This also has the advantage of a single format file, so you can change your layout or style for the whole site in one go.