Ok, I'd like to thank everyone for their different views on flash and
frames.  It helped me a lot.  At first I was thinking of doing a hybrid
site but now I think I'm going to do 2 versions of the site.  One in PHP
and the other in Flash (totally).  I actually would like to do a study
on where users would rather go.

Thanks again!

Jonathan 



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org [mailto:owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org]
On Behalf Of Larry Coats
Sent: Tuesday, July 09, 2002 11:44 PM
To: j.go(at)spinweb.ph
Cc: hwg-techniques(at)mail.hwg.org
Subject: Re: Frames or no frames

Jonathan Go wrote:
> Hi... I'm currently doing a site and thinking of using flash for the
> navigation menu.  If I do that I need to do the page using frames.
> Would appreciate your comments on using frames.  Can you give me the
> pros and cons based on your experiences?


I don't know why you feel you'd have to use frames if you use flash, but

I'm sure you have your reasons. But if you're going to use flash for 
your navigation, I'd strongly suggest that you also provide some means 
of navigation for those who don't/can't use flash. I know I resisted 
installing flash for a long time myself, since I just hate downloading 
and installing things and tend to avoid sites that ask me to do that. 
I'm sure that there are many people who feel the same way.

As far as frames go, here are some of the well-known drawbacks: 
Inability to bookmark individual pages, search engine problems, 
usability problems (especially for people new to the web who haven't 
experienced many framed sites before), some people really hate frames.

On the other hand, frames can provide some nice facilities. When I was 
learning HTML several years ago, I built a personal site using frames. 
The frames allow the playing of music that doesn't quit when the user 
moves to a new page (I only play music on request, it's never 
auto-started, and it's easy to turn the music back off). The frames also

provide a very easy way to preload content - some areas of the site are 
designed to be viewed in a particular sequence, and when that sequence 
is followed, the next page to be viewed is preloaded into a hidden frame

while the user reads the current page, and comes up instantly when the 
user is ready to proceed to the next page. The javascript to do this was

very simple, and I've had lots of comments from people about how amazed 
they were at how fast the site is.

When I first put the site together, I was using a 15" monitor at 800x600

resolution, and had designed the content for that resolution (before I 
started using frames). I was aware that 640x480 users would have to 
scroll horizontally, but I figured, what the hell, let 'em suffer. But 
it's one thing to say "let the masses out there suffer - they ought to 
upgrade to something that'll support 800x600." It's another thing 
entirely when your relatives and close friends complain about how crappy

your site is, when some of your content was meant largely for them. When

I saw how awful the site looked on my mom's computer and discovered that

several other friends/relatives also used 640x480, I redesigned the 
content to be displayable at that resolution. (None of them still use 
640x480, but there are still some people who do.) I'm amazed at the 
number of sites today that can't be viewed at 800x600 without horizontal

scrolling, when that's still such a common size.

Once the site could be displayed nicely in 640x480, there was extra 
space for viewers using 800x600 and up - so I added a nav frame on the 
left side, and made it so that the 640x480 viewers could easily dismiss 
the nav frame. I made sure the site was completely usable without the 
frames, and that the nav frame and hidden frames simply added
convenience.

Being a personal site, I've never bothered to submit it to any search 
engines. But I have found that search engines have found it. I've found 
my site showing up in searches I've done at Google, and I think I've 
seen it in others as well. The links in Google are to the individual 
pages, so someone who comes in from there won't be in the frames 
version, but that's not terribly important because I made sure that the 
frames were not absolutely required (if your site requires the frames, 
there are ways to use javascript in the individual pages to open up the 
frameset when needed).

Larry Coats

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