I'm trying to do something seemingly simple, but about which there is an astounding lack of information.
I've got what is right now a static web page, with a very large table full of images. What I'd like to do is divide up those images into categories, and create a select box the contents of which will determine which category of images to actually write to the page.

I *thought* I'd done something like this before, perhaps having the onChange call set a variable, or call a function to determine which option is selected and then write the correct part of the page...i.e.

<select>
<option value="something1" onChange="some function setting var imageCategory to '1'">
<option value="something2" onChange="some function setting var imageCategory to '2'">
</select>

<?php
if (imageCategory == 1)
{
echo("<table>");
echo("<tr><td><img blah blah blah></td></tr>");
echo("</table>");
}
else if(imageCategory == 1)
{
you get the picture.
}
?>

I realize that there are some inconsistencies in there, namely in getting the php to re-run (or the page to resubmit, whichever comes first), but if I knew the answers I wouldn't be asking, would I?

Many thanks for any help,
-Laura

ok, instead of using php why not use frames or a simple document.write() in javascript?

Anyhow, lets say your selection page has this form

<form action="images.php" method="POST">
<select>
<option value="true" name="Category_1">
<option value="true" name="Category_2">
</select>
<input type="submit" value="submit" />
</form>

Then images.php will have this:

if ($_POST['Category_1']){
'show one category
}
if ($_POST['Category_2']){
'show two category
}

The truth is this would be alot easier to make separate static pages if you only have two categories. I don't see a reason for making this overly complicated

mm, but see - the issue is not to show different pages' worth of icons, it's to divide them up into some sort of smaller categories so that I don't have to look at them all at once. There aren't just 2, there are closer to 7 or 8.

This isn't for some grand project - it's just for my personal blog, which is sort of a reverse-engineered livejournal. I've gotten to the point where I've got upwards of 60 icons, and currently am statically displaying them in one gigantic table on my "Post" page...I'd like to split them up so that I can select a category, and display only the appropriate icons.

The trick is, the table with the icons is of course part of a form already, which has a couple of text boxes, a text area, and which submits to a script ultimately displaying the new post on the main page. So giving the icons their own form isn't really an option.

There's *got* to be a way, somehow, to change a page's contents at runtime based on some form of user input...
I'm not even all that locked into using a select box, just something that will display selectable categories.

Javascript can do that easily via a document.write() -- You can even include all the code (and set it to prefetch all the images too) if you want. Just research on the document.write some as that is what will be good for a runtime-based client-side interaction.

I'll do that - thanks very much for your help!