Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Design and Content : How do you feel about frames and i-frames?

[Eiolon]

Personally, I hate frames. I have been wondering if I should go the route of implimenting some i-frames into a few designs. What is everyone's opinion? I will probably limit the usage to personal sites instead of business.

[UH-Matt]

I hate frames and I would never own a site that used them either.

[Charlottezweb]

Second the above...I maintain a few sites that still use them, but I HIGHLY recommend against them for all the classic reasons.

I do use iframes in some of my sites though when design necessitates it.
Nowadays I'm willing to sacrifice a few older browsers for its compatibility

Jason

[chihuahuabot]

i used to hate a major hate-on towards frames. i ranked them up there with embedded midi files, animated gifs, pointless java tricks and needless flash splash....

iframes have their place and i have used them from time to time. I've been doing sites for a lot of bar bands lately, and the iframe page works out pretty well in presenting the type of info that these customers want on their sites.

It makes it much easier to design and deploy, which is good cos these guys are not really paying big bank either

[Rich2k]

Frames do have their place but never for your main website.

Intranets and admin pages / manuals are acceptable in my opinion.

I've only ever used then when I want navigation on every page and I'm forced to use plain HTML. E.g. a manual.

[xisp]

Originally posted by Rich2k
Frames do have their place but never for your main website.

Intranets and admin pages / manuals are acceptable in my opinion.

Agreed - quick 'n' easy ;-)

Originally posted by Rich2k
I've only ever used then when I want navigation on every page and I'm forced to use plain HTML. E.g. a manual.

I'd use includes for that, instead.

alex

[Charlottezweb]

I'd use includes for that, instead.

alex

Depends...If you're doing a manual like he mentioned, I'd go for frames due to loading speed. Includes would be ideal for a site that needs to look good, but load slower

Jason

[platinum]

Originally posted by Charlottezweb
Includes would be ideal for a site that needs to look good, but load slower

Jason

Includes don't slow anything down though Any images they contain should be cached and not downloaded every page load, then after that it's probably a byte or 3 of html extra :p

Frames are awful, iframes can be used for a couple of valid purposes but I try to steer clear of them as much as possible.

[Charlottezweb]

Originally posted by platinum
Includes don't slow anything down though Any images they contain should be cached and not downloaded every page load, then after that it's probably a byte or 3 of html extra :p

Well, the reason I say slow is because you're reloading the whole page again. Despite the cached images or not, it will take longer than a frame where that part of the page doesn't reload for any reason.

I didn't mean that using includes slowed anything down code-wise, I meant that if you do it that way, it will reload on each page view.

Jason

[platinum]

Yeah, but in the long run there are some sacrifices you have to weigh up against each other. Do I use frames or decrease the load time of a page by less than 0.5 second?

[Charlottezweb]

Fair enough...Truce? hehe

Jason

[Rich2k]

Originally posted by xisp
I'd use includes for that, instead.

alex

Yes but I said where I was forced to use plain HTML... no server side scripting.

[Ionsurge]

Whatever you can do with frames, it can be done with CSS, there is no need at all to implement frames into anything whatsoever imo.

http://www.soapi.com is an example of that.

[Rich2k]

That's a hilarious statement.

That is simply not true.

For a manual for instance you want a navigation system on the left always (that is in plain HTML i.e. no includes possible) therefore frames are probably an OK choice.

Tell me how do you do that in CSS? You can't... CSS is a stylesheet language for display and rendering.

[ANMMark]

Well I personally cannot stand frames under most circumstances. However, if used properly, they don't suck so bad.

Also, using plain HTML with no SSI possible....you still have a few alternative to frames and iframes.

You can use the following code:
<object type="text/x-scriptlet" width=100% height="250" data="navigation.html">
</object>

That only works in IE btw.

You could also use javascript includes.