Ridding my site of frames?

L

Lorne Cameron

OK, so I've finally relised that "frames are evil" - it's linking to
specific pages and imroved search engine performance that finally sold
it to me.

So how do I go about ridding my site,
http://www.sportsunion.strath.ac.uk/snowsports , of frames whilst
keeping the same functionality (ie. only the main "frame" scrolls)? I'm
guessing CSS will provide the answer, which I have a little experience
with already. Are there any specific resources I should be looking at
(all the CSS tutorials I've been reading so far seem to go into a lot of
unecessary depth)?

Is there a way of embedding html files in other html files (eg. embed
header.html and contents.html in each page) so that I don't have to edit
code in every page if I want to change the left menu bar? Only having
to change one file (contents.html) to change something in the menu bar
was something I really liked about using frames that I'd like to
continue to be able to do if possible.

Any general constructive critisism of the site is very welcome too.

Thanks.
LC.
 
L

Lorne Cameron

After-thought to previous message:

One of the major critisisms of using frames seems to be that each "page"
of the site does not have a unique URL displayed in the address bar. So
I'm thinking, you could still use frames but have a distinct URL and a
distinct frameset for each page, each frameset containing hearder.html,
sidebar.html and whatever.html in the main frame. When a link is
clicked, the whole window would be targeted and the new frameset loaded.
I know that this would require more coding when adding new pages, but
it would mean that I could still be able to alter only one file if I
wanted to change the side menu.

Would this still be considered bad design? What problems would/could
this approach lead to?

Thanks.
LC.
 
D

David Dorward

Lorne said:
So how do I go about ridding my site,
http://www.sportsunion.strath.ac.uk/snowsports , of frames whilst
keeping the same functionality (ie. only the main "frame" scrolls)?
http://stone.thecoreworlds.net/www/frames/#layout

Is there a way of embedding html files in other html files (eg. embed
header.html and contents.html in each page) so that I don't have to edit
code in every page if I want to change the left menu bar?

http://stone.thecoreworlds.net/www/frames/#worm
http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?AnySizeDesign
 
D

David Dorward

Lorne said:
When a link is clicked, the whole window would be targeted and the new
frameset loaded. I know that this would require more coding when adding
new pages, but it would mean that I could still be able to alter only one
file if I wanted to change the side menu.
What problems would/could this approach lead to?

By the time you factor in suitable <noframes> content, and a robots.txt to
persuade search engines to index only the frameset documents (with
<noframes> content). You will have a *lot* of work and pretty much double
the bandwidth requirements for HTML for the site.

Its fairly accessible, but a bandwidth and effort nightmare.
 
C

Clive Quinn

Hi Lorne,

If you are not familiar with CSS then just use something like the following
within your frame tags

noresize scrolling="no"

It does exactly what it says Noresize means you cant resize frame window and
scrolling means it wont allow frame to scroll

I would also suggest to look at this site :
http://webdesign.about.com/cs/css/a/aa110402a.htm

Allows your site look as if you are using frames yet it is only CSS
positioning
Hope this helps
 
B

brucie

In post <[email protected]>
Clive Quinn said...

noresize scrolling="no"

It does exactly what it says Noresize means you cant resize frame window and
scrolling means it wont allow frame to scroll

really stupid idea. your content will be inaccessible unless the
visitor has a canvas area that will fit the content. something as
simple are changing the font size can cause it.

please don't toppost
How am I supposed to post my replies in a newsgroup?:
http://allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?How_to_post
 
A

Anonymous Joe

Lorne Cameron said:
OK, so I've finally relised that "frames are evil" - it's linking to
specific pages and imroved search engine performance that finally sold
it to me.

So how do I go about ridding my site,
http://www.sportsunion.strath.ac.uk/snowsports , of frames whilst
keeping the same functionality (ie. only the main "frame" scrolls)? I'm
guessing CSS will provide the answer, which I have a little experience
with already. Are there any specific resources I should be looking at
(all the CSS tutorials I've been reading so far seem to go into a lot of
unecessary depth)?

With this particular site, I'd leave it scrolling everything. If somebody
wants to read down, then they aren't interested in going somewhere else yet.
And if there are links below they certainly don't need the left links. Once
they are ready to see what else you have to offer, they will gladly scroll
to the top.

If you only had a left menu, then I would say that you can make it float. I
think CSS will allow that to happen, however I could be mistaken and it is
actually Javascript that allows things to float. I'm guessing it is really
CSS, though.
Is there a way of embedding html files in other html files (eg. embed
header.html and contents.html in each page) so that I don't have to edit
code in every page if I want to change the left menu bar? Only having
to change one file (contents.html) to change something in the menu bar
was something I really liked about using frames that I'd like to
continue to be able to do if possible.

Yes, SSI commands will easily do that. However, make sure your web server
allows SSI, and do realize you will either have to change *.html to *.shtml
or edit a server file to allow .html to be parsed through the SSI portion of
the web server.

Failing SSI, PHP will work. The good thing about PHP over PERL is you can
use PHP sort of like an extension of HTML. You can actually rename all your
*.html files to *.php and if your server allows PHP, then your site will
load as normal, nothing will go wrong! [Keeping in mind your references to
*.html files locally now need to be changed within each page to *.php or
welse something will go wrong :]

You can easily find information about SSI and PHP Includes by searching for
them on google, it's pretty much everywhere.
 
L

Lorne Cameron

Lorne said:
OK, so I've finally relised that "frames are evil" - it's linking to
specific pages and imroved search engine performance that finally sold
it to me.

Sorry to reply to myself *again*, but I've been thinking about my
options for what I want to achieve, and I've come across I-Frames, which
look a lot easier to implement than advanced CSS. I understand the
basic implementation of I-Frames, but what problems of frames do they
solve and what problems remain? It seems to me that by using I-Frames I
could embed hearder.html and contents.html in each page and have a
distict URL for each page, correct? What about the search engine
problems of regular frames - are these solved?

Thanks again.
LC.
 
I

Isofarro

Lorne said:
One of the major critisisms of using frames seems to be that each "page"
of the site does not have a unique URL displayed in the address bar. So
I'm thinking, you could still use frames but have a distinct URL and a
distinct frameset for each page, each frameset containing hearder.html,
sidebar.html and whatever.html in the main frame.

What did you initially consider as being the benefits of using the frames in
the first place?
 
P

PeterMcC

Lorne said:
Hopefully I won't need to change the
navigation panel much/at all, and maybe Advanced Find and Replace
(reccomended by an alt.html user, very good program) will be able to
help me out if I do need to.

Have a look at SSI It's a doddle for including regular bits of stuff on
different pages.
Dead easy and there's good info at:
http://www.bignosebird.com/sdocs/include.shtml

You could also use php or asp includes
http://www.outfront.net/tutorials_02/getting_started/includes2.htm
http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/all.html#include-file
 

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