- From: Steven Gilham <steven.gilham@eu.citrix.com>
- Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 08:55:05 +0100
- To: "Amaya ML" <www-amaya@w3.org>
This starts to stray from Amaya as an XHTML renderer/editor on to
broader web design issues (for which there are many easily found blogs).
Frames have fallen out of favour, at least in part because of usability
issues as noted by Jakob Nielsen as long ago as 1996
(http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html - "Why Frames Suck (Most of the
Time)" ), even if the ecology of user agents has moved on in the
interim.
In the abstract world where we can deal with some restrictive schema
(e.g. XHTML 1.1) and perfect user agents, the presentational appearance
of a frame can be emulated by a <div> with {overflow:scroll;} styling in
conjunction with appropriate sizing and positioning - applying
scrollbars to just that part of the page. Unlike the framed solution,
avoiding the repeated download of the common elements is now an issue -
DOM injection via a common script, perhaps, and relying on that script
being cached. (You need a dynamic solution to avoid the maintenance
issues in any case, be it server- or client- side). OTOH, it is unlike
the framed solution in that it avoids the bulk of the problems that they
suffer.
Received on Thursday, 20 October 2005 07:55:17 UTC