Deciding whether to use frames nested framesets, Deciding whether to use frames – Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2014 v.13 User Manual
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content frame on the right displays the appropriate document for the link the visitor clicks on the left.
A frame is not a file; it’s easy to think of the document that currently appears in a frame as an integral part of the frame, but the document isn’t
actually part of the frame. The frame is a container that holds the document.
Note: A “page” refers either to a single HTML document or to the entire contents of a browser window at a given moment, even if several HTML
documents appear at once. The phrase “a page that uses frames,” for example, usually refers to a set of frames and the documents that initially
appear in those frames.
A site that appears in a browser as a single page comprising three frames actually consists of at least four HTML documents: the frameset file,
plus the three documents containing the content that initially appears in the frames. When you design a page using framesets in Dreamweaver,
you must save each of these four files in order for the page to work properly in the browser.
For more comprehensive information about Frames, consult Thierry Koblentz’s website at
.
Deciding whether to use frames
Adobe discourages the use of frames for web page layout. Some of the disadvantages of using frames include:
Precise graphical alignment of elements in different frames can be difficult.
Testing the navigation can be time-consuming.
The URLs of the individual framed pages don’t appear in browsers, so it can be difficult for a visitor to bookmark a specific page (unless you
provide server code that enables them to load a framed version of a particular page).
For a full treatment of why you should not use frames, see Gary White’s explanation at
.
The most common use of frames, if you do decide to use them, is for navigation. A set of frames often includes one frame containing a navigation
bar and another frame to display the main content pages. Using frames in this way has a couple of advantages:
A visitor’s browser doesn’t need to reload the navigation-related graphics for every page.
Each frame has its own scroll bar (if the content is too large to fit in a window), so a visitor can scroll the frames independently. For example,
a visitor who scrolls to the bottom of a long page of content in a frame doesn’t need to scroll back up to the top to use the navigation bar if
the navigation bar is in a different frame.
In many cases, you can create a web page without frames that accomplishes the same goals as a set of frames. For example, if you want a
navigation bar to appear on the left side of your page, you can either replace your page with a set of frames, or just include the navigation bar on
every page in your site. (Dreamweaver helps you create multiple pages that use the same layout.) The following example shows a page design
with a framelike layout that doesn’t use frames.
Poorly designed sites use frames unnecessarily, such as a frameset that reloads the contents of the navigation frames every time the visitor clicks
a navigation button. When frames are used well (for example, to keep navigation controls static in one frame while allowing the contents of another
frame to change), they can be very useful for a site.
Not all browsers provide good frame support, and frames may be difficult for visitors with disabilities to navigate, so if you do use frames, always
provide a noframes section in your frameset, for visitors who can’t view them. You might also provide an explicit link to a frameless version of the
site.
For more comprehensive information about Frames, consult Thierry Koblentz’s website at
.
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