RE: When is it appropriate to use HTML frames?

True. My point (which I did a poor job of explaining) was this: Let's say we
have a frame page as described in poor ASCII art below.

"default.asp" is the framepage. "Default.asp" loads "top.asp" into the top
frame, "contents.asp" into the left frame and "main.asp" in the right frame.
Now, a customer clicks on the "products" url in the left frame. This causes
"Products.asp" to be loaded into the right frame. So far so good. This
customer wants to mail this web page to a friend. He has two choices: 

1) Look at the URL at the top which says "default.asp" and send that 
or 
2) Be savvy enough to get the URL of the page in the right frame,
"products.asp" and send that. 

Either way we have a problem. If he takes option one his friend sees
"main.asp" not "products.asp" in the right frame, or if he takes option two
his friend sees "product.asp" but not in a frame environment so he is
missing the top and left frame. What I was referring to is that you can put
some javascript in "products.asp" so that if this page isn't loaded as a
child page it will redirect to the frame page and load itself in the right
frame.

-Walden

+-----------------------------------------+
|       TOP                               |
|                                         |
+--------+--------------------------------+
|        |                                |
|  LEFT  |     RIGHT                      |
|        |                                |
|        |                                |
|        |                                |
|        |                                |
+--------+--------------------------------+


-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Kempter [mailto:NOERICK.NORCAL@CLEANCITY.COM]
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2000 1:59 PM
To: 'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com'
Subject: RE: When is it appropriate to use HTML frames?


Walden,

     In actuality, frames has the functionality to specify (without using 
Javascript) how pages will be presented.  The new page can be within the 
content frame, in a new window all together or replace the frames page with 
the new page.

-----Original Message-----
From:   Walden H. Leverich [SMTP:WaldenL@TechSoftInc.com]
Sent:   Monday, July 31, 2000 9:32 AM
To:     'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com'
Subject:        RE: When is it appropriate to use HTML frames?

Frames got there original bad rep from minimal/incomplete/buggy support in
early browser versions. That has all been fixed now.

However, the biggest problem with frames, IMHO, is that you cannot go
directly to a specific page since most pages are loaded in the "content
frame" and the URL remains that of the frames page. If you type the URL of
the content page you miss all the surrounding frame. Now you can get around
this using tome JavaScript trickery but it's not great. Having said that,
the ability to refresh only a section of a page is the greatest advantage 
of
frames.

So, in short I've seen systems that use frames very well and I've seen
systems that use frames very poorly.

Personally, I use frames quite a bit for applications, but not too much for
"brochure-type" web sites.

-Walden

-----Original Message-----
From: Nathan M. Andelin [mailto:nathanma@haaga.com]
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2000 10:22 AM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: When is it appropriate to use HTML frames?


A few weeks from now I'll be starting on the development of a new web
application.  I've been leaning toward using "frames" in the user 
interface.

However, I've noticed the trend in the last year or so that web sites have
been moving away from the use of frames.  Also, I noted a comment from Brad
Stone a couple weeks ago about "beginners" getting caught up with frames.

On the other hand, MS uses frames in several of their web applications.
Frames are part of the HTML spec.  Both IE and Navigator have supported
frames for several versions now.  So, why not use frames?



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