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5) Visitor opinion. Many find frames annoying.
6) Copyright issues. You'll need to ensure that all links within your site that point to external sources open in a new window to avoid copyright wrangles. There have been legal precedents in relation to this issue. Many site owners object to their content appearing in someone else's frame, to
point that special "frame busting" code is used.
7) Internal linking. Special attention will need to be paid to your internal links to ensure that any page pointing to, for example, home page opens as a "whole page", otherwise framed home page will appear in target window, causing confusion to visitors.
8) Printing issues. Visitors need to take further steps within their print settings to ensure information they want is printed correctly. In most cases, a full page cannot be printed as displayed on screen, only in sections corresponding to frame.
9) Scroll bars, divider bars. If your framed site uses a number of frames, scroll bars can prove to be unsightly. These can be removed, but check compatibility with other popular browsers. (See further resources at end of this article)
10) External linkages to your site. If other sites wish to link to specific pages in your site, it is more difficult for them to do so.
11) Refresh/Reload problems. Again, special care needs to be taken with coding otherwise when a visitor tries to refresh a particular page, they may be taken back to original frameset. A common problem.
It's a lot to consider; weigh up pros and cons carefully. Instead of frames you could utilise a few lines of javascript code for quick global updates; learn more here:
Free Javascript to Dynamically update your website!
http://www.devwebpro.com/2001/0928.html
If you are a FrontPage user publishing to a FrontPage enable web server, "Include Page" function is very handy and easy to implement. For others Server Side Includes (SSI) may also be an option. Neither of these options give you a static feature, such as frames do - but it can save many hours in global site updates. You can learn more about Server Side Includes here:
Free Server Side Include Tutorial:
http://www.bignosebird.com/ssi.shtml
If you decide to use frames, and have already implemented them, you may find following links to frame tutorials useful in planning or editing your site:
Free Framed Site Tutorials:
An excellent, in depth examination of Frame coding issues:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/spider-food/2001/frames.html
Get low-down on frames from a search engine authority:
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/frames.html
Michael Bloch michael@tamingthebeast.net http://www.tamingthebeast.net Tutorials, web content and tools, software and community. Web Marketing, eCommerce & Development solutions. _____________________________________________
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Michael is an Australian Information Technologies trainer and web developer. Many other free web design, ecommerce development and Internet articles, tutorials, tools and resources are available from his award winning site; Taming the Beast.net (http://www.tamingthebeast.net)
