[thelist] www.cannonier.co.uk - what are your opintions on using frames?

[Iva Koberg]

Wondering what you guys think about using frames on this site and in
general. A client has just asked us to build a frame based site. The
reason is that they want to keep the top and left nav fixed when
visitors scroll. I just don't see the point: isn't it correct to assume
that anyone knows how to scroll at this point? Is it really so valuable
to keep the banner always visible (occupying valuable real estate on the
screen, especially with people with smaller screen/res) when people are
trying to read content?

I've been trying to dissuade my client from going this route for the
multiple reasons I dislike frames: legal issues (particularly with the
site in question), speed (banner and nav change as user gets deeper into
the site hierarchy so there are no savings including the nav code),
coding/maintenance, printing, bookmarking / emailing url, search,
back/forth browser navigation, accessibility and so on. I know most of
the above can be solved one way or another, but I can't seem to find a
good answer to the "Why bother?" question.

So, I decided to mimic frames with CSS - it all works well in most
browsers visually. But, then I came across an issue I was unable to
solve - anchor links don't work predictably in this scenario and because
of the multiple css for different browsers, it would be a JS hack to fix
-- at which point I decided to ditch the idea.

Am I missing some pro-frame arguments here?

thx,
Iva


Iva A. Koberg - liveSTORYBOARD, Inc. 
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