Re: Frameset/Frame Specification Amendment (HTML+CSS)

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From: "Axel Dahmen" <brille1@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, March 26, 2010 4:16 PM
To: <www-style@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Frameset/Frame Specification Amendment (HTML+CSS)

> I agree to Brad's response.
>
> Ajax is no replacement for using frames. Doing so would be a way of 
> leaving intrinsic browser features aside just to rebuild them with 
> substantial manual effort, affecting three distinct channels: HTML, CSS 
> and JavaScript. This effort can easily be left aside if using frames.
>
> Frames are also fully accessible to disabled users, in contrast to your 
> assertion.
>
> I don't believe that using server-side script to reload a whole page again 
> and again would be a serious alternative to the bandwidth-saving use of 
> frames.
>
> I'm very much looking forward to a further constructive discussion on my 
> suggestion.
>

Yes, <frame>s have their own use cases and benefits.
Notable example (at least for me) is http://www.rsdn.ru - forum engine that 
is quite bandwidth and battery efficient.
Other examples are help systems that have index/content layout, etc.

For information (reading is optional) :

I even went further in my engines [1] and made <frameset> and <frame> as 
ordinary DOM elements.
So you can include <frameset> in any place on the page, say like this:

<div>
   <h1>... caption...</h1>
   <frameset>....</frameset>
</div>

And yet <frameset> can contain any other block elements other than <frame>s. 
This makes sense if you need
sort of static TOC, dynamic content area and splitter [behavior] between 
them.

Following is quite popular setup:

<h1>Help topics</h1>
<frameset>
   <ul id="TOC">
        <li><a target="content">Topic 1</a></li>
        <li><a target="content">Topic 2</a></li>
   </ul>
   <frame name="content" src="greetings.htm" />
</frameset>

And of course you can apply any layout to the frameset by using flow and 
flex units[2].
Here is a fragment of default style sheet that is used for styling framesets 
in the engine:

frameset
{
  behavior: frame-set;
  width:*;
  height:*;
  border-spacing:3px;
  background-color:threedface;
}

frameset { flow:vertical; }
frameset[cols] { flow:horizontal; }

frameset[cols] > * { height:*; }
frameset[rows] > * { width:*; }

As you may see it uses precisely flow:horizontal of yours.

Hope I did not went too far from the topic.

I just want to say that technically <frameset> and <frame> are not anyhow 
different from other
DOM elements so, indeed, they can be styled by CSS.

[1] Embeddable HTML/CSS engines:
       http://www.terrainformatica.com/htmlayout/  - htmlayout,
       http://www.terrainformatica.com/sciter/  - the Sciter.
[2] The flow an flex units in CSS proposal:
      http://www.terrainformatica.com/w3/flex-layout/flex-layout.htm

-- 
Andrew Fedoniouk

http://terrainformatica.com

Received on Saturday, 27 March 2010 03:54:39 UTC