Are HTML frames good?

[Water Cooler v2]

Are HTML frames a good thing or a bad thing?

For someone who knows HTML, and only a measely bit of JavaScript and
DOM familiarity, what are the alternatives to frames?

When people design a navigation bar to their websites, the one to the
left that displayes links on the same website, do most of them use HTML
frames or other means? What are such other means apart from displaying
a graphic image that gives the impression of a borderless frame, and
displaying links/text in a table on top of that image?

 

[Els]

Are HTML frames a good thing or a bad thing?
Worse.

For someone who knows HTML, and only a measely bit of JavaScript and
DOM familiarity, what are the alternatives to frames?

Writing pages without frames...

When people design a navigation bar to their websites, the one to the
left that displayes links on the same website, do most of them use HTML
frames or other means?

Other means: html code. Just like you would have done in a frame, only
without the frame. In the same page as the content.

What are such other means apart from displaying
a graphic image that gives the impression of a borderless frame, and
displaying links/text in a table on top of that image?

Impression of a borderless frame? You mean you want to be able to see
an absent border so that people think there is an invisible frame?

Maybe you meant to ask: how do I get my navigation links to stay on
the left of the page with the content to the right, and how do I give
it a separate background colour or image?

f-up set to alt.html

 

[Water Cooler v2]

For someone who knows HTML, and only a measely bit of JavaScript and

Writing pages without frames...

That is rather a glib remark. I thank you for answering but also
request you to check your mood. In your present disposition, you seem
to be chucking more noise than signal. Sorry! I don't mean to sound the
same. I appreciate your wanting to help. Just that it wasn't a very
helpful answer, but rather the question in the guise of an answer.
Perhaps, it would help if I amplied the question, "Not having to use
frames, what other techniques could one deploy to achieve separation of
content on a Web page?"

Other means: html code. Just like you would have done in a frame, only
without the frame. In the same page as the content.
Thanks!




Impression of a borderless frame? You mean you want to be able to see
an absent border so that people think there is an invisible frame?

Maybe you meant to ask: how do I get my navigation links to stay on
the left of the page with the content to the right, and how do I give
it a separate background colour or image?

Of course, you got the idea and that means the purpose of the
communication was well-achieved.

f-up set to alt.html

What's that?

 

[Stephen Poley]

Are HTML frames a good thing or a bad thing?

Mostly bad, for reasons discussed many times in the
comp.infosystems.www.* groups - see the archive.

They may have their uses when you are putting real content in multiple
frames (i.e. not just a heading or a navigation bar) and you expect that
the user will want to adjust the frame sizes...

For someone who knows HTML, and only a measely bit of JavaScript and
DOM familiarity, what are the alternatives to frames?

When people design a navigation bar to their websites, the one to the
left that displayes links on the same website, do most of them use HTML
frames or other means? What are such other means apart from displaying
a graphic image that gives the impression of a borderless frame, and
displaying links/text in a table on top of that image?

.... but I gather that doesn't apply in this case.

Try something like this:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/layout3.html

 

[Els]

That is rather a glib remark. I thank you for answering but also
request you to check your mood.

My mood is just fine, thank you - the sun is shining, the groceries
have been bought, and we're having chili con carne tonight

In your present disposition, you seem to be chucking more noise than signal.
!!

Sorry! I don't mean to sound the same.

But you did anyway ;-)

I appreciate your wanting to help. Just that it wasn't a very
helpful answer, but rather the question in the guise of an answer.
Perhaps, it would help if I amplied the question, "Not having to use
frames, what other techniques could one deploy to achieve separation of
content on a Web page?"

It's done with CSS - float the navigation to one side, and give the
content a margin-left to accommodate the floated navigation. (yes, I
know this is not explaining word for word what you need to do, but
it's just to get you looking in the right direction)

Welcome!


Of course, you got the idea and that means the purpose of the
communication was well-achieved.



What's that?

It means that I hope you are reading alt.html, because your message
and this message, will be only in alt.html now. f-up is short for
follow-up, which means it's redirecting any answers in all the groups
you crossposted to, to one group only, being alt.html.

Now that we know you may want to use CSS to achieve your goal though,
maybe we should set a new follow-up to a CSS group?

I'm not sure yet though, as by "separation of content", I don't know
if you mean only visually, or also in code. Maybe you meant "how can I
write the navigation only once, yet have it appear on every page,
without the help of frames". The answer to that one, would be found
here:
http://allmyfaqs.net/faq.pl?Include_one_file_in_another

Of course, you will still need the CSS to make sit on one side with
the content to the other side.

Stephen gave an example in his post, might just exactly do what you
want

 

[Andy Dingley]

Are HTML frames a good thing or a bad thing?

Well they're not as bad as cross-posting one of the most obvious and
easily searched-for web authoring questions you could possibly ask.

So yes, use frames. Do whatever you like. If it was really going to
make a difference to you, you'd have noticed by now.

 

[Water Cooler v2]

Well they're not as bad as cross-posting one of the most obvious and
easily searched-for web authoring questions you could possibly ask.

So yes, use frames. Do whatever you like. If it was really going to
make a difference to you, you'd have noticed by now.

Thanks, Stephen and Els. I got it. I always used to wonder how they
squeeze something like the navigation bar to the left because HTML is
normally written horizontally, if you know what I mean -- what comes
first is put above until the space on that row gets over.

I got it now.

[PAGE_SOURCE]margin: 0 0 0 11em;[/PAGE_SOURCE]

I know a little bit of CSS. Actually, I know almost all of it until
before CSS 2 that has different selectors for different media. But the
problem is that I've used only very little of it. To be honest, I'm
mostly a library developer who works on C, C#, VB 6, VB.NET and Win32
API. I've done almost no Web development except for practice and an
incomplete ASP.NET project for real.

Now, a different question. Just for exploring all different
alternatives and possibilities.

Suppose that the navigation bar is something I want to place on every
Web page over my website. And I want the content of the navigation bar
also to be constant. I can then design a separate HTML page that
carries the code for the navigation bar.

If my understanding is correct, some CGI/ISAPI filters such as ASP/PHP
provide for server side includes. Using the server side includes, the
programmer can point to the content of the HTML/PHP/ASP/CGI file
containing the navigation bar code into every Web page that needs the
navigation bar.

But those includes, if I understand correctly, are not built into a Web
server. They're extensions provided by ISAPI or whatever other web
server API. So, they're accessible only when you are doing server-side
programming such as ASP/PHP etc.

In plain HTML, using only HTML and nothing but HTML (or may be some
lite JavaScript), is it possible to include content from another HTML
page into the current page?

I hope I've made my question clear.

 

[JDS]

In plain HTML, using only HTML and nothing but HTML (or may be some
lite JavaScript), is it possible to include content from another HTML
page into the current page?

No. Not really. Using Javascript for this is a Bad Idea(TM) , IMO.

But what is wrong with something like ASP or PHP or SSI? At this
point, these technologies (or their equivalents) are very, very, very
commonly found on web servers.

 

[Els]

Now, a different question. Just for exploring all different
alternatives and possibilities.

Suppose that the navigation bar is something I want to place on every
Web page over my website. And I want the content of the navigation bar
also to be constant. I can then design a separate HTML page that
carries the code for the navigation bar.

If my understanding is correct, some CGI/ISAPI filters such as ASP/PHP
provide for server side includes. Using the server side includes, the
programmer can point to the content of the HTML/PHP/ASP/CGI file
containing the navigation bar code into every Web page that needs the
navigation bar.

But those includes, if I understand correctly, are not built into a Web
server. They're extensions provided by ISAPI or whatever other web
server API. So, they're accessible only when you are doing server-side
programming such as ASP/PHP etc.

I'm not familiar with API or ISAPI, but I just use includes in PHP.
However, if your server doesn't have PHP installed... :

In plain HTML, using only HTML and nothing but HTML (or may be some
lite JavaScript), is it possible to include content from another HTML
page into the current page?

Nope.
You could pre-process though, as explained in the link I gave:
http://allmyfaqs.net/faq.pl?Include_one_file_in_another

That way you do all the including at home, and voila, the result is an
entire website with navigation on every page.

I hope I've made my question clear.

Yup - except for that (IS)API stuff, but I don't think I needed to
understand that ;-)

BTW - are you sure your server doesn't have PHP installed or SSI
enabled?

(f-up to alt.html again)

 

[Water Cooler v2]

But what is wrong with something like ASP or PHP or SSI? At this
point, these technologies (or their equivalents) are very, very, very
commonly found on web servers.

Thanks, JDS. No. Nothing is wrong with the server side programming
tools. I was only inquiring out of curiosity so as to increase my
knowledge on the subject.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Darin McGrew]

In plain HTML, using only HTML and nothing but HTML (or may be some
lite JavaScript), is it possible to include content from another HTML
page into the current page?

See http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/design.html#include-file

 

[Water Cooler v2]

You could pre-process though, as explained in the link I gave:

http://allmyfaqs.net/faq.pl?Include_one_file_in_another
That way you do all the including at home, and voila, the result is an
entire website with navigation on every page.

Wow! thanks for that link. I didn't know they built a pre-processor for
HTML. Funky! But there're two disadvantages with it, from what I am
reading:

1. You have to run the pre-processor only once, and that is when you're
fully sure all your content that is to be included is final and won't
change.

2. Not good when you have to edit the content included through the
pre-processor. It would require replacemnet of code in every page that
has the content (pre-processor inserted content) included.

Yup - except for that (IS)API stuff, but I don't think I needed to
understand that ;-)

OK. Sorry.

BTW - are you sure your server doesn't have PHP installed or SSI
enabled?

I am sure that my webserver has PHP 5.0 installed and ASP 3.0 and ASP
..NET v1.1 also intsalled.

However, SSI is not currently enabled.

 

[Els]

Wow! thanks for that link.

Eh.. I did give it before, but apparently you're not reading alt.html,
meaning you won't read this bit either, nor did you notice your own
message disappeared off your radar?

I am sure that my webserver has PHP 5.0 installed and ASP 3.0 and ASP
.NET v1.1 also intsalled.

However, SSI is not currently enabled.

No need for SSI if you have PHP
(or ASP, but I prefer PHP - more portable to non-Windows environment
;-) )

 

[JDS]

Thanks, JDS. No. Nothing is wrong with the server side programming
tools. I was only inquiring out of curiosity so as to increase my
knowledge on the subject.

Thanks for the help.

No problem.

What you *really* want, though, is a good templating system.

Something like ColdFusion has a good bit of templating kinda built-in.

Something like PHP does not.

However, PHP has a lot of available templating systems available. From
the fairly simple (bTemplate) to the quite complex (Smarty).

Actually, though, what you might *actually* want is a pre-built content
management system (CMS). No sense in reinventing the wheel and all. Take
a look at http://opensourcecms.com for more information and sample CMSes.

Actually, looking back on your OP, your question is pretty broad.

what, exactly, do you aim to achieve? Being more specific in your goals
and your perceived solutions may help provide more clarity from the
responses.

later...

 

[JDS]

However, SSI is not currently enabled.

If you have ASP installed (I'm assuming, then, that you are running IIS on
a Windows server) then yes, you do have SSI. ASP in effect implements SSI.
And by "implements" I mean that ASP uses the same syntax, even. (For the
most part).

PHP (and likely dotNet) implement the same *behavior* just not
syntactically in the same way.

later...

 

[Andy Mabbett]

Well they're not as bad as cross-posting one of the most obvious and
easily searched-for web authoring questions you could possibly ask.

So yes, use frames. Do whatever you like. If it was really going to
make a difference to you, you'd have noticed by now.

In other words, please see:

http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Water Cooler v2 wrote

Are HTML frames a good thing or a bad thing?

I've never needed to use them, so I would say they were unnecessary rather
than good or bad. Having said that, they are a f*cking pain if you are
trying to bookmark a page.

 

[mbstevens]

That is rather a glib remark.

Oh, no no no. This is usenet; people are plain spoken.
They won't adjust to you. You adjust to them.
The groups are, for the most part discussion groups, not
help groups.

At the lowest level you cut and paste exactly the same
navigation around new material.

One level up you use a preprocessor to automate this for you
on your own machine then upload the finished .html files.
Take your pick:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/links/preprocessors.html

If you have server side permissions, you can move all this
away from your machine and generate your pages in all kinds
of ways SSI, Perl/Python/Ruby_with_CGI generated pages, PHP, SSI,
all sorts of ways. Google them all.

 

[William Hughes]

Wow! thanks for that link. I didn't know they built a pre-processor for
HTML. Funky! But there're two disadvantages with it, from what I am
reading:

1. You have to run the pre-processor only once, and that is when you're
fully sure all your content that is to be included is final and won't
change.

Not necessarily.

2. Not good when you have to edit the content included through the
pre-processor. It would require replacemnet of code in every page that
has the content (pre-processor inserted content) included.

Look up a program called IncludeHTML. It lets you both preprocess your
HTML, and remove the preprocessed sections.

FAQ at http://rosenlundnielsen.dk/doc?product=includehtml&document=faq

Download includeHTML from http://rosenlundnielsen.dk/software/

 

[David Dorward]

1. You have to run the pre-processor only once, and that is when you're
fully sure all your content that is to be included is final and won't
change.

No. Run. Test. Edit. Run. Test. Edit. Run. Test. Edit. Upload.

2. Not good when you have to edit the content included through the
pre-processor. It would require replacemnet of code in every page that
has the content (pre-processor inserted content) included.

Which doesn't take very long unless you have a very large number of pages,
and tools such as rsync allow you to minimise the amount of data transfer
needed to upload the changes.