Re: FRAMEBORDER attribute?

On Thu, 1 Feb 2001, Dan Miller wrote:

> 
> 
> Frank Tobin wrote:
> > 
> > Dave  J Woolley, at 17:20 -0000 on Thu, 1 Feb 2001, wrote:
> > 
> >     [DJW:]  Most commercial sites that have ever thought about
> >     this make ....
> 
> > First of all, this technique is not limited commercial sites.  It's even
> > good for embedding of one's own site.
> > 
> > Second, never assume Javascript.
> 
> As we carry this thread into the future and farther from topicality.
> 
> I just have to jump in here.  Frames are often used as navigational
> aides, and that is what they do best.  Just make sure your content
> documents stand on their own and interlink.  This is easily accomplished
> with HTML and JavaScript including NOSCRIPT tags.

Navigational aids? No. Developers typically use frames because they think
it will cut their development time. Frames break the fundmental user
conception of what a "page" is; i.e., an individual unit of
information. With frames, a single unit becomes 2 or more units in terms
of the assets that make up the page. From the user's perspective, however,
it's still just one unit of information. This leads to usability problems
as well as difficulties with history and bookmarking.

> For example, use JS to document.write a navigational header only IF the
> doc is loaded in a top level window.  Have the same header in a NOSCRIPT
> tag for no-JS browsers.  The JS header does not appear when the doc is
> loaded into a frameset, but appears outside of it or woth JS off.

Or, dispense with javascript entirely and use any number of
server-side tools to write out a navigational header based-upon the
hierarchial structure of the document(s) or some other dataset.

- Jeff

Received on Thursday, 1 February 2001 14:14:45 UTC