Help: Annoying Frames...

Spunog UIE · 05-05-2001 5:52pm #1

Hey tis me again, amateur webdesigner.

I am sooooo ****ed off with my attempts at doing simple frames. I did them before and there wasn't a problem, but whatever is happenin this time i just can't get it.

I can't get the right target frame. All i want to do is make a link in one frame open up the page in the other.

Look at the nav' bar at the bottom of my pic page. http://www.angelfire.com/fm/Gideon/pictures/
I have the links on it pointing to entirely different pages with frames, but what i want to happen is make the bottom frame load the new page in the top frame. Hope i explain thi sproperly.
Oh its hosted by angelfire. i hope that they arn't the cos and its just me.

PLEASSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HELP>
im slowly going insane!!!

Gideon.

satchmo · 05-05-2001 7:55pm

in your index page, put name="Main" in the <frame> tag of the bottom page. Then in the link tags of the bottom page, put target="Main" to load them in the main page. Simple as that.

Spunog UIE · 05-05-2001 10:51pm

Hey thats the one. got it all sorted now.

Thanks,
Gideon

Robbie Burke · 05-05-2001 11:09pm

DIE FRAMES DIE.

Sorry, I just dislkie frames, if you are using them so you can update your navigation quickly and easily, don't!!

Use a combination of tables and SSI, if you don't know what these are, I would be happy to implement them into your site for nothing for you. anything I can do to get rid of frames!!

Spunog UIE · 06-05-2001 2:55pm

Any special reasons for disliking frames?

Gideon.

Spunog UIE · 06-05-2001 2:57pm

oh by the way how do you rate the message board i have up, it used to be good, but images aren't loading and such. Think the server is dieing or something. how is it for you?

Gideon.

mewso · 06-05-2001 4:36pm

Yeah I have to agree with an earlier poster. I hate friggin frames. I don't know what it is. At times I'v seen them done pretty well but 9/10 times it's gives a site an amateur feel. I haven't looked at your site so nothing personal. SSI gives a site a much more professional feel. Look at some of the good looking sites of these days amazon, cnet etc. Nice and professional looking but then you might not agree with me.

dahamsta · 06-05-2001 5:09pm

"Disliking" and "hating" frames is not a valid reason to advise someone not to use them. There's only one valid reason not to use frames, and that's incompatibility with some search engines. If you're not worried about search engines, there's absolutely no reason not to use them. I'd also like to point out that 1) professionalism has nothing to do with it - some of the most professional sites in the world use frames; and 2) SSI isn't available on a lot of servers. I doubt angelfire is one of them.

[This message has been edited by dahamsta (edited 06-05-2001).]

Enygma · 07-05-2001 3:56pm

I'm afraid I'm gonna have to disagree here, the search engine issue is not the only valid reason not to use frames.

1) Frames aren't supported on all browsers
- a weak argument I know but it's still valid.
2) It's not often that frames are imlemented well.
- More often than not, frames just make it difficult to navigate a site.
3) Frames are butt-ugly.
- All that frame widget cruft is ugly and just takes up space on the page.

Frames simply bring no advantage whatsoever to the development and useability of a site.
Includes *are* far better at both ends, from the developers and the users perspective.
And your argument about them not being available on Angelfire is redundant too. There are plenty of other places that *do* provide SSI and more for free.

Hehe, I can get kinda passionate over frames. To me they're just as bad as the blink tag.

Bard · 07-05-2001 5:34pm

1) Frames aren't supported on all browsers

Utterly ridiculous. They are supported on the browsers which make up well over 90% of the web viewing masses.

2) It's not often that frames are imlemented well.

That's not a reason for not implementing them. Other people's implementations will have nothing to do with your own.

3) Frames are butt-ugly.

Apart from that being pure opinion, frame borders can be turned off rendering the "butt-ugliness" of the frames invisible, and therefore irrelevant.

Frames simply bring no advantage whatsoever to the development and useability of a site.

Bullsh|t. That all depends on what functionality is required in the site.

Includes *are* far better at both ends, from the developers and the users perspective.

Usually, but not necessarily. It again depends on what functionality is required, the capabilities of the server, required portability of the site and how the site has been designed.

Now, while I in general dislike frames myself and would avoid using them unless absolutely necessary, - your discouraging comments were not helpful, and for the most part, simply not true.

An excellent example of a site in which frames are effective and useful is www.postcardxpress.com - go into the "Design Online" part to see them in action.

Similarly to Flash, frames are not useless, but have just been used very badly for the most part by web designers.

Bard

"We do know it was we who scorched the sky..."

dahamsta · 07-05-2001 8:22pm

Bard got there before me, but my response would be ever so slightly different.

> Frames aren't supported on all browsers - a weak argument I know but
> it's still valid.
>
You said it - a very weak argument, and not valid unless your target audience is people who haven't upgraded their browsers in five years; or a very small core of people using text-based browsers. If you're worried about them, you can forget everything else too, and do a search on the W3C site for the HTML 1.0 spec. Because that's all you'll be able to use.

> It's not often that frames are imlemented well.
>
Badly implemented frames are a web developer problem, not a client problem, so this point is moot.

> More often than not, frames just make it difficult to navigate a
> site.
>
Again, this is related to the developer, so moot. SSI based navigation, which you're so keen on, simply replicates the frames "way of doing it".

> Frames are butt-ugly.
>
And again, this is developer related. Properly written frames code can render them invisible to the user.

> All that frame widget cruft is ugly and just takes up space on the
> page.
>
Ditto above.

> Frames simply bring no advantage whatsoever to the development and
> useability of a site.
>
Again, SSI used for navigation simply replicates the ease-of-development and useability of frames on a webpage. Your argument is illogical.

> Includes *are* far better at both ends, from the developers and the
> users perspective.
>
I'll rephrase that for you: "Includes *can* be far better at both ends, depending on the implementation." They also have their disadvantages, such as adding to load time; and loading up the processor because of the higher processing requirements of the server, and the file I/O required on each request.

> And your argument about them not being available on Angelfire is
> redundant too. There are plenty of other places that *do* provide
> SSI and more for free.
>
I beg to differ - the creator of this thread has his or her site on Angelfire.

> Hehe, I can get kinda passionate over frames. To me they're just as
> bad as the blink tag.
>
And that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. And a lot of people would agree with you. But that doesn't make you right. It doesn't make me right either - I used to be dead against frames, not because I "didn't like them", but because we develop professional sites and needed to make them accessible to the widest audience possible. My developer used to crawl all over me every time we developed a site, because I wouldn't let him use frames except in certain circumstances. Now he can do what he wants, because it doesn't matter any more.

My post and points stand. If you want to advise people to do something - or not do something - you have to come up with a valid argument to support it. "Disliking" and "hating" frames is not a valid reason to advise someone not to use them. It's only a valid reason for *you* not to use them.

Spunog UIE · 07-05-2001 9:19pm

yessssssssssssssssss, great argument :S,
but can i be totally selfish and say what about my page

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, i've only really done anything with the ol' pics sectoin bit buzy on time due to leavin n all, but whats ya think of the " imlementation "

Oh and do you know any better relable free servers other than angelfire. I don't like geocities.

Gideon.
http://www.angelfire.com/fm/Gideon/

Enygma · 07-05-2001 10:43pm

Originally posted by Bard:

Utterly ridiculous. They are supported on the browsers which make up well over 90% of the web viewing masses.

I did say it was a weak argument, but its not so ridiculous. I use lynx and my Palm to surf the web quite a lot, and I'm sure the other 10% of us that do too wouldn't say it's ridiculous either.

Apart from that being pure opinion, frame borders can be turned off rendering the "butt-ugliness" of the frames invisible, and therefore irrelevant.

Just my opinion but you have to agree, it is ugly.
Yeah but there are plenty of people out there that don't know that. Just like they don't know that you can turn off Javascript, prompt for cookies etc. These are the people that are going to be viewing the site and you don't really want them to have that much control over your design do you?

Bullsh|t. That all depends on what functionality is required in the site.

What I meant was frames give you no advantage over includes, and I still believe that's true. Just my opinion.

Now, while I in general dislike frames myself and would avoid using them unless absolutely necessary, - your discouraging comments were not helpful, and for the most part, simply not true.

No, I belive they were all true. And if it get people to stop using frames then I believe they were helpful too

An excellent example of a site in which frames are effective and useful is www.postcardxpress.com - go into the "Design Online" part to see them in action.

I never said that there were sites that implemented frames very well. But there sure are a heck of a lot more sites that don't do it well at all. And before you go saying that that's a developers problem, which it is, it becomes the users problem then.

Similarly to Flash, frames are not useless, but have just been used very badly for the most part by web designers.

At last we agree

Didn't mean to go mouthing off there so sorry, it's just that I really hate navigating a frames-based site, especially when the developer does something retarded like switching the targets of the links around ever so often. ARRGH

Bard · 08-05-2001 12:49am

Originally posted by Enygma:
I did say it was a weak argument, but its not so ridiculous. I use lynx and my Palm to surf the web quite a lot, and I'm sure the other 10% of us that do too wouldn't say it's ridiculous either.

Lynx and the Palm do not make up the "other" 10%... they probably make up about 2-3% tops.

Just my opinion but you have to agree, it is ugly.
Yeah but there are plenty of people out there that don't know that. Just like they don't know that you can turn off Javascript, prompt for cookies etc. These are the people that are going to be viewing the site and you don't really want them to have that much control over your design do you?

Sheesh! ... Frame borders are not turned off by the end user in their BROWSER- they're turned off by the developer in the HTML code for the FRAMESET! The user doesn't need to know that it can be "turned off" (or set to "0", to be more accurate) - they don't even occasionally need to know that frames are being used at all.

No, I belive they were all true. And if it get people to stop using frames then I believe they were helpful too

I wouldn't exactly call completely discouraging people to the point where they no longer use a particular type of web site "helpful"... there are still a lot of excellent frames-based sites out there. Let the user make their own mind up on a site-by-site basis.

I never said that there were sites that implemented frames very well. But there sure are a heck of a lot more sites that don't do it well at all. And before you go saying that that's a developers problem, which it is, it becomes the users problem then.

Again (!) the fact that quite a large number of web developers completely ar$e up their implementation of a frames-based site is NO reason for a developer NOT to use frames. As long as they know what they're doing and know the good and bad points of frames, there is no reason for they themselves to ar$e it up also.

Bard

"We do know it was we who scorched the sky..."

Spunog UIE · 08-05-2001 9:28pm

*COUGH*

Bard · 08-05-2001 10:49pm

Y'oughtta take something for that...

Bard

"We do know it was we who scorched the sky..."

FreaK_BrutheR · 10-05-2001 5:45pm

Help: Annoying Frames...

shouldn't this be on the music board?

_ _ _ _ _________ _ _ _ _
<A HREF="http://homepage.eircom.net/~cullenm" TARGET=_blank>

</A>
http://run.to/pile

Bludgeon · 12-05-2001 12:54am

dont say that frames are an example of bad web design ... if one site can do it well then every other site can ... example .. check out www.quake3world.com/forums
the q3 forum site is similar to this one but its better ... if you know how to implement frames well dood go 4 it .... i remember i Has a project for college once where our site had to use frames and could not exceed 150k ... i think it's still there http://indigo.ie/~brianco if u wanna c it ...
understand ... its something i did a while ago but i like the way the frames work ..

[fist]Snowball · 12-05-2001 1:08am

Gideon?

What r u buildin' ur sites with?

Spunog UIE · 13-05-2001 10:49pm

I generally use front page(kinda old version me thinks) to get the basic shape of the things. And then once tables or scripts go into it, i use notepad plus. Cos emmm too many tables and stuff cos front page on my computer to get ****ed up, and frontpage always *****n changes things that ya don't want changed if ya get me. But its good to get a general idea of what it looks like.
I had ultraedit 52 or something for a while which was really good but it was shareware.

WHy?

mewso · 14-05-2001 3:31pm

I'm anti-frames but it is as ever just my opinion. O.k. so the geniuii among us set frameborder=0 god knows I've been through the frame thing many times - well whoopiffingdoo but hey look at those lovely scroll-bars that appear when my resolution is not the same as said genius web developer, said developer who is going to revolutionise web design with frames, scroll bars in the middle of the page - urgh ugly. O.k. set scroll to never etc. and hey presto that last link at the bottom of the menu can't be seen in the lower resolution so the user never knew there was an email link to contact the site. But hey dedicated webbers can put in the hours to test in all resolutions on all platforms and on the most popular browsers.... or he can just make a page of limited width that includes menus etc. and save a lot of time, any risk of ugliness in the process.

SAY NO TO FRAMES!!!!!

Sean · 23-05-2001 8:10pm

lol ban frames

hehe

Help: Annoying Frames...

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