Frames/iFrames question

[rhowes]

Hi All

We have developed an application using two frames, top and main. The top frame is a menu/toolbar frame and the bottom frame is where the application happens.

We are looking at changing to a non-frames version for various reasons, firstly because frames seems to be slower despite not having to load the top frame detail/functionality every time (especially initially), and secondly because it will simplify things like our DHTML menus.

One thing we need to preserve is that the top section remains in place as the page details (currently botton frame) scrolls. We can use div tags with fixed height and scroll bars but I was wondering about using iFrames or whether, if we do that, we are just replacing one frames scheme with a similar one with similar issues.

I would be very interested to hear opinions on this.
Thanks in advance for your time/help.

Regards
Richard

 

[SashiRaveendran]

Is this site to work in Netscape 4 browsers, if so iframes cannot be used nor can divs with scrolling regions either.

Otherwise I would use divs. The advantage being on a slow network or with a slow connection you will still have to wait for the iframe to download before it will show its contents. If you use divs and all your content is on the page and you use scripting to change the text in the scrollable area then this is a much quicker (instantaneous) implementation. Avoid frames if you can, I know of a lot of companies who are phasing frame usage on their intranet applications because of possible security risks etc.

 

[rhowes]

Hi sjravee

Thanks for the advice (and the reply to my other post).

We are developing a web-based app and in fact are only targeting IE5.5 and above at the moment (and may insist on IE6.0). Later we will code for Netscape as well but right now we dont have the time, money or requirement.

So I am going to go with scrolling DIV's. Going to be an interesting and difficult learning curve but worth it in the long run I think.

One more issue I have to get around is that with frames I store variable values that I want to use across pages on the framset page. I will now have to find another way. We use PHP and MySQL on the back end and pass certain parameters to PHP using GET so passing these fields via GET is going to be difficult (and impossible to maintain). Dont suppose you have any ideas?

Thanks again for the advice.
Cheers

Richard

 

[SashiRaveendran]

cookies is one way to persist data on the client, the other is by using hidden form fields to store data across pages. One technique I have seen to get data back to the server is to use popup windows to fire off a querystring back to the server and then immediately close, this can work ok if you hide the popup window off the screen, ie. make its left property more than the screen width

 

[rhowes]

Thanks, all these ideas sound good. I think I will investigate and use one of the first two, cookies or hidden fields. I especially like the later as it is not dependent on client security settings.

Thanks again.
Regards

Richard