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Are frames still in? or not? I think they are but many friends say they are now very old hat. What do others think?
Kev
Kev
Frames can be used to good effect, but only on sites where subpages don't need to be bookmarked - like administration/configuration areas, temporary login areas, etc.
As for them 'looking naff' - that's down to bad coding - they can look however you want, and can actually have the advantage of having navigation bars always on view, with just the content of the page being scrolled through (without having to assign specific divs overflows, which can be bothersome).
As for them opening pages inside a frame, again, poor coding. A simple target="_top" fixes that.
The problems with them tend to be Google and other search engines have a hard time caching anything useful, and the links you follow in the search engine tend to suffer from no navigation bars or the like, unless it does the insufferable redirection, like MSDN.
Also, for the majority of sites, it's nice to be able to bookmark pages and return to them.
I'm really not a fan of the include()ing anything parameterised, either, it just means you have to set up a whitelist of pages to allow and makes administration much more painful than it needs to be. Including a template type file and addHeader() addFooter(), or include(header) include(footer) are much preferred by me.
As for them 'looking naff' - that's down to bad coding - they can look however you want, and can actually have the advantage of having navigation bars always on view, with just the content of the page being scrolled through (without having to assign specific divs overflows, which can be bothersome).
As for them opening pages inside a frame, again, poor coding. A simple target="_top" fixes that.
The problems with them tend to be Google and other search engines have a hard time caching anything useful, and the links you follow in the search engine tend to suffer from no navigation bars or the like, unless it does the insufferable redirection, like MSDN.
Also, for the majority of sites, it's nice to be able to bookmark pages and return to them.
I'm really not a fan of the include()ing anything parameterised, either, it just means you have to set up a whitelist of pages to allow and makes administration much more painful than it needs to be. Including a template type file and addHeader() addFooter(), or include(header) include(footer) are much preferred by me.
Yes it all makes sense and I agree with all that you all say, so now I must go rethink a fews ideas and see what I can come up with.
Cheers
Kev
Cheers
Kev
Frames are poor, avoid using them. Better ways to get similar effects if you put a bit more work and effort into your site.
Good way of getting around the problem that menus must stay the same on every page?
I've found it's easy to just use a single page (eg. index.php) for the basic structure of a site, then pass as a parameter the actual page that needs to be viewed, and include that page in the 'content' area of the index page.
eg. you have an index page with all the nav bars set out, along with anything else that needs to be on every page, then have a div called (for example) 'content'. You then just include the file for each individual page in that content div, based on what index.php gets passed, so for example, index.php?page=reviews would be the reviews page.
Although that means the navigation part of the site has to reload on every page change, your menu shouldn't be too complex anyway really, so it shouldn't be a problem.
I don't think frames are really necessary. If you want an area of scrollable content you can just use a scrolling div, you can use stuff like .htaccess to 'mask' URLs so they look 'nicer' than they really are, and you can use includes to make a navigation (or anything else) appear on every page, so I don't really see that there's any need to be using frames nowadays...
I've found it's easy to just use a single page (eg. index.php) for the basic structure of a site, then pass as a parameter the actual page that needs to be viewed, and include that page in the 'content' area of the index page.
eg. you have an index page with all the nav bars set out, along with anything else that needs to be on every page, then have a div called (for example) 'content'. You then just include the file for each individual page in that content div, based on what index.php gets passed, so for example, index.php?page=reviews would be the reviews page.
Although that means the navigation part of the site has to reload on every page change, your menu shouldn't be too complex anyway really, so it shouldn't be a problem.
I don't think frames are really necessary. If you want an area of scrollable content you can just use a scrolling div, you can use stuff like .htaccess to 'mask' URLs so they look 'nicer' than they really are, and you can use includes to make a navigation (or anything else) appear on every page, so I don't really see that there's any need to be using frames nowadays...
Do you mean the name of website that appears at the top of the window? E.g. on the Freeola website it has "Freeola Chat - Free UK Forums and Chat ...".
If so that's easy to fix - just put the title of each page in the header tag:
If on the other hand you mean the url box (I think this is what you mean), then there is no way to change this, and I don't think you should want to. If all the pages look the same in the url box the user can't go back to a particular page, especially annoying if your website is large.
An example:
If someone was looking at my webpages, they might see my CV. Then they would think I'm perfect for that highly paid new job they have at their Singapore branch. They would then bookmark the page to come back to later. However, because my pages use frames, the bookmark would take them to index.html rather than cv.html. Annoying. They then have to search for the CV page, they are busy, they get fed up, I don't get to move to Singapore.
Silly example I know, but you get the idea. For a large site such as amazon it would be really annoying to not be able to email someone with a link to a specific product or bookmark a product to look at later.
For parts of the webpage that look the same on each page, such as menus, headings, etc, you might use a web-programming language to generate your pages (I use php for my personal site), or you could use xml and xslt to create well organised and easily updateable web pages. I expect there are lots of other ways I don't know about as well.
Hope that helps, and sorry it's so long.
Jo
xx
If so that's easy to fix - just put the title of each page in the header tag:
<html>
<header>
<title>Page Title</title>
</header>
<body>
...
</body>
</html>
If on the other hand you mean the url box (I think this is what you mean), then there is no way to change this, and I don't think you should want to. If all the pages look the same in the url box the user can't go back to a particular page, especially annoying if your website is large.
An example:
If someone was looking at my webpages, they might see my CV. Then they would think I'm perfect for that highly paid new job they have at their Singapore branch. They would then bookmark the page to come back to later. However, because my pages use frames, the bookmark would take them to index.html rather than cv.html. Annoying. They then have to search for the CV page, they are busy, they get fed up, I don't get to move to Singapore.
Silly example I know, but you get the idea. For a large site such as amazon it would be really annoying to not be able to email someone with a link to a specific product or bookmark a product to look at later.
For parts of the webpage that look the same on each page, such as menus, headings, etc, you might use a web-programming language to generate your pages (I use php for my personal site), or you could use xml and xslt to create well organised and easily updateable web pages. I expect there are lots of other ways I don't know about as well.
Hope that helps, and sorry it's so long.
Jo
xx
yes I see where you are coming from but some times the other pages need to stay the same for menus etc? the thing I like about frames is that it keeps the domain name as it should be along the address bar with out showing the page eg in a framre its www. whatever.co.uk but out of a frame its www.whatever.co.uk/some.htm etc
Perhaps you know of a way to resolve this for me?
Kev
Perhaps you know of a way to resolve this for me?
Kev
I'd say very very out.
My reasons:
- they look naff (in my opinion)
- when you click on a link inside a frame, the new page opens within that frame, and the other frames stay. Does that make sense? I find this really annoying.
Jo
My reasons:
- they look naff (in my opinion)
- when you click on a link inside a frame, the new page opens within that frame, and the other frames stay. Does that make sense? I find this really annoying.
Jo
Are frames still in? or not? I think they are but many friends say they are now very old hat. What do others think?
Kev
Kev