Topic: ...frames or not...?

Im currently working on a new site. I havent done that much yet, but the interface is almost done, after that im gonna start coding. Therefor i have a question. i cant decide wheter my site is going to have frames or not...
I have this interface with a few buttons that is equal on all pages. see the top: click to see, but its not finished!! I cant see the point why you should reload the whole site each time you click one of them. it isnt that much to reload (in kb) but the thing is that the top-buttons is always there, why reload them?? I know that the site is cached. but yet it takes some time to reload the whole page...but when using frames you can reduce that load time, maybe not that much but a little...

I know that there arent to many that uses frames now a days but why not??
I dont say its better i just wanna know why people arent using em....i cant see why...a couple of years ago i could understand, since it was a browser-question. but nowadays....

so what do you say?? frames or not?? what do you think are the disadvantages and advantages with frames???



/m

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I think it's better for you to use frame on this one but make sure you don't overused it like other site who have lots of scrolling in one page. BTW,Nice interface.

To Live is To Die...

If thats all you're going to do, I wouldn't bother with frames. Since the images for that interface will be cached the first time the page loads, making seperate pages won't increase the amount of time the user has to wait significantly.

Not to mention the fact that you're going to need at least 3 pages for that layout which seems like a bit of a hassle to me. Just create one template page and then you can slap your content into that, rename the file, and be done with it.

InI -There is no problem in using both frames and divs...but i do know what you mean...
blacksoulsunday -If im using frames it will just be two of them...top & bottom, btw thanx :-)
kretsminky -Thats not all, im going to add some more graphic, in time....if im using frames, it will be 2 frames...since the menu to the left is going change depending on what top selection you've done...not easy for you to know...

but thats not really the point....im wondering about frames in general, why arent people using them?? (it might be wrong forum...)
could it be because of dhtml & javascripts?? harder to add script to the site....?


/m

I think frames can be good with used the right way.
The main drawbacks of frames are search engines and bookmarking.
Unless you add the right code to the page, a framed page will not be picked up very well by search engines. And you also risk people coming in your page from the from way, so they only see a sub page, and not the whole frame structure.

Nice interface. Reminds me of that flight club site you showed us earlier.

thanks!
Keep in mind that the interface isnt finished, im working on it right now :-)

But thats not a good reason either...its easy to add a javascript that prevent that kind of things. see for your self (its one of the pages at the flight club site that you were refering to :-)


/m

[This message has been edited by hallon (edited 04-16-2002).]

use frames, flash, java applets or dhtml coding monkeys - just give me a good web experience.
i should not be able to explicitly tell that you are using any particular technology.
i don't care what you use, as long as i don't know about it.
and that means no ugly grey lines, no external links that open in your frameset, no totally screwed up bookmarks...
have i made my point?


- - r e i t s m a - -
(tifkab)

hallon: It is your call in the end. That current page loads pretty quickly on my slow dialup connection and after that it is all cached. ZOX hit on the 2 main problems (as well as visitors being stuck on a page with no navigation) - I'm not sure I like the redirect if I arrive without frames as sometimes I want to just view that page without the hassle of frames so a link to the full frame page would be good. Also does that script take people to the main page? This isn't very user friendly and if that is what is happening then this is the best solution I've yet seen (and a neat example):
www.xs4all.nl/~ppk/js/index.html?/~ppk/js/framecustom.html

In this day and age with good browsers and includes I wouldn't have thought frames were necessary unless you were doing something very heavy in graphics but as reitsma says if you are going to use them then implement them well - that means things like the above script and good use of the <NOFRAME> tags. You should also look at that lefthand navigation bar as it is too long for 800x600 so if you used frames you'd have 2 scrolling areas and that starts to look a mess and spoil the visual effect.

Emps

okay..i understand what you mean reitsma...i'll work on that
thanks for that useful link emps :-)
and frames....i havent decide wether to use them or not yet...well see, but ill let you know...i'll probably post another site review...
thanks!

/m

Well, I'll relate an experience using frames on a site to give you an idea of their drawbacks.

As mentioned, you can't have a direct link to a certain page because everything is in the frameset, but, as you said, there's a simple fix. Also, getting stuck in a frame is a problem and you have to be careful with your link targets so you don't inadvertantly get a frame within a frame.

Also, bookmarking is the worst thing. Say somebody makes a comment on a section of your site and sends a link to you. What you'll get is a link to the frameset page and not the actual page the person was looking for.