Frames

December completed a two month series concerning what to look for in using basic graphics for the Web. There was one other format I didn't discuss, PNG. I may go into this format in detail later this year, but as a preview let's just mention that one big difference is the fact that the designer can assign transparency to a color in this format whereas one cannot assign transparency to a jpeg formated image. Now on to frames.

Frames are a means to divide the web-page into sections. However, the use of frames can cause a problem with the novice web-learner. Some of these problems are:

1. To print information found inside a frame, the user must make sure that he/she mouse clicks the cursor inside the frame to be printed. This will activate the frame. Unless this activation is done, the user will print the screen frame in which the last mouse click occurred. This may or may not be the frame the user wants printed. As an example, a site uses a left frame for navigation and a right frame to display information. If a user has been exploring the links in the left navigation frame and decides to print information that is displayed in the right frame, the left frame (navigation) will print information and not the right frame with the article. Why? The user has been active with the left frame, that was the active frame. For the user to have printed the article in the right frame, he/she needed to have activated the frame by mouse clicking inside that frame.

2. Bookmarking frames other than the initial lead into frame is not possible with out a special procedure. Frames allow the developer to insert individual pages into a framed area. Using the navigation example in item 1, you might think of this concept as a book in which there is only one left page, which has a list of the table of contents. The right page will only display the text of the book. If you were to click chapter 2 in the table of contents, the right page would display the first page of chapter 2. You begin reading the chapter and each page of the chapter is displayed on the right side. After reading 12 pages, you click on the bookmark icon of your browser to bookmark page 12 and off to bed you go.

Three days latter you decide to continue your reading, You click on the bookmark from a few days earlier, but instead of the bookmark taking you to page 12 of chapter 2, you find yourself back at page 1 of chapter 2. You now have to click through 12 pages to get to the spot you had left previously. How would you feel if you had read to page 112 at this site — I doubt you would click through the site 112 time. This is part of the problem with frames. The only way to get around this is to provide each framed page with its own unique URL (see Activity links above/below). There is a work-around in this situation. Using a PC, right click the frame you want to bookmark. A pop-up window provides you with a choice of actions-click the line which reads bookmark. Now the page is bookmarked, but using the bookmark to re-enter that page will give you that page only and none of the navigation features which were part of that site. With the inherent problems associated with frames, why use them? Just design each page with the appropriate navigation structure.

3. Another problem with a frame structure is the ability for someone to design a site which inserts another site (different URL) into the frame, giving the user the appearance that he/she is still at the original site. It's sort of like placing the novel Moby Dick inside the binding of To Kill a Mockingbird. Unless you know the story about Moby Dick, you'd think you were reading the other novel.

If you are going to use Frames, make sure you have a good reason. A bad frame design can destroy an otherwise good site.

A Map unit using a frame site design is available in the Activity link - try to bookmark several different pages and see what happens when you use the bookmark to get to those pages.