Re: Wrong approach towards Frames (was: New tags...)

On Tue, 11 Feb 1997, Benjamin Franz wrote:

> Counter-example #1:
> There *are* other uses. I can think of at least two additional seperate
> uses where content isolated frames are the *right* solution: Web page
> commentary and Meta-website submission validation and review.

True, but I don't think this is the majority of cases. People who push to
use frames MOSTLY want them for this reason. Actually, what I am supporting
here is a way to define, through Style Sheets, non-scrolling regions of a
document. It is a clearly presentational issue, hence absolutely in the
domain of Style Sheets, while two related documents are an issue of
structure.

Let's not forget that Live Chat is hardly what the Web was designed for, in
fact there are quite a few standards around for years that cater for this,
and when all you want to do is have a handy reference of a document around
(in the case of comments or validation, as you mentioned), most user agents
can simply display the other end of a hyperlink in a different window. We
don't need frames for that.

I'm NOT denying that these are valid and useful applications of Netscape-ish
frames, but they're in relatively low demand, and the current implementation
is kludgy when the Logo-and-NavBar approach is taken.

> Untrue. By linking to other frame documents you can change *all* the
> visible frames at once. And you are making a sweeping generalization that
> is easily disproved.
> 
> If that is what you want. For some problems divying up a single document
> into chunks is inadequate. Content *isolation* is needed. And you *could*
> do what you want with Netscape's frames as well. Think about it for awhile
> and I am sure you will discover how to put different pieces of the same
> document into frames - it isn't hard.

I know - I've done this, in practice. <BASE TARGET="_top"> is a start and
every link is a new frameset document that redefines frames and reloads all
documents, loading new ones if necessary. But it's kludgy, difficult, and
you have to keep track of an unnecessary number of documents.

Those of you worrying about unnecesary content duplication solved by frames,
what you want is an include function in HTML, not frames (yes, yes, I know,
the decleration doesn't allow for HTML fragments as documents, we've been
through this before on this list, but there are ways).

--
  Stephanos Piperoglou aka Sneakabout - http://users.hol.gr/~spip/index.html
  All I need in my life is a little love and a lot of money. In that order.

                                               ...oof porothika! (tm)

Received on Tuesday, 11 February 1997 16:58:12 UTC