# Are you anti-frames?



## MDLarson (May 24, 2002)

OK, here's my [company's] website:
http://www.larsonsystems.com

It relies heavily on frames, and (in my opinion), does it effectively.  The main problem I've run into was when somebody would want to bookmark a page or link into an individual page (such as from a search engine results page).

I've always rolled my eyes when somebody suggested against using framesmost browsers support them and you have something to look at when you're clicking links (frame-less sites have to reload everything, and you get a "blink" when you switch pages.)

Anyway, what I really want to know is how can I (preferably without removing the frames) get potential customers to what they want to find as soon as possible?  Is the interface intuitive or confusing?

Also let me know of any browser quirks that you might have.  Screenshots would be cool.


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## dricci (May 24, 2002)

Yes, frames are evil. They had their place in the Mid/Late 90s but it's 2002 and people can be a little more creative (no offense 

Have you looked into using something such as server side includes?


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## Nummi_G4 (May 27, 2002)

I like frames.  they do make bookmarking a pain, but I use them on almost every site.  i Frames are even better.  Too bad some browsers do not support them.  

SSI is good to use.  but not in all cases.  and SSI takes a little more to learn.


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## BlingBling 3k12 (May 27, 2002)

ME LOVE iFRAMES!!!! 

but it's too bad not every browser supports them


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## MDLarson (May 27, 2002)

> _Originally posted by dricci _
> *Yes, frames are evil. They had their place in the Mid/Late 90s but it's 2002 and people can be a little more creative (no offense
> 
> Have you looked into using something such as server side includes? *


It's nice to hear your opinion, but maybe you could back it up?  Like I said in my original post, I think frames can be advantageous and still have their place, if used correctly (which I think I have).  Frames remain a widely supported tool, and serves my purposes wonderfully.

I think I sort of understand the concept of server side includes, but don't know how that would replace the functionality of frames.  What are you thinking more specifically?

p.s.  Inline frames are nice, but haven't seen their use hardly ever, except in web design class.


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## Nummi_G4 (May 27, 2002)

SSI can kind of create the effect of frames.  But they still have to load with every page.  frames do not.  I think people would use the iFrame a lot more if more browsers supported them. *cough* OmniWeb *cough*.  I would be one of those people using them on every site.


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## TommyWillB (May 27, 2002)

The most confusing thing for users of frames-based sites is that the page are generally not bookmarkable... and/because teh URL does not change.

This also means it is difficult to send URl's as email links. for example how do you send a link to a Support page if you must first go to the home page and click Support.


So with that said there are some things you can do to make frames a bit better:

1) turn the frame border off (border=0)

2) Any page that will need to be bookmarked or used as a direct link will need its own frameset (Which is going to drive you nuts and become more a maitenance nightmare than just doing away with frames all together...)

3) When you have links to new framesets remember you must ALWAYS use target="_top"... Forget it once and you'll end up with a mess of frames within frames... within frames... within frames... within frames... within frames... within frames... within frames... within frames... within frames...


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## AdmiralAK (May 27, 2002)

I had frames on my web site, but I removed them.
They are basically a design decision, some sites are good with them, and they work well.  I would suggest you make an "entry" page to your site though, that doesnt use frames, so that people can bookmark your site 

Frames have their place, you just need to know when where and how to use em


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## Nummi_G4 (May 28, 2002)

My site uses frames... do you think they are ok?
http://home.datacomm.ch/aftermath/nummi


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## benpoole (May 28, 2002)

I'm not a fan of frames. I have used them in the past, as they tend to bring ease of design and loading to a site, but the disadvantages outweigh the advantages for most sites, I find.

My main issues centre around coding proper onward links, and bookmarks. When my site was a frames-based one, I had lots of base framesets for each part of the site, i.e. music, development, CV, and so on -- it was a maintenance nightmare.

A well-designed site doesn't have to be slow-loading just because it doesn't use frames.

For example, I refer to this site a lot, and it's always quick -- there are standard elements which are pretty much the same on each page, but no frames are used. My site (not live, in development) is much the same. It can be done!

PS Nummi, your site looks good, but commits a minor sin in my eyes: it has a "Click here to enter"-style link on the front page. Lots of sites do this, and I have never understood why. I guess it's a personal thing...

That being said, don't look at my site -- it's awful  I'm currently re-designing it and moving hosts as my current one plasters ads everywhere.


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## Nummi_G4 (May 28, 2002)

I looked at your site anyway.    Please do not use aqua buttons on your new site  That design is getting old.


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## benpoole (May 28, 2002)

Eh? There are no aqua buttons on my site. But in any case, did you tell Apple that the look's getting old? 

The new site looks nothing like what is there now. I like changing from time to time...


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## Nummi_G4 (May 28, 2002)

your site has purple OS X buttons on the bottom of the page.  that is what I meant by aqua buttons.  It is ok for apple to use them... but half of the mac sites on the internet are using the aqua look.


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## benpoole (May 28, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Nummi_G4 _
> *your site has purple OS X buttons on the bottom of the page.  that is what I meant by aqua buttons.  It is ok for apple to use them... but half of the mac sites on the internet are using the aqua look. *


They have nothing to do with Aqua. Nor is the site a "Mac site." Glass-styled graphics are not new, nor are they the exclusive domain of OS X's UI.

I've had a website of one form or another for some 8 years now, and this one is one of the longest-standing designs... it certainly pre-dates OS X -- which is why it's being re-done!

To move on, what's wrong with sites using "Aqua styling" anyway? You say "it's old" yet it's a look presumably promoted on mac.com homepages, and is something that naturally Apple can use all they want.

Interesting argument...


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## MDLarson (May 28, 2002)

> _Originally posted by AdmiralAK _
> *I would suggest you make an "entry" page to your site though, that doesnt use frames, so that people can bookmark your site  *


Like a splash page?    I don't really like splash pages

Here's a breakdown of my website referrals during June 2001 through April 2002 (11 months):
*33,531* Sessions TOTAL - 100%
--------------------
*18,964* Blind sessions (no referrer) - 56.6%
*13,045* Referred sessions - 38.9%
*1,522* Referred sessions (search engine) - 4.5%

Of the referred sessions (search engine and not), 6,847 (47%) are either larsonsystems.com or larsonsystemsinc.com.  (We own both domains, and both point to the same IP address) So because of this, I interpreted 6,847 referred sessions to really come from blind sessions.

What this really means is that people type in our website URL directly about 77% of the time, and the remaining 23% come in from search engines and the like.  Many times these referrals link directly to our home page, keeping the frameset intact.

Therefore, I consider about 15% of new browsers miss the correct frame context and get right to a single page.  For that reason I have placed on the top of each of those pages a link that says "Home" and links right back to the index.html or another appropriate frameset.

I am unable to accurately determine what the user experience is, but we have a Contact Us page with a little section where users can rate the website.  98% come back as "Great" and "OK".

Anyway, thanks for reading all this.


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## AdmiralAK (May 28, 2002)

not really an animated splash page, something along the lines of what I have on my site, or something like nummi's site, something eyecatching that says "click here to enter" or something like that, so that customers can bookmark you


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## Nummi_G4 (May 28, 2002)

> _Originally posted by benpoole _
> *To move on, what's wrong with sites using "Aqua styling" anyway? You say "it's old" yet it's a look presumably promoted on mac.com homepages, and is something that naturally Apple can use all they want.
> 
> Interesting argument... *



  Whats wrong with it?  Many, many, many people use the aqua look on their sites.  too many.  Personally, I would want my own design.  I thought mac users were the creative ones? eh?  Everyone should make a site that looks better than aqua.
 Of course apple can use it all they want.  it is their look.


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## nkuvu (May 28, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Nummi_G4 _
> *My site uses frames... do you think they are ok?
> http://home.datacomm.ch/aftermath/nummi *


Just looked at the site -- and I have a huge blank area to the right of the content.  What's up with that?

Visited the Photography section.  The table of contents for the section (Set 1) was replaced by a single photo.  The contents frame remained the same as the last place (Web design, in this case).  The pic seemed to be cut off horizontally, but there is no scroll bar.

Is this all due to IE proprietary code garbage?


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## Nummi_G4 (May 28, 2002)

> _Originally posted by nkuvu _
> *
> --Just looked at the site -- and I have a huge blank area to the right of the content.  What's up with that?
> 
> ...



-- No... the site is only about 600 pixels wide.  I wanted it to fit on crappy wintel 640X480 monitors too.

---- you mean it loaded a photo right where you clicked on set 1 ??  a new window should pop up.  WTF? WTFing browser are you using?  It tested it in IE OS 9 and X.  NN 4.7 OS 9.


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## nkuvu (May 28, 2002)

Opera v6 at the time, set to refuse pop up windows.


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## Nummi_G4 (May 28, 2002)

And that is why I HATE that no pop up option.  it kills me.


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## rinse (May 28, 2002)

i hate it too. people that turn off javascript deserve the crappy web experience they get.


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## benpoole (May 29, 2002)

> _Originally posted by rinse _
> *i hate it too. people that turn off javascript deserve the crappy web experience they get. *


 Well yeah. I guess he just got sick of the pop up windows at all those porn sites 

As for Mac users being the "creative ones" well, fair point nummi... but what are you saying? Just 'cos someone uses glass-style buttons, they're not coming up with an original design? Well hell, you could stretch that to anything with regards design / the web.

I guess xoot is blushing right now and changing his avatar eh?

Sheesh, my site's design is fairly old-hat and cludgey -- Aqua it ain't -- and you pretty much ignored my other points too, you slacker


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## Nummi_G4 (May 29, 2002)

Fine your site has a glass look.  But I still think the whole aqua look is way over done.  And thank you Rinse.  That is exactly how I feel 

Back to the frames part of the thread


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## benpoole (May 29, 2002)

Re frames... this site made me laugh:

http://victorian.fortunecity.com/brambles/4/frames/

And this one's a nightmare:

http://www.ipd.uka.de/~hauma/no-frame-set.html

Most of these "I hate frames" sites go way over the top. For example, I think the way frames are implemented in the Sun Java API documentation pages makes perfect sense... the user requires some form of constant "contents" page, so this form of navigation suits its purpose:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/index.html

I am less clear as to what value is added by using frames willy-nilly in other kinds of sites. For example, click on the "Information of Grauate Admissions" link on the homepage of this:

http://www.princeton.edu/~complit/

Looks crap! What's the point?! All subsequent links then nest more frames within the main frameset, and it's just... horrible.

The site that sparked this thread uses them pretty well I think; they've been thought-out, and the links are properly coded. But the bookmarking issue remains, as does printing from some browsers. These are inherent frameset issues though.

I used frames in my own site a few years ago, without any clear idea of what I was trying to achieve. I found that without (maintenance-heavy) "wayside" framesets for people to bookmark along the way, the site was just a pain to navigate, so I dropped them.

Some web designers get very "conceptual" about it. I've read articles railing against the use of frames which discuss the "purity" of the original vision for the web, that of simple navigation from page to page, without the hindrance / guidance offered by framesets. This point of view is all well and good, but it assumes (a) that Tim Berners-Lee had a true guiding vision for the web and that (b) he was correct 

So that's my perspective on frames done  Don't get me started on needless pop-up windows...


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## roger (May 29, 2002)

I agree with  benpoole, except that I feel the Sun example is the one of the better reasons not to use frames.

The site is not intuitive - try and guess which of the frames will respond to clicking a link in another one. However if I was implementing that web site I would probably use frames, but in a different way. Once you get used to it makes sense, but there is that initial phase.

I used to use frames but have recently moved away from them. I have found all the functionality that I wanted using CSS and tables. Frames do have their place, but I am finding that place less and less often.

R.


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## .dev.lqd (May 29, 2002)

Documentation systems based on locally stored web pages... not using frames, having to clone the navigation content into EACH PAGE, would increase the size of the documentation footprint a great deal. That's why they use frames there... it saves space... and since the documents are local... it doesn't matter.

Furthermore... these people are developers... they ought to be able to deal with a little UI issue such as not being able to bookmark a page in the documentation.

As I've ranted before... frames break user's expectation of how a browser should behave... it basically requires a more savvy user to succesfully deal with a page that uses frames... and the more frames it uses... the more difficult it is.

Browsers are getting better at managing this... but each browser handles it a little bit differently with varying degrees of success. Again... the level of trouble a browser has is directly proportional to the number of frames in the page. 3 frames seems to be the limit, really: two small ones on the top and bottom, and then a large content frame.

The upside to dynamically generated pages using scripting or includes is that the designer has only minor difficulty in setting it up, and maintains a better end user experience. Yay for information design.


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## nkuvu (May 29, 2002)

> _Originally posted by rinse _
> *i hate it too. people that turn off javascript deserve the crappy web experience they get. *


For what it's worth, I don't have Javascript disabled.  Just pop up windows.  And people who design web sites which require any one browser don't know anything and should go back and think things through.  And people who can't make a website without pop up windows deserve the crappy reviews they get.

But of course this is all opinion, you're never going to change your mind on who you want to visit your site, so I'll never visit your site.


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## roger (May 29, 2002)

> Documentation systems based on locally stored web pages...not using frames, having to clone the navigation content into EACH PAGE, would increase the size of the documentation footprint a great deal.



Not if it were a database driven system (which I certainly hope Sun's is). It would make no difference in fact. Agreed if it is individual web pages, but which century are Sun in?



> As I've ranted before... frames break user's expectation of how a browser should behave... it basically requires a more savvy user to succesfully deal with a page that uses frames... and the more frames it uses... the more difficult it is.



I like this argument. 

R.


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## benpoole (May 29, 2002)

> _Not if it were a database driven system (which I certainly hope Sun's is). It would make no difference in fact. Agreed if it is individual web pages, but which century are Sun in?_


 OK, so maybe I shouldn't have chosen these pages as an example  Doh! We're walking away from the frame discussion again...

The frame-based documentation found on Sun's site is a standard for all Java code documentation. If you issue a "javadoc" command against some code you've written, the Java Development Kit automatically generates documentation for the code in HTML format exactly like that found on Sun's site.

So whilst there may be a back-end involved somewhere, it's probably individual pages at the Sun site -- but for a good reason! The reason that the data is presented in that way on the Sun site is because Sun document their APIs / classes in exactly the same way that Noddy Developer (i.e. people like me) does.

Which is good.

And to add my four-penneth re pop-ups, I _generally_ find them a pain in the arse, because they add nothing to a site (they're usually ads anyway!). For example, why present a photo album in pop-up windows? What does that add to the experience?


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## MDLarson (May 29, 2002)

> _Originally posted by benpoole _
> *The site that sparked this thread uses them pretty well I think; they've been thought-out, and the links are properly coded. But the bookmarking issue remains, as does printing from some browsers. These are inherent frameset issues though.*


I forgot about the printing issue.  Yes, I _have_ had unexpected printing problems with different configurations.  I wonder if the best way to work around this limitation is to simply ad a new link at the top of the page that opens the page in its own window for printing purposes, then the user would have to close it again.

Maybe it's still too much

I'm glad to see that [most of] you are not simply labeling frames as "evil".  As far as popup windows go, they're not evil either, but rather very very annoying.  I guess maybe I have a hard time associating a few lines of code with evil-ness, but that's just me.


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## Nummi_G4 (May 29, 2002)

What do you guys think about i frames ?  Here is a site that uses an i Frame.  It belongs to a new member of this forum:
http://www.dustmuzik.com/

I think the iFrame is great.  You can cram a bunch of stuff into a small area.  Great for news sections...  like the fella did there.


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## uoba (May 30, 2002)

Just spent the whole day using iframes for the first time for a client's site (for my programmer to tell me don't actually need to now!)

Anyway, the advantages over frames are that 1. they are not frames (bookmarking and search engines won't have problem), 2. they are more robust, especially if used in layers (for example if you need a dropdown menu (which habitually won't cross the frame border)), 3. and they generally feel cleaner.

Here's a great link to learn how to do them:
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/96/37/index2a.html?tw=authoring

I use GoLive, you need to use iframes as Elements (click on the Outline view and select the Element icon (which looks like <*>). Make sure the Element is called iframe, you can add attributes from the Inspector (such as src and frameborder etc.)


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