question about frames and xhtml

[William Gill]

I am maintaining a site where the original designer used a lot of "web
designer in a can" tools. The result is a frames based site, very
convoluted code and javascript, and pages in xhtml.

I won't go into the directory structure that goes down 5 or 6 levels for
html pages, a separate 5 or 6 level path for the images, and an image
naming convention that uses the titles of the parent levels (i.e.
root/level1/level2/level3/level4/level5/images contains an image
level1_level2_level3_level4_level5_image1.jpg, where level1 etc. are
actually descriptive terms)

Anyway, I am thinking of eventually redoing the entire site, but in the
mean time are there any pitfalls to converting xhtml pages to html on an
as I go along basis (while I also clean out unneeded code snippets).
This would leave a mixed bag of xhtml and html being displayed in a
frame on parent pages. Does that pose any problems?

 

[cwdjrxyz]

I am maintaining a site where the original designer used a lot of "web
designer in a can" tools.  The result is a frames based site, very
convoluted code and javascript, and pages in xhtml.

I won't go into the directory structure that goes down 5 or 6 levels for
html pages, a separate 5 or 6 level path for the images, and an image
naming convention that uses the titles of the parent levels (i.e.
root/level1/level2/level3/level4/level5/images contains an image
level1_level2_level3_level4_level5_image1.jpg, where level1 etc. are
actually descriptive terms)

Anyway, I am thinking of eventually redoing the entire site, but in the
mean time are there any pitfalls to converting xhtml pages to html on an
as I go along basis (while I also clean out unneeded code snippets).
This would leave a mixed bag of xhtml and html being displayed in a
frame on parent pages.  Does that pose any problems?

Without a link to the pages, one can only guess. I would check the
pages with the w3c validator. If you get a lot of errors, conversion
may be very time consuming. Also most xhtml pages are served as html.
You must associate a mime type of something other than html with an
xhtml page on the server to serve as true xhtml. When you do the page
may likely not work because true xhtml is parsed very strictly to
avoid errors, often fatal, if there are xml errors. A xhtml page
served correctly must handle html, xml, or a combination of both. Even
if your xhtml pages validate completely, you are still just using html
unless you adjust mime types on the server for true xhtml. In that
case you would be better off just to use html, such as 4.01 strict if
you can avoid frames and the frame version of html 4.01 if you must
use frames.

If you have many pages and many errors, it might be best to do no
drastic changes if you can keep the pages working as written.

 

[William Gill]

Without a link to the pages, one can only guess. I would check the
pages with the w3c validator. If you get a lot of errors, conversion
may be very time consuming. Also most xhtml pages are served as html.
You must associate a mime type of something other than html with an
xhtml page on the server to serve as true xhtml. When you do the page
may likely not work because true xhtml is parsed very strictly to
avoid errors, often fatal, if there are xml errors. A xhtml page
served correctly must handle html, xml, or a combination of both. Even
if your xhtml pages validate completely, you are still just using html
unless you adjust mime types on the server for true xhtml. In that
case you would be better off just to use html, such as 4.01 strict if
you can avoid frames and the frame version of html 4.01 if you must
use frames.

If you have many pages and many errors, it might be best to do no
drastic changes if you can keep the pages working as written.

The original question was simple enough, though maybe not stated so
simply. Not being fluent in frames, I wanted to know if it poses any
problems if pages used to fill each frame include a mix of both html and
xhtml resources.

Not sure what providing a URL would do to clarify that.

When I update a page, I validate and correct as I go, but this is a
working website(Yucca might say, "By some definition of working."), and
I tend to believe "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

 

[Neil Gould]

[...] Not being fluent in frames, I wanted to know if it poses any
problems if pages used to fill each frame include a mix of both html
and xhtml resources.

Each frame will contain a complete and separate page, and I don't think that
the format of that page, be it xhtml, html, asp, php etc. would matter.

Hope this helps,

Neil

 

[dorayme]

The original question was simple enough, though maybe not stated so
simply. Not being fluent in frames, I wanted to know if it poses any
problems if pages used to fill each frame include a mix of both html and
xhtml resources.

In your OP there was an impression (slight or otherwise) that you
might have been meaning individual pages to be a mix.

Anyway, if the src of the frames are good (if they would be good out
of frames), be they xhtml, html, img, possibly even a healthy African
plains animal (the sick ones cannot stand being exhibited live in
frames), the thing should work OK.

The frameset is like a downtown hotel landlord who does not pry into
what the guests do in their rooms, hardly even bothers to check what
visitors write down when they register, he knows most of them would
not even lie straight in their coffins - just look at how seedy his
joint is. All he is concerned with is they pay in advance for a night.

He used not to drink so much before his detective agency came
across... well... well, this dame see ... Charlotte Rompling. She
hired him to find a man, Big Al Moose. Long story, he took the case
against his better instincts, became a ruined man, a complete drunk
and ended up living on the streets until he stumbled on this third
rate job manning this poke hole.

 

[William Gill]

In your OP there was an impression (slight or otherwise) that you
might have been meaning individual pages to be a mix.

Anyway, if the src of the frames are good (if they would be good out
of frames), be they xhtml, html, img, possibly even a healthy African
plains animal (the sick ones cannot stand being exhibited live in
frames), the thing should work OK.

The frameset is like a downtown hotel landlord who does not pry into
what the guests do in their rooms, hardly even bothers to check what
visitors write down when they register, he knows most of them would
not even lie straight in their coffins - just look at how seedy his
joint is. All he is concerned with is they pay in advance for a night.

He used not to drink so much before his detective agency came
across... well... well, this dame see ... Charlotte Rompling. She
hired him to find a man, Big Al Moose. Long story, he took the case
against his better instincts, became a ruined man, a complete drunk
and ended up living on the streets until he stumbled on this third
rate job manning this poke hole.

So then, I can update a page, and submit it to the Carrie Nation
treatment, whilst the remaining derelicts go approached, and the
establishment continues to function as advertised.

Thank you

 

[dorayme]

So then, I can update a page, and submit it to the Carrie Nation
treatment, whilst the remaining derelicts go approached, and the
establishment continues to function as advertised.

Sure. These seedy hotels are a broad church, even demoralised priests
down on their luck stay in them and do nothing more than pray and
sleep in their rooms, while all manner of other things happen in other
rooms, drug deals, murders, criminal plannings...

 

[Andreas Prilop]

I wanted to know if it poses any problems if pages used to fill
each frame include a mix of both html and xhtml resources.

Probably not as long as you serve them with the same content-type,
i.e. text/html.

When I update a page, I validate and correct as I go,
but this is a working website

Then keep XHTML. I don't see any good reason to convert them back
to HTML.

 

[William Gill]

Then keep XHTML. I don't see any good reason to convert them back
to HTML.

Not a particularly compelling reason, but a defensive one. I don't do
much xhtml, and by habit anything I do will lean toward html compliance.
Sure the pages wouldn't validate if my updates miss "/>" with
regularity, but that seems to be asking for trouble.