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description=Hints and tips on the use of frames in HTML documents.;
keywords=HTML,web development,frames;

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Text of the page (random words):
dan s web tips frames this freeze frame moment can t be wrong the j geils band w3c validator ads from google their content is not necessarily endorsed by dan s web tips dan s web tips frames dan s web tips frames previous up next tip if you re tempted to use frames in your web site think long and hard about whether they re really necessary don t just do it because it s new or cool ask whether they actually improve the navigability of your site rather than detracting from it while there are a handful of good uses for frames most actual uses are unnecessary frames are probably the most controversial thing netscape came up with back when they were the dominant browser since the blink tag many people absolutely hate them one reason for this is that frames are often misused with excessive numbers of frames taking screen space away from the main content of a site in order to present unneccessary things like distracting animated ad banners but even when used carefully frames have some problems users can t bookmark individual pages of your site as only the url of the original frameset shows up in the browser thus somebody who finds something interesting buried deeply within a framed site might have trouble getting back there later navigation can be difficult and inconsistent in netscape 2 0 the back button took you all the way past any frames you d surfed through to the previous site before the frameset making it really difficult to retrace your path through the site this was fixed in 3 0 but now you had the reverse problem that if the framed site was full of different frames that keep reloading an attempt to use the back button would retrace all of these and require lots of clicks to get back to the last real page you were at a user with a lower resolution screen than the designer expected may not have room for all of the frames contents and some of the graphical navigation bars may not fit sometimes a designer will make such a frame nonscrolling so when it s too small to fit all the content the user has no way to get to the remainder of it since many search engine robots still don t index frames a framed site may be cutting off most of its content from the indexers and any indexer that does index frames could send users directly to a frame and the user following such a link would have no way of finding its full frameset context which might have essential navigation controls not found in the frame itself if some of the framed pages are on secure servers for online ordering the user can t tell as the key icon displayed for secure pages only appears when the entire page is secure not just one frame of it i m involved myself in the creation of online commerce sites and have had to deal with complaints of clients who first insisted on having frames in their site and then griped about how their customers can t tell their transactions are secure despite all of this frames do have their uses sites that critique other sites like webpagesthatsuck com and mcspotlight org can make effective use of frames to show the site they re criticizing along with their commentary on it and sites with interactive content such as online games and real time chats can find frames to be a useful technique to allow user input in one section of the screen with dynamically updating status in another that way one part can be refreshed with updates without affecting the others while frames began as a nonstandard netscape microsoft addition to html they are now part of the official html 4 0 specification so they are here to stay most sites would nevertheless still probably be better without them and use of frames might just be a patent violation at least that s what southwestern bell is claiming saying that use of frames or keeping a navigation menu in the same place on all your pages in any other way violates their patent on this concept see this discussion if anyone actually stands up to them in court however it s almost certain to be invalidated due to a huge quantity of prior art supporting non framed users tip if you do use frames be sure to include a noframes section for the sake of non frame browsers and search engine robots if you use frames you should have a noframes section to support non framed users including the search engine robots this consists of a section of code within the frameset and beneath all the frame s starting with noframes and ending with noframes within these tags should go a body block containing the content to be displayed by browsers that don t support frames or when the user has disabled the use of frames if that option is provided some critics have remarked that the need for the noframes tag is dubious since frame supporting browsers will ignore any html code in the main frameset page other than the frame definitions and non frame supporting browsers will ignore all the frame definitions and use the remaining html code whether or not the noframes tag is present thus there s no reason not to go straight to the body tag right after the frameset without having to explicitly code that this is for noframes use maybe so but including noframes explicitly does provide a clear indication of the purpose of the code being enclosed in that block and with future html revisions likely to introduce added complexities of inline frames it s best to put this explicit code in place to remove all possible ambiguity later anyway the html 4 0 specs say to include this tag note noframes would have been more useful if it were implemented such that any section of content within such an element anywhere in any document would be ignored when the document is being displayed as part of a frameset in that case you could provide alternative navigation within individual frames that would show up when the page was viewed separately but not when it s in a frame in fact microsoft internet explorer implemented noframes this way but netscape didn t so this use of the element becomes yet another browser specific thing to be avoided due to its inconsistent effect but it s perfectly safe to use noframes in its original usage within the frameset document hopefully your noframes section will contain all of the content and functionality of your main framed site not just a curt note that you can t do anything unless you upgrade your browser you can make the no frames index a separate page and have a link to it both within the noframes code and also on the main navigation frame for the sake of users who just don t like frames if you fail to use a meaningful noframes section you may be cheating your site out of a good search engine listing some search engines don t index frames so all they might see is the part in the main index file try searching in popular search engines for the string this site requires frames your browser doesn t support them and be amazed at how many sites have this as their description as far as the robots are concerned don t make your site fall into this category use a noframes section as well as a good title and meta tags in the main index file it s astounding how many developers forget to include these at all in the main frameset document even after placing them carefully in all other html files of the site which the robots might never see but don t use the noframes section to spamdex with heaps of keywords that s yet another self defeating technique that will make things harder on honest web developers as it leads search engines to discount the noframes section use care in naming frames tip be careful to give frames names that are likely to stay unique even when a framed page is loaded within a frame of another page targeted links in a framed site reference a frame by its name these names must be unique if you give your frames really generic names like main and contents there s a chance that there will end up being more than one frame of that name on the user s screen especially if a framed page is loaded within another frameset this may cause linked pages to show up in unexpected places on the user s screen avoid this by giving your frames more unique names like dan_main and dan_contents instead of just main and contents also try to make the names meaningful to users some specialized browsers such as text mode and speaking browsers which don t present frames in a normal visual manner will present the names of the frames either alongside their content or as links to their content so use names that make some sense and give some idea of their contents or purpose not just frame1 and frame2 more frame cautions don t forget to close the frameset with frameset if you have several nested framesets close all of them if you forget some browsers might get confused and show a blank page instead of your frameset in particular netscape tends to be more finicky about this than internet explorer as it is with requiring table elements to be closed don t precede the frameset with a body tag or any content such as plain text or html tags like p which belongs only within a page s body this sort of content belongs only within the noframes section if it s found elsewhere on a frameset page some browsers once again most notably netscape will get confused and fail to show the frames your frameset page should consist of a head section with a title and optional meta tags then the frameset ending with the noframes section which contains a body tag don t change the order of these elements breaking out of frames one of the most annoying things you can do on a framed site is to link to somebody else s site and keep part of your site present in a frame that way the user never does escape you and none of the other sites are bookmarkable as long as yours is stuck as the main frameset even worse if the destination site uses frames too you wind up with frames within frames until there s barely any space for actual content if you eventually reach a link that goes back to the original site you might even wind up with a recursive page containing multiple nested copies of the same frame this can go on infinitely if you keep following the links you may think this is a clever marketing scheme to keep users from leaving your site permanently but it may just get them so ticked off at you they never return avoid this by making all your external links have target _top within the a href tag these target attributes are case sensitive so remember to type top in all lower case and precede it with an underscore tip if another web site links to yours within a frame you can give users a chance to escape by adding this link prominently on your page a href target _top are you framed escape now a if it happens that somebody has framed this site here s a link to get out hall of shame make your site better by looking at other sites that show by example what not to do note the inclusion of a site in my hall of shame links should not be construed as any sort of personal attack on the site s creator who may be a really great person or even an attack on the linked web site as a whole which may be a source of really great information and or entertainment rather it is simply to highlight specific features intentional or accidental of the linked sites which cause problems that could have been avoided by better design if you find one of your sites is linked here don t get offended improve your site so that i ll have to take down the link if you try to bring up content from this page outside the frameset like by right clicking on the main frame so you can see it in a full browser window without the other junk or get a direct url to link or bookmark it triggers javascript code that puts it right back into the frameset again very annoying a page of child care statistics put up by the anchorage department of health and human services alaska has inexplicably as its title this web page uses frames but your browser doesn t support them the meta tag indicating what program created it says microsoft word 97 so i guess that program generates titles by abstracting the page content and the only page content it could find was that dopey no frames section links netscape guide to frames htmlhelp what s wrong with frames tom frame service lets you view framed sites on a non frame capable browser previous up next this page was first created 06 aug 1997 and was last modified 18 nov 2006 copyright 1997 2011 by daniel r tobias all rights reserved webmaster webtips dan info