Headers and Drop Down Menus

[bigcougar]

My questions are quite basic so I hope some of you will bear with me.

1. Headers

This is my front page that has a horizontal menu bar(1), header(2) and left side bar(3).

www.troutsalmonchar.com

I want to have my pages open in the space occupied by the middle panel(4) and right sidebar(5). How can I do that without adding (1),(2) and (3) to each page and reloading them?

2. Drop Down Menus

Let's start with this crazy page of mine:
http://troutsalmonchar.com/TH_Destination.html

When I click on British Columbia, I will get this page:
http://troutsalmonchar.com/M_BC.html

Now the whole purpose of the page above is to display the rivers and lakes in British Columbia. What I want to have is a drop down menu containing all rivers and lakes. Once I select a river, I would want the information to show up on the same page below the drop down menu. (e.g. http://troutsalmonchar.com/ART_Thom_Adams.html if Adams river were selected)

What is the easiest way to achieve this?

Thanks for your time.

 

[PixelPusher]

In response to your first question about the headers, you will need to use server side scripting...something like PHP.

Your drop down menu can be built with html/css. The drop down menu would have links for all your rivers and would load the appropriate page when clicked.

Do you have experience building drop down menus with css?

 

[bigcougar]

In response to your first question about the headers, you will need to use server side scripting...something like PHP.

Your drop down menu can be built with html/css. The drop down menu would have links for all your rivers and would load the appropriate page when clicked.

Do you have experience building drop down menus with css?

Thanks, PixelPusher,

I almost found a solution to my problems a few hours after I made the post, but I am not sure if the solution is good.

My drop down is generated in PHP. I would much rather have it built in HTML and only use PHP to load data from MySQL into it. What I am doing on this page is, I include two php files - the menu and the left sidebar to the page.

The map image will help the user populate the drop down list with rivers/lakes in the selected area. Then, once a river is selected from the list, a similar page will open.

The problem I foresee is, after the new page is loaded, it will reload the left sidebar as well and the list of rivers will be reset. There are probably two possible solutions:

1) pass some variable values (area, list value) to the new page
2) figure out a way of only re-loading the main content of the page and not the left sidebar (where the map and list box are) and the menu bar.

I am not sure what is feasible and what would be a better choice if both methods can be utlilized.

 

[bigcougar]

With my limited knowledge, I only make a big mess of things.

I have a function called LoadList(str)
The function is supposed to filter the values of a list box named "Rivers"
Basically all I want to do is execute the SQL= "SELECT * table WHERE field1='" & str & ''" (in VB language)
where table is the record source of my list box. Then I have to refresh the object to get it updated??
Not surehow this is done in Java or PHP. I hope I find the right example soon...