name, title of Frames; Noframes

I think that there is a little confusion concerning 
the name and title attributes of FRAME.

"name" is intented to be machine readable and has 
restrictive syntax. (Eg, it cannot have spaces, 
it must atart with a letter.) "title" is intended to be 
human readable text.

I think best is to recommend:
1. use title P1.
2. use name that is descriptive to a human  P2. (or maybe P1)

I also think that it would make sense to recommend to 
HTML WG to make title a required attribute of FRAME in the 
next HTML version.  After all, this is the only human readable 
link description available for the FRAME element.

Using name is for backward compatibility (e.g. with Lynx2.8 
that does not recognize the title attribute.).
In principle a frame may have no name, if it is fixed
(e.g., navigation bar) and the author doesn't want to 
target any other document in that frame. 

Using NOFRAMES improves considerably the 
usability of a site if multiple windows are not created,
but if all the frames are represented as links with 
meaningful descriptions, it is still accessible. This makes it P2.

There are other reasons to use NOFRAMES, such as 
accessibility to Excite!'s indexing robot, but this is beyond 
the scope of the WAI.

Regards,

Nir Dagan
Assistant Professor of Economics
Universidad Pompeu Fabra
Ramon Trias Fargas 25
08005 Barcelona
Spain

http://www.nirdagan.com
mailto:nir@nirdagan.com

"There is nothing quite so practical as a good theory." 
-- A. Einstein

Received on Thursday, 7 January 1999 12:36:27 UTC