ie tabstrip search engine optimisation

[sagey]

Hello i am reworking an asp site in asp.net the nav for the current site is essentially a tabstrip-like thing along the top of each page, the nav itself is built using includes so if you click on menu item 4 you go to menuitem4.asp and if you click on menu item 5 you got to menuitem5.asp, etc etc

my initial thought to redoing this nav in asp.net was to use a tabstrip control. but now i'm not so sure its what i need.

Search engine optimisation is very important to the site and i don't think going from being able to spider www.site.com/menuitem1.asp and www.site.com/menuitem2.asp etc

to going to only being able to spider:

www.site.com/default.aspx?menuitem=menuitem1
and
www.site.com/default.aspx?menuitem=menuitem2

won't be very good for the sites search engine optimisation.

So my question is. is the tabstrip the write control for me to use?
Or should i try a different approach? could i try and keep the existing nav?
for example can i use old style aps includes in asp pages? (this immediately sounds like a stupid question)

please help.

[dj4uk]

I thought the IE Tapstrip used JavaScript to navigate between each tab in which case this is completely invisible to search engines and a bad idea to use it.

In actual fact search engines don't have too much trouble with QueryStrings now and so can be used e.g.
www.site.com/default.aspx?menuitem=menuitem1
and
www.site.com/default.aspx?menuitem=menuitem2

Ideally though you are correct in trying to have a separate URL for each tab. Sorry I can't recommend any controls though. Someone else can I'm sure. Maybe try to write your own!

DJ

[sagey]

If anyone can help with this i would be grateful.

the sort of nav i want is exemplified here:

http://dev.essentialdirectory.com/

this version is implemented by including asp files

as explained above i don't think the asp.net tabstrip control is suitable for what i need. is there a way of using the include approach in asp.net?

any help would be really appreciated. this is my first asp.net website and i'm rather depressed that i've got stuck trying to implement the basic navigation.

[dj4uk]

The tab menu is essentially HTML. So you design it in HTML and then put all the code in a ASP.NET User Control which works in a similar way to an include file allowing code reuse. Within this User Control you can add any server-side logic required e.g. to highlight the current section a user is in.

If you want your tab menu to be built dynamcially then that's a whole different kettle of fish and a tad more complex - let me know if this is what you want.

HTH

DJ

[sagey]

thanks for the reply.

I'm probably being really thick but
the thing i can't get my head round is that in the example url i posted above

if i click on the whats on tab i go to http://dev.essentialdirectory.com/norwich-whats-on.asp

if i click on bars and pubs i go to
http://dev.essentialdirectory.com/no...s-and-pubs.asp

But how do i create a control that sits on all these pages and automatically knows which page has focus (for want of a better word)?
should my user control get the name of the page its hosted (again, for want of a better word) on and use that to change the display?

i guess i'm having difficulty moving from the idea of asp pages including other pages and an asp.net page using a control.

i doubt this ramble makes sense.

[sagey]

also in terms of it being dynamic, it would be good if it could pick up menu and submenu items from an external source, an xml file would be nice. (and if i can do that then pulling the info from a db wouldn't be much more work)

so i guess the control when loaded would do the following.

check what page it is loaded on
lookup menu and submenu items in the xml file
generate the html for the menu (displaying the menu items picked up from the xml file)

and the xml file might look something like this?

<menuitem name="barsandpubs.aspx" url="site.com" description="bars and pubs">
 <submenuitem name="winebars.aspx" url="site.com/barsandpubs/" description="wine bars" />
</menuitem

[sagey]

so i guess my next question is how does a user control get the hosting page name?

[dj4uk]

Well a user control would use Request.Path to work out which page is currently being viewed.

In the case of http://dev.essentialdirectory.com/norwich-whats-on.asp it would return /norwich-whats-on.asp.

To create a dynamic populating menu you would need to create a collection within the user control to hold the values. It would be up to you to decide what would be the source but generally specking its as easy to populate from any source if the control is designed well.

I would recommend reading up on user controls (perhaps even composite controls) especially with regards to holding controls that use collections.

DJ