Why can't HTML alone do includes?

#1

Post by susam » Sat, May 03, 2025, 12:50 PM UTC

Why can't HTML alone do includes?
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Re: Why can't HTML alone do includes?

#2

Post by axelfontaine » Sat, May 03, 2025, 2:25 PM UTC

Iframes, while not perfect, are pretty close though...

Re: Why can't HTML alone do includes?

#3

Post by evrimoztamur » Sat, May 03, 2025, 2:28 PM UTC

If you want to include HTML sandboxes, we have iframes. If you want it served from the server, it's just text. Putting text A inside text B is a solved problem.

Re: Why can't HTML alone do includes?

#4

Post by bdcravens » Sat, May 03, 2025, 2:28 PM UTC

The simplest answer is that HTML wasn't designed as a presentation language, but a hypertext document language. CSS and Javascripts were add-ons after the fact. Images weren't even in the first version. Once usage of the web grew beyond the initial vision, solutions like server-side includes and server-side languages that rendered HTML were sufficient.

Re: Why can't HTML alone do includes?

#5

Post by nico » Sat, May 03, 2025, 2:29 PM UTC

FTA

> We’ve got , which technically is a pure HTML solution, but

And then on the following paragraph..

> But none of the solutions is HTML

> None of these are a straightforward HTML tag

Not sure what the point is. Maybe just complaining

Re: Why can't HTML alone do includes?

#6

Post by lelandfe » Sat, May 03, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

axelfontaine wrote: post #2

Iframes, while not perfect, are pretty close though...

Making iframes be the right size is super awkward. I might actually use them more if they were easy to get responsive.

This post does link to a technique (new to me) to extract iframe contents:

Re: Why can't HTML alone do includes?

#7

Post by tln » Sat, May 03, 2025, 2:32 PM UTC

There used to be a thing for this

https://caniuse.com/imports

Re: Why can't HTML alone do includes?

#8

Post by hilti » Sat, May 03, 2025, 2:33 PM UTC

Have you ever heard of Server Side Includes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Includes

Re: Why can't HTML alone do includes?

#9

Post by pjc50 » Sat, May 03, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

nico wrote: post #5

FTA > We’ve got , which technically is a pure HTML solution, but And then on the following paragraph.. > But none of the solutions is HTML > None of these are a straightforward HTML tag Not sure what the point is. Maybe just complaining

Iframe is stuck in a rectangular box. It's not really suitable for things like site wide headers, footers and menus.

Re: Why can't HTML alone do includes?

#10

Post by rendaw » Sat, May 03, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

hilti wrote: post #8

Have you ever heard of Server Side Includes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Includes

That's mentioned in TFA under "old school web server directives".