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Jenny asked:
> Still, I'd like to know why anyone would use [components]
> when they can use server-side includes to do the same thing.
When you "publish" from either DW or GL, the application inserts the files that are referenced from the library or component panel. This design-time insertion of external files is useful if you build your web site to be server/platform-agnostic and/or static HTML-only files with no dynamic (read: request-time) content.
SSI (Server Side Includes) rely on the web server processing the files at request-time, not design time, so the web server inserts the header or footer (or whatever) only when the page is requested by a browser. This requires a web server or add-on module to the web server that supports SSI, an ISP that allows SSI, and the particular syntax to use SSI for that web server.
Caching can mitigate the performance decrease from SSI.
If you use a web application server to respond to client requests (a browser), then you would typically not use SSI, as they have been abandoned for more updated technologies such as filters (on J2EE) or (ColdFusion) or whatever for .ASP or PHP.
HTH,
Matthew J. Horn
Sr. Technical Writer
< m a c r o m e d i a >
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