When frames aren't evil

[Neal]

Of course, every frame site I've ever seen has reduced usability and all.
We've been through this before.

But as frameset is still a part of HTML, there must be some legitimate use
for it, hmm? For most markup I know when it's useful and when it's not,
but regarding table markup I sure know when it isn't good, but can't
really come up with a way it would be good.

As you all are among the sharpest pencils in the bag, let me ask: Do you
know of a site which uses frames in an appropriate way? Where s it, and
why do you think it's acceptable?

[Neal]

On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 01:02:07 -0400, Neal <ne*****@yahoo. com> wrote:

regarding table markup

Meant "frame", of course.

[tm]

Neal wrote:

As you all are among the sharpest pencils in the bag,
Can't speak for others, but, yeah.
let me ask: Do you
know of a site which uses frames in an appropriate way? Where s it, and
why do you think it's acceptable?

Dumping photos cheap and easy.
http://www.campalicious.com/2002/photos/dav/

[Andrew Fedoniouk]

Russian software developer forum : http://www.rsdn.ru/ (in Russian)
Frames there are doing what they are designed for.

Andrew Fedoniouk.
http://terrainformatica.com

"Neal" <ne*****@yahoo. com> wrote in message
news:op******** ******@news.ind ividual.net...

Of course, every frame site I've ever seen has reduced usability and all.
We've been through this before.

But as frameset is still a part of HTML, there must be some legitimate use
for it, hmm? For most markup I know when it's useful and when it's not,
but regarding table markup I sure know when it isn't good, but can't
really come up with a way it would be good.

As you all are among the sharpest pencils in the bag, let me ask: Do you
know of a site which uses frames in an appropriate way? Where s it, and
why do you think it's acceptable?

[Leif K-Brooks]

tm wrote:

Neal wrote:

let me ask: Do you
know of a site which uses frames in an appropriate way? Where s it, and
why do you think it's acceptable?

Dumping photos cheap and easy.
http://www.campalicious.com/2002/photos/dav/

And what if someone wants to link to a particular photo on your page?
That's not a good use of frames. There's no such thing.

[Leif K-Brooks]

Andrew Fedoniouk wrote:

Russian software developer forum : http://www.rsdn.ru/ (in Russian)
Frames there are doing what they are designed for.

Yup, the frames on that site are doing exactly what they were designed
to do: annoy the visitor to no end.

[Spartanicus]

Neal <ne*****@yahoo. com> wrote:

Of course, every frame site I've ever seen has reduced usability and all.
We've been through this before.

But as frameset is still a part of HTML, there must be some legitimate use
for it, hmm? For most markup I know when it's useful and when it's not,
but regarding table markup I sure know when it isn't good, but can't
really come up with a way it would be good.

Contrary to popular belief all the technical problems with frames can be
solved. The one remaining drawback is that in most situations it takes a
*lot* of extra work to create and maintain, the maintenance issue can be
solved in a small number of cases.

But you specifically mentioned "usability" , this could mean something
else completely. A usability drawback could be that users are confused
by multiple independently scrolling panes within the browser window,
another issue could be that fixing things like a nav section can be
considered unnecessary and/or a waste of canvas space.

These latter problems are shared by css frame "imitations ", and css
frame imitations also have an inherent drawback to frames: viewport
scrolling with the keyboard breaks when there's a top of bottom fixed
section.

--
Spartanicus

[tm]

Leif K-Brooks wrote:

tm wrote:

Neal wrote:

let me ask: Do you
know of a site which uses frames in an appropriate way? Where s it, and
why do you think it's acceptable?

Dumping photos cheap and easy.

And what if someone wants to link to a particular photo on your page?

Fuck 'em. Its a page to dump photos, not for linkin' to.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Spartanicus <[e-mail] > wrote:

Contrary to popular belief all the technical problems with frames can
be solved.

Maybe for some values of "technical" , "problem", and "solve".

For example, the fact that you cannot refer to a particular combination
of frame contents (intuitively, a "page" of a site using frames) is a
technical problem in my opinion. And what comes closest to solving it is
setting up a server-side script that accepts suitable parameters
(identifying a combination) and generates a corresponding <frameset>
document. But I would say that there are so many problems in such a
solution that it really does not solve the non-adressibility problem.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Pierre Goiffon]

"Neal" <ne*****@yahoo. com> a écrit dans le message de
news:op******** ******@news.ind ividual.net

But as frameset is still a part of HTML, there must be some
legitimate use for it, hmm?

I'll respond with another question : what does exists now to replace frames
? Yes, there are CSS alternates... but they also have their disavantages.