That's more or less the answer I'd give for new projects. There is still inherent power in the frames model in having essentially a number of independant browser windows though.
As an example, one app I did has 5 different visible frames (and 2 hidden ones). Of the 5 visible ones, only one ever changes, the rest have their contents loaded initially and are changed via scripting when the content in the main frame loads. This has made that application extremely fast because there simply isn't as much coming back with each request. Yes, it absolutely requires scripting, but then so does AJAX :) One of the hidden frames is the Javascript API, about 100k of code. This code would, at least in part, have to be downloaded with each page otherwise. The other hidden frame is actually where everything is targetted to, which helps makes the interface look, feel and work much more like a fat client because a lot of things happen out of site of the user, only what I want them to see gets seen. This is all stuff that is either extremely difficult or maybe even impossible to do without frames... AJAX only gets you so far, as does CSS. Of course there are the problems to consider, some of which you mentioned, so you really have to look at the requirements and see what fits. I would lean away from frames these days, but some people rule them out without a thought, and that to me is not a smart way to work. -- Frank W. Zammetti Founder and Chief Software Architect Omnytex Technologies http://www.omnytex.com On Tue, July 26, 2005 12:44 pm, Laurie Harper said: > Frank W. Zammetti wrote: > >> Me personally? I'd use frames! :) No, not automatically, if the >> requirements were such that it made sense. I don't have an aversion to >> them like many people seem to. >> >> But, in the case where I couldn't justify it (remember, using frames >> does >> introduce some unique difficulties) I would go with Tiles. I think >> that's >> the generally-accepted "Struts approach" when you have common sections >> to >> each page of a site layout. > > Personally I'd rely on CSS; I can deliver a 90% equivalent UI without the > accessibility sacrifices involved with frames. The only benefit frames > give > that is tough to reproduce without them is the ability to easily reload > parts of a page independently and, well, these days there's always AJAX > for > that :-) > > L. > -- > Laurie, Open Source advocate, Java geek and novice blogger: > http://www.holoweb.net/laurie > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
