I think there are some applications where frames are needed, but if you don't need them, don't use them.
I did discover a really good things about frames a couple of years ago when I spent a lot of time optomizing a web site for good placement in search engiens. If you set your site up properly using frames and then also use the NOFRAMES tag, the search engines will index the information in the NOFRAMES section of the web site. You may think who cares. Well the lovely thing about this is that your users can see your nice pritty site in the FRAMES section with all of your fancey graphics, but the search engines will spider the no frame section. OK, now go out and buy some site optomization software like web position gold. You can run this on your site and it will evaluate your site just like the search engines and it will give you recomendations of how to move text, graphics, links, names, and other things that the search engines look for to get high ratings. Well now you can go move all this stuff around and it does not have to make a lot of sense or look very nice in the NOFRAMES part of your site. In other words you can customimze your site for the search engines w/o haveing to change what the users see. Troy Sosamon Denver, Co. -----Original Message----- From: Scott Cadillac [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 4:25 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Witango-Talk: frames Oh boy, this should be a fun thread 8-) Having a rare community of programmers that is complimented with probably equal portions of Mac, Windows and some Linux/Solaris Users - you're going to get about 40 different answers I bet. ------ Well...here goes my 3 cents. ~~ I think the technical reasons for "not" using Frames has long since gone away. Having said that, you need to use them properly. For example, when your site gets crawled by Google (or other lesser search engines) use the META HTML elements, like so: <meta name="Description" content="The description to show in a Google Listing, because frame pages don't have text."> Otherwise, your site will have no text when displayed in a Google listing. Checkout the top 3 sites at http://www.google.com/search?q=Witango - these sites are using frames, but have no "Description" element. Or at least put a meaningful description in <NOFRAMES></NOFRAMES>. There is nothing funnier than seeing a site listed in Google with a description of "Get a better browser bozo!" - I want to do business with that guy!!! Many search engines actually use the META elements, so it's worth some research to boost your ranking (frames or not). >From here, Frames can help with the speed of your site, because not all your content has to be downloaded with every page request. Design wise, your decision can depend on the use of the site if it has a complex menu that is a tricky to reload and reset for users. As far as search ability by Google and others, I found my site to be very well indexed with frames - no complaints by me. But of course I did just recently change over to a non-frame design, just because. Good luck. Cheers..... Scott Cadillac, XML-Extranet - http://xmlx.ca 403-281-6090 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Well-formed Development -- Extranet solutions using C# .NET, Witango, MSIE and XML ________________________________ From: Alan Wolfe [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 3:54 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Witango-Talk: frames around the net you hear alot of dislike for frames on pages, is it just cause people dislike the style or is there some good technical reasons why frames are not so great? Figured this was a good place to ask, all of us being familiar w/ HTML, but sorry if this is off topic (: ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf