

RE: Frames and People With Napoleanic Issues >>

From: Walter Ian Kaye <walter@natural-innovations.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 23:55:21 -0800
Message-Id: <v04220805b4ab16737b9a@[]>
To: www-html@w3.org
At 03:12p +0000 01/18/00, Roy.Gardiner@natwest.com wrote:
>Some sites have complicated parts, largely static (e.g. the navigation
>bars). It drives me nuts when they slowly rebuild the whole page every time
>because they don't use frames,

Be careful to not confuse overkill design with non-framed pages.
Besides, it takes a lot longer to download a page filled with 
JavaScript than it does to download a page with an integral 
navigation panel. My own navigation panels are all text, with a 
single tiny gif in their "header" (which gets cached anyway).

>and if they waste too much of my time I
>leave. Is there another way or ways of keeping part of the page unrefreshed
>our readers' time.

That depends. My favorite browser is Lynx, and when I hit frames, it 
slows me down! It is additional steps I'm forced to go through to 
reach the content. Non-framed pages get me to the data immediately, 
saving me time (and saving time is one of the reasons I use Lynx -- 
it loads pages an order of magnitude faster than GUI browsers).

My moderation-tempered view: If you must use frames, use them only on 
a *portion* of your site -- do NOT frame the entire site. And on the 
framed page(s), provide complete non-framed content and functionality 
for UAs that do not display frames (or have them disabled by personal 

Received on Wednesday, 19 January 2000 02:57:13 GMT
