Re: Frames Are Improving

Benjamin Franz <snowhare@netimages.com> writes:
>On Thu, 22 Aug 1996, Jason O'Brien wrote:
>> I once swore off of frames forever, but since the latest versions of
>> Netscape and MS Internet Explorer now allow for better navigation within
>> frames, (hitting the BACK button at least allows going back within the
>> frame) which was the big problem before, I think frames are becoming
>> easier to use and incorporate into web page design.   The biggest problem
>> still to solve is the fact that everyone views web pages on different
>> display sizes, and this will forever be a problem for designing frames --
>> does anyone else have a standard they design for?   I have learned that
>> most people use 800x600, the in-between on most PC's -- does anyone else
>> have any kind of statistics on what most people use?   I don't know if
>> this problem will ever be solved when dealing with frame design.
>
>It turns out that MSIE is including screen size in their headers. I
>generated stats a few weeks ago. From about a million or so hits on
>XMission:
>
>37.3%    ( 640,480 )
>39.3%    ( 800,600 )
>20.1%    ( 1024,768 )
> 1.4%    ( 1152,864 )
> 0.1%    ( 1152,882 )
> 1.8%    ( 1280,1024 )
> 0.1%    ( 1600,1200 )
>
>This is probably biased towards the high end because of minimum system
>requirements to run Win95/NT.

I'd caution against making ANY assumptions about screen size or resolution
(which noboby has mentioned yet). In the next year we'll start seeing the
Web showing up on television and on PDA-type devices. At that point, any
attempt at frames is going to cause some rather difficult UI problems,
particularly as concerns pages designed with non-resizeable panes.

Murray (who thinks frames are an HTML virus)

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
     Murray Altheim, Program Manager
     Spyglass, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts
     email: <mailto:murray@spyglass.com>
     http:  <http://www.stonehand.com/murray/murray.html>
            "Give a monkey the tools and he'll eventually build a typewriter."

Received on Thursday, 22 August 1996 14:51:24 UTC