why to use frames

take your audience into consideration:


when you use frames or iframes you will automatically have created what are called "printer friendly pages". So no ink will be wasted on ads or menus or whatever. In each one of your content pages supply a link to itself and have it open up in a _blank page and there ya go, with no re-design.

someone give a better reason than the one above of why *not to use frames, other than the typical maintsream "out of style" or how about taking up too much space, lol. i bet if the menu was 30 pixels in height those would still complain..

if search engines are a problem of how they do not list framed pages get yourself an awesome splash page or intro page and while your at it preload images and whatever content from there, might as well. but the key here is that your splash page must be atleast 2x better looking than your real page and actually contain some real info on it like something thats frequently updated.. just so the public can accept it. people these days... for instance off the top of my head, i would probably have "newest news updates" or how about real up to date "world news" on there? or whatever tickles your fancy, rofl.. this is where you show me your creativity :thumbsup: , so while some people would actually take the time to read it, or go through it or whatever it may be.. you could preload things and then have your main page load up instantly, just have the splash as the index and submit that to the search engines. ive also seen some scripts that will not allow a page to be seen without it being within frames so... u can do that too. Oh wait i just thought of a better one, you could also use the splash to direct users to specific screen resolution versions of your page e.g.:

enter 800 x 600
enter 1024 x 768

whatever.. anyway i dont know why people make such a big deal about not using frames these days they swear like its a forbiden practice.. i would understand if some browsers did not support frames, but i will not accept it for such undeveloped reasons

i bet someone will still post something about "i dont want a splash page" lol just because they are'nt creative enough to utilize one...

frames encourage out of the box design, i honestly believe the iframe was implemented for the true artist, someone who can actually see a complex design around an iframe. but whatever..

remember *printer friendly pages*

Frames are inaccessible, Bad for SEO, and its really easy to use a Print stylesheet for a printer friendly page. If you want content scrolling effect like an iframe, use a DIV with an overflow:scroll;. Although I dont hate iframes as much as actual framesets.

…

(I'm not quite sure if your post was meant as a joke, but in case it wasn't…)

It seems you have an extremely under-developed understanding of the issues as well as design and creativity in general. This is particularly evident where you seem to assert that using frames and/or splash pages is somehow a more creatively open option.

I'd love to see an example of what you consider to be a high level of creativity in use on a framed site that can't be easily or effectively reproduced in a non-framed design.

Wake up and smell the '00s.
That's not meant as a 'style' comment, just that truly creative designers know how to be every bit as creative with non-framed designs whilst actually improving on the level of usability of a frames-based site. The only thing frames 'offer' are things which simply aren't worth having. Their impact on usability is insignificant at best and in most cases negative.

Web design, both in terms of development and creativity, has moved on since 1997. With all due respect, it sounds like you have some catching up to do.

It's more than a little ironic that you think that placing individual bits of your pages into separate boxes within a frameset helps you design 'outside the box'.


Still, feel free to show me/us how a frameset can help you be more creative.

:sigh:

You can use CSS style sheets to create "printer friendly" pages
much easier than using frames ... it's basically an automatic conversion.

If you want an example, let me know.

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I don't ever use <frames>, but occasionally, I do use <iframes> (inline frames).
Even with CSS, inline frames can be useful for pages like this:
http://www.mickfredrickson.com/available_work.htm

the way i use the frame mainly is i put this forum i have inside an iframe CGI. and have all of that in a nifty inline box instead of the hassle of scrolling all the way to the top just to navigate can this be done with CSS? if so please do tell.

i bet someone will still post something about "i dont want a splash page" lol just because they are'nt creative enough to utilize one...

People don't use splash pages anymore, back in the day they were more popular but now it is more of an annoyance than anything. Just imagine if Google had one and every time you went there to search for something you had to hit enter, that'd get old real fast.

People don't use splash pages anymore, back in the day they were more popular but now it is more of an annoyance than anything. Just imagine if Google had one and every time you went there to search for something you had to hit enter, that'd get old real fast.


actually its quite professional to have a splash page redirecting a user to specific pages according to their screen resolution, browser etc.. u dont have to hit enter u can do a setTimeout of 1 second if u want.

Maybe... you know whats even more professional though? Having a site that will work regardless of resolution, browser and operating system. Thats called accessible design, and is exactly why I would never use frames again. I used to, when I had been doing HTML for 2 months... Now I dont go near them.

yes, but still giving a choice to the viewer to be able to view a high definition 1024 x 768 flash animated site for high bandwidth users or a regular html, css, or an alternative for dial up users on a splash page would also be nice, ofcourse thats only if you are into all the graphic, animation design and all that cutting edge stuph.

oh and by the way i now see the problem with framesets i was originaly actually referring to iframes*

As I said, iFrames are slightly more useful but still less accessible that you could do without them. I still rarely use Iframes.

i dont understand what you mean by "less accessible"? in reality the only reason i use iframes is for pages of which the content i have no control over such as u know form handlers where the content inside the iframe is the result of a cgi script. not trying to convince anyone to use them.. not saying they're better than any alternative just trying to point out that they're not necessarily as bad as people depict them as being.

i now understand that search engines will mark a frameset page as a "dead" page, thanks for pointing that out.. but this is not true for a page which contains an "iframe".

but anyway im starting to convert to css myself... anyone have a link to a site which has a form handler write into a DIV with an overflow:scroll; ?

i dont understand what you mean by "less accessible"? in reality the only reason i use iframes is for pages of which the content i have no control over such as u know form handlers where the content inside the iframe is the result of a cgi script.
Regain control over how your form data is handled, processed and represented by using your own server-side script (e.g. PHP) to handle and process your forms.
There are plenty of tutorials scattered around the forum and the web in general.

PHP form handlers are relatively simple things to write for yourself and don't require you to be a PHP guru to do. I'm no PHP guru, but I still wouldn't consider using a prebuilt CGI-bin form handler. I always prefer to build a PHP form handler into the contact/form pages I build.

e.g. http://www.netspade.com/articles/2005/09/26/php-form-mail/


Regarding the 'fixed' menus, is this the sort of thing you had in mind…?
e.g. http://www.dashboardwidgets.com/

If so, …
http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/menus.html
+
http://tagsoup.com/-dev/null-/css/fixed/
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/fixedPosition.html
http://www.cssplay.co.uk/layouts/fixed.html

i dont understand what you mean by "less accessible"?
Try dealing with any page with frames in a screenreader.

Also be aware that in XHTML 1.1 there is no target attribute on a tags nor a frameset tag (if I remember correctly, i know for sure there isnt a target) because we are slowly moving to the point where you might be looking at the site on a device that can't open a new window. Plus sites that just open new windows e.g. setting the target to blank are just plain annoying.

in fact, the target attribute is invalid in XHTML 1.0 strict, and a frameset can only be used on a specifically marked frameset doctype.

in fact, the target attribute is invalid in XHTML 1.0 strict, and a frameset can only be used on a specifically marked frameset doctype.

Just to complete the set…
The target attribute is invalid under Strict doctypes, including HTML 4.01 Strict.

As it says somewhere on W3.org, target has never been valid under any Strict DOCTYPE.