How can I make a link in zone 2 (left) open in zone 0 (right)?

Question

I'm pretty new to SP, so I'm not looking for complicated SP Developer tool solutions. I can't help but think what I want to do should be easy. Is it?

BACKGROUND

I've created a "site" within the corporate SP site. That's fine, no problem. I made a page that lists the department procedures. Each procedure is a link to a page I made (copied and pasted from the previously non-SP HTML pages). Those were saved by SP as ASPX files into a "library" folder. When I make a link to one of those ASPX files back on the "procedures" page, the ASPX page opens up just fine.

Except for one thing: when the ASPX page opens, I lose the left-hand site navigation column. As a result, the text in the page is as wide as the browser (well, slightly less as there are some margins) but it looks awful and is hard to read with lines that long.

I tried to get the Procedures page to open its links in a page WITH that nav. bar, but I couldn't figure out how.

So I figured instead I would put a web object in the left column and a page viewer web object in the right column. I opened the page's default ASPX file and resized the columns so it's 30% on the left and 70% on the right.

NOW WHAT?

The page looks just fine. The left column has two zones (one is just some intro text, and under that is zone 2, which contains the list of links). On the right is a column with one zone in it (zone 0). Currently it's a page reader object but I'm not committed to that (I can change it to whatever works).

What I want to do is set it up so that when I click on a link in zone 2 (left column) the ASPX page loads in the right column (zone 0).

I've spent about four hours trying things and searching dozens of help and web sites. Nothing seems to work and I can't find any specific information about this.

IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?

All help appreciated! (Sorry for the long question...)

Answer 1

It sounds like you want the Quicklaunch panel to appear within the ASPX pages.

You need to ewnicw a line of ASP within the ASPX page in order to do this. Locate this line then delete it from one of the ASPX pages (but NOT default.aspx).

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderLeftNavBar" runat="server"></asp:Content>

As always, save changes to files before you edit them.

Additionally, I wouldn't edit default.aspx at all in any Web, as if the administrator were to reset the site to the Site Definition, you'd loose all your changes.

Answer 2

As sometimes it's all about using the good "out of the box" components, I would recommend using a publishing site (check if it's available on your site template list)

It's the simplest way to create "html" pages that will have the full quick nav, versionning, etc..

Maybe it's not a good solution for your current issue, because you will need to recreate the site. But, for next time, it should save you time.

Answer 3

The Page Viewer Web Part you are using is just an iframe.

Try finding out what the name of the iframe is, and set the "target" attribute on the hyperlinks on the left to reference that iframe.

As a result, any link clicked with target="myframe" will result in that url being opened in the frame with that particular name (your Page Viewer Web Part in your case).

I hope this answers your question.