[thelist] Frames comeback?

Richard Bennett richard.bennett at skynet.be
Tue Jul 30 23:08:00 CDT 2002


Hi,
Yes this is true, and is set to increase dramatically.
One reason for this is Jakob Nielsen's cooperation with Macromedia.

What happened was that Jakob complained about all kinds of aspects of Flash
over the years. One main problem he noted was the lack of "back-button"
support.

Now when Flash MX was released, Macromedia touted it as *the* one-stop
website authoring tool.
To have this succeed, they needed to silence Jakob's constant niggling about
accessibility, it was bad for their image.
So Jakob was duly hired as consultant.
He now had the problem that he had to find a way of retracting all the
derogatory comments he had made about Flash over the years.

Of course macromedia helped as much as possible by addressing the qualms he
aired about Flash's accessibility. Sadly one of the main solutions they came
up with actually caused more potential problems than it solved. Framesets.
In their new blueprint apps, showing developers how to code Flash-only (sic)
websites, they embed their .swf file in an invalid frameset. Then they use a
hidden frame with a Javascript proxy. Each time a user clicks a link in the
Flash site, the command is sent to the hidden frame, the Javascript proxy
triggers whatever the link should do in the .swf file.
So... the result is that windows users with IE5.5+ will have the back-button
back - not due to any major technical development in Flash MX, but simply
due to the use of old DHTML hacks, long-since discarded by any serious
webdevelopers.
The downside is that a whole generation of Flash coders are being led to
think that embedding their .swf file inside  malformed framesets is good for
accessibility...

like in this tutorial:
http://www.macromedia.com/v1/handlers/index.cfm?id=8780&method=full

Or as used in this blueprint application:
http://examples.macromedia.com/petmarket/flashstore_800.html

And Jakob being enthusiastic about framesets:
http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/mx/blueprint/articles/nielsen.html
He obviously only uses IE5.5+, and doesn't do a "view-source" when reviewing
a webpage...

So if we see all new Flash sites embedded in funny framesets using
cross-frame javascripting, then yes Peter, I expect you will be getting a
lot more frameset questions...


Cheers,
Richard.



<----- Original Message -----
<From: "Peter-Paul Koch" <gassinaumasis at hotmail.com>

<So I wonder if frames are making a comeback. Does anyone have any idea?





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