[DRY] Use html imports for the common header

[waldyrious]

...and maybe templates for common structures, e.g. the content div, the footer, etc.

[waldyrious]

Won't do. Besides being fairly new in the browser landscape, it's too limited (only css and js get applied immediately). Ideally I'd like a way to replicate PHP's include(), so I could apply DRY in content as well (e.g. the container div, the common footer, the navigation menu). If we can include (and have them load automatically) images, videos, scripts and even markup documents like svg, why on earth can't we include html in the same manner? Sigh...

I'll close for now, but I'll update this issue if I come across any serious attempt at approaching that goal.

For now I'll bear repeating code in the spirit of allowing maximum portability (e.g. not needing a server for local development) but I suspect if html doesn't evolve to support this use case, I will probably have to return to PHP...

[waldyrious]

Actually, there might be some light in the tunnel with seamless iframes. Let's just hope it doesn't take too long to arrive (caniuse?).

Web Components simply aren't meant for this, see e.g. what the spec says:

The template element is used to declare fragments of HTML that can be cloned and inserted in the document by script.

Anyway, this is a different issue from the one originally reported (common header can still be implemented with HTML imports), so I'll reopen and move that feature request (client-side static content embedding) to another issue.

[waldyrious]

Not ready for prime time yet, reopened in a1711d7.

References:

• http://caniuse.com/#feat=imports
• http://html5test.com/compare/feature/components.imports.html

[waldyrious]

Seamless was abandoned as well, god damn it!!

• whatwg: issue, PR
• w3c: issue, PR
• caniuse: issue

Perhaps iframe-height's approach could help a bit. Hope the specs eventually include something to properly embed html.