Frames or not?

[matthias s.]

Hi there,

I'm currently trying to make a decision about whether to use a frameset or
not on the webapp I'm building. Most of the pages have a (more or less)
static
menu on the left side. The right part of the pages is dynamic content
fetched from a db and forms...

Using a frameset (menu/content seperation) I'm afraid of not being able to
provide direct links (for
example in emails which are sent to the clients) to specific pages. If I use
a frameset, do I have to write heaps of utility-code to get the user
redirected "through" the frameset/startpage?

I guess this is just one of the drawbacks when using frames. What are
others? Bookmarking comes into my mind... What do I have to pay special
attention to?

Could anybody please provide a link to some further reading or share some
experiences?

Thanks in advance!

/matthias

 

[Jeremy S]

User Controls provide a way to chop up a page and re-use some portions
throughout the pages in your site. Your site navigation/menu implementation
is a great candidate for implementing as a User Control. You can think of a
User Control as a snippet of HTML + server-side logic that can be simply
dropped into place on any page in your site. At runtime the User Control
effectively becomes part of each page on which it appears.

You can google "ASP.NET" + "User Control" to find more...

http://samples.gotdotnet.com/quickstart/aspplus/doc/webpagelets.aspx

-HTH

 

[intrader]

One additional problem if that it affects the way that the back button
behaves. There is no easy solution here that I know of.

 

[MattB]

I do this with User Controls too. It works pretty well. I even converted
an older html site that used to use frames and it was pretty easy.

FWIW Asp.net 2.0 will have a templating feature where you can have a
parent page that would act like the navigation frame or user control and
then it loads other pages inside it. Kind of like a reversed User
Control scenario. That sounds like the way to go in 2.0 for this kind of
thing.

Matt

 

[darrel]

I'm currently trying to make a decision about whether to use a frameset or

not on the webapp I'm building. Most of the pages have a (more or less)
static
menu on the left side. The right part of the pages is dynamic content
fetched from a db and forms...

If the frameset is just navigation, then a better solution is to turn the
navigation into a userControl and just have the usercontrol load on each
page.

Using a frameset (menu/content seperation) I'm afraid of not being able to
provide direct links (for
example in emails which are sent to the clients) to specific pages. If I use
a frameset, do I have to write heaps of utility-code to get the user
redirected "through" the frameset/startpage?

Yes. Bookmarking is just one of the drawbacks to frames.

I guess this is just one of the drawbacks when using frames. What are
others? Bookmarking comes into my mind... What do I have to pay special
attention to?

Accessibility. Navigating between frames with something like a screen reader
can be difficult.

Usability, frames can cause odd scrolling all over the place. Might be an
issue.

Printing. Less of an issue these days, though.

Forward/back buttons. This is also less of an issue these days.

-Darrel