Are you anti-frames?
- Thread starter MDLarson
- Start date
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
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...
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...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.
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.
.dev.lqd
Angry Member
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.
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.
nkuvu
Gone
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.
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?
MDLarson
Registered
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.
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.
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.
uoba
Re: member
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.)
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.)