frames or not?

[jgnunn]

hi, im in the middle of building a site using frames.

http://home.hot.rr.com/josstuff/home/index.html

Does anyone know of achieving the same effect of keeping the navigation interface constant without using frames?


regards bj

[mjames]

Of course there is, use tables.

Everything you ever wanted to know about tables: http://htmlgoodies.earthweb.com/tutors/tbl.html

[jgnunn]

Thanks for the obvious! ....but I DID say constant. I notice the header part of the site point homepage doesnt even refresh when a link is clicked yet its not in frames...thats what im talkin about..hows it done?


regards

[sylow]

Answer: Your browser caches the images on your hard drive and reads from there after an image is loaded first time.
So it will be the same for your web site as long as visitors enables caching on their browser.

[Saz]

Originally posted by sylow
Answer: Your browser caches the images on your hard drive and reads from there after an image is loaded first time.
So it will be the same for your web site as long as visitors enables caching on their browser.

The only way this makes a difference is that it makes the images load quicker 2nd, 3rd, 4th time around.....but they still refresh!!

If you want to keep the nav bar contant, you have to use frames I think, but I don't see the problem with that. A lot of people moan and say you shouldn't use frames, but I don't see why.

1) People say search engines don't list them, but they've listed mine - even Google.

2) People say they look ugly, but I've only ever had good feedback about my frames site.

3) Some browsers don't support them, but we're talking older versions here, and we've had discussions before about whether or not we should design sites around older systems to cater for the people who can't be bothered to upgrade.

I guess at the end of the day it's personal choice. If you don't want to use frames for your site, you're going to have to accept that the nav bar will refresh each time one of your visitors clicks on a different link.

[showpony]

I like the way the sitepoint header works, and yes, it does refresh (really quickly though cause I guess we've all got it cached well and truely by now!)

The thing I would do though, is use Server Side Includes - change the header whenever the whim takes you without having to deal with either templates (FTP ing all changed pages - what a pain) or changing every single page by hand. Ugh.

Have a look at this site which uses simple SSI header and footers

http://www.richmond.gov.uk/

[mmj]

Without using complex client-side applets or plugins, you can only achieve your desired result with frames. But if you don't mind the page reloading, tables would be essential. In my opinion, tables would be appropriate for jgnunn's design.

Frames do have some benefit. If you don't want a section of the screen to refresh, then that is the primary benefit of frames.

The rule I've always used is "if what you do in frames can be done in tables, use tables". I've never used frames, but that's just because I've never really needed to.

Frames cause issues when printing, viewing with non-visual browsers (such as for the sight impaired), converting to text or spidering, etc.

With search engines you can usually overcome the downfalls by including meaningful content in the <NOFRAMES> section of your frameset.

Of course, as Saz249 says, many search engines will do this and include your frameset. However, as far as I know, the frameset will be the only page indexed by the search engine, and not the content within the inner frames. I think that's right but correct me if I'm wrong.

[dominique]

If you expect people to link to different parts of your web site (pages besides your main entrance) I would go with tables since your page would show up without the navigation bar if you went with frames, either that or some novices won't even figure out how to link to those pages in the first place.

But your site looks like a personal site so I wouldn't worry too much about that...

[nickmarcel]

in response to what mmj said a few posts ago, i've found that many search engines do index frames within framesets ... but if you poke around, you ought to be able to find a script that will force the browser back to the frameset level if the user tries to look at a frame individually.

nickmarcel

[Saz]

Originally posted by mmj
Of course, as Saz249 says, many search engines will do this and include your frameset. However, as far as I know, the frameset will be the only page indexed by the search engine, and not the content within the inner frames. I think that's right but correct me if I'm wrong.

Sorry honey, but you are wrong.....The whole of my Postfive website seems to have been spidered, not just the frames page - and it was only the frames url that I submitted too! Also, it's only my frames page that has any meta tags on it as I didn't really want people finding one of my 'inner' pages in a search. I've had to use a script that will redirect users to the frames page if they try to open an internal page on it's own.

[creole]

is it just me or has there been like 5 or 6 threads on frames pop up all at once.

Can we join these together? hehe

But seriously people, if you are thinking about posting a NEW thread about frames, please just add to one of the existing ones instead.

pooches gracias

[lynlimz]

i agree to that on creole..lol
i keep posting the same stuffs...not really same..improvements with grammer i hope?

[excessus]

It's true... browsers do goes beyond the frameset. Google has indexed my whole site (+9.000 pages) with no trouble.

Frames? I would not use them. I used them and eventually got bored... there are a lot of problems related to using frames, like visitors accesing final pages and not loading the other frames, etc. Nothing that javascript can't fix, of course, but a pain anyway.

I am now inclined to use ASP to serve different files like if they are one, combining the different tables on them to create the layout of the page. Our websites are usually software applications designed through an object-oriented approach. The index.html initialises the application infrastructure, determines the requested 'service', and then hands off control to a 'service processor'. All HTML mark-up are handled by 'Page Objects' that provide formatting services, so we have the benefits of frames without using them really.