[thelist] Frames vs Divs
Ian Anderson
ian at zstudio.co.uk
Fri Jun 30 11:44:10 CDT 2006
Christian Heilmann wrote:
> The perceived speed of frame pages may be quicker, but the annoyance
> of not bein able to bookmark, hard to navigate with assistive
> technology or not being able to view source weigh heavily on the
> downside.
Just to add my usual anal retentive footnote; frames are actually good
for accessibility a surprising amount of the time. For many users with
disabilities there is no difference one way or the other. For screen
reader users, the usability of a site is sometimes enhanced by using
frames, as it permits much easier navigation from chunk to chunk; screen
readers offer specific and convenient keyboard shortcuts for flipping
through the frames in sequence. This assumes the frames are titled
appropriately, of course, and that the user is familiar with the
shortcuts. In our user testing, many more users knew the shortcuts for
frames navigation than knew how to read the headers of a properly
formatted data table, oddly enough.
The other great benefit is that in a single document in a framed site,
there will normally be vastly fewer links than in a normal, non-framed
page, and unlike in a normal page, all the links will be relevant to the
content or task to hand, greatly easing the mental burden of figuring
out what is going on if you can't see the screen.
Frames have a bad press for accessibility, but it isn't one of their
real weaknesses IMO. They do suck properly for other reasons, which
Christian also mentioned.
--
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