Quote Originally Posted by DrByte View Post
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: your parenthetical last-minute comment about using iframes is VERY important when coupled with your suggestion of embedding yet another DOCTYPE and opening <HTML> tag on the page. In fact, INSIDE A FRAME is the ONLY time you should do that.
So, if you're not using frames (and they're generally not something one would use, for a myriad of reasons), then YOU SHOULD NOT use the added HTML suggested above.
Thanks DrByte.. My apologies.. I should have been MUCH clearer in my post (it was a copy and paste from another forum where the context of my writing would have been clearer -- I should have cleaned it up a bit more before posting it here raw/uncut)..

Yes, the reason I had to do this at all was because the sidebox is being called from inside an iframe. This all started because I was trying to get the sideboxes to look like the rest of the site and the store. Initially based on the an older post in this thread I added the following to the very bottom of the single_sidebox.php file (*after* the closing ?> line).

Code:
<style type="text/css"> @import  "/includes/templates/MY_TEMPLATE/css/stylesheet.css";  </style>
You may have to even make that an entire URL:
Code:
<style type="text/css"> @import  "http://yourdomain.com/includes/templates/MY_TEMPLATE/css/stylesheet.css";  </style>
But that didn't work.. So based on a suggestion from someone who had helped someone else to get an iframed external sidebox to work, I added this to the top of the single_sidebox.php file (*before* the opening <php line).

Code:
 <head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://yourdomain.com/includes/templates/MY_TEMPLATE/css/sidebox_stylesheet.css" />
<title></title>
</head>
That worked, but I was concerned that the sidebox "pages" wouldn't validate. So I went to http://validator.w3.org/ to validate the sidebox page, and used the "HTML-Tidy" tool to get the "clean" HTML I previously posted.

To further clarify my previous statements, I'm truly not advocating the use (or rather overuse) of iframes at all for all the reasons most often cited (accessibility, page loading times, SEO, etc). However, for this particular site, the use of an iframe was the ONLY way I could get the externally called sideboxes to show/behave.

In this case I believe this limited use of an iframe will probably be okay.. I am using a notice of external content for screenreaders to resolve any accessibility issues, there are no serious SEO concerns from displaying 1 or 2 sideboxes, and I do not plan to load more than two iframed sideboxes to ensure that I don't create any performance issues.

All this to say that I'm still testing this implementation and as of this writing I am cautiously optimistic that they will not be problematic down the road. I will of course update my findings if this turns out to NOT be the case..

Again, my apologies for not being clearer in my earlier post.. Dr Byte is absolutely correct. The information I shared yesterday is only to be used if the sideboxes are called from inside an iframe..