Frames or no frames

[tfstom]

I am trying to decide whether to set up an in-house web site (not public) and am looking at using Frames.

They want it to look professional and not amateurish, as they have now.

I have been looking at articles on the net and the opinions seem split on whether to use frames or not. One of the concerns seems to be bookmarking, which probably won't be a problem here.

One of the drawbacks of not using frames seems to be having to make sure all pages have the constant data on all pages and if you change anything you need to go to all pages and make the changes (such as adding new buttons or changing a link).

I was wondering what others think about frames in an in-house situation.

I have no problems setting them up, just curious if I might be missing some negatives about them that I haven't thought of.

Thanks,

Tom.

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

You can't just ask "should I use frames or not" and expect an answer to suit you. We have no idea of many factors that should influence your decision.

Things like:

Do you have access to a server-side language?
Will you require any database access?
Will you have a menu?

Personally, I'm fine using frames for in-house work, should it be necessary. If it's not necessary, then why use them?

As I said, it really depends on what the site it, and what it will be used for.

Hope this gives some food for thought,
Dan




There are all sorts of

 

[tfstom]

Yes it does.

The site is going to be used for a business who wants to use ASP.NET and dipslay reports as well as run maintenance programs, diseminate company information and updates.

It would be using Sql Server.

As I said, they want it to look professional and asked about using frames (so that the company logo on the top, menus and buttons don't disappear as they scroll down the page.

Tom.

 

[ChrisHirst]

frames as a in-house solution can be great if done well, but it not the easiest thing in the world to do them well.

personally I would use CSS positioned menus as there should be no need to worry about cross browser compatabilty, and as you are going to be using asp.net SSI can be used for common features.

and some of the controls in .net could make it much simpler (just started getting into .net)




Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?

 

[vongrunt]

Personally I am optimization preacher... frames are simple way to save lots of bandwidth and server resources. When used properly of course.

About professional/amateurish look: overall this is matter of design. Frames sometimes can give "squared" look to pages; this can be solved with simple CSS border/background tricks. Besides, in-house sites should be usability first, craplets and foggy pictures second.

Btw. expect some problems w/ users that run 800x600 on 17" monitors and use mouse like baseball bat :X

 

[tfstom]

Btw. expect some problems w/ users that run 800x600 on 17" monitors and use mouse like baseball bat :X"

Why is that a problem?

Tom.

 

[vongrunt]

Unlike popup menus, frames are always present on screen. At lower resolutions usable client area becomes small.

Refresh button reloads all frames. Print button prints only current frame by default. Bookmarks/favorites are not practical to implement etc.

 

[pixl8r]

There is one key thing here... ASP.NET.

Personally I dislike the use of frames simply because they create more problems than they solve. Also there are many better ways to accomplish the same thing. The iFrames and includes would be good examples.

If you are using ASP.NET a frameset would be very impractical because the .NET page does a "Postback" when a change is made. This will have the same effect as a refresh. As mentioned here previously all of the frames will reload when this happens.

IMHO: You should use .NET User Controls (and iFrames if necessary) to accomplish your task. With .NET I would definitly not recommend using a traditional frameset.

Hope it helps.

Wow JT that almost looked like you knew what you were doing!