From: David L. <jm...@q7...> - 2005-08-28 13:56:09
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Eric Martz asked: >And I still don't understand why I am advised not to use frames. Let's make it clear, you can uses frames if you want, but you 'should not' use deprecated markup such as align=left etc in applet tags. If frames are the best way of doing your job - use frames. I have a number of sites that use frames, and although I would probably not design them with frames if I were starting again, I have no intention of rebuilding them just for the hell of it. There are an official standard of HTML 4.01 and there is also an XHTML 1.0 Frames version. My sites conform to these standards where possible. There are several reasons why frames have gone out of fashion, but none of them may be relevant in your case. Frames make big sites more of a chore to update (3 pages for each page), are difficult for search machines to index, and are more difficult for blind people to use. There has always been a W3C purist faction who hated frames because they broke the original HTML concept, and they have been happy to join with the 'accessibility' lobby to seize on the latter point. However, as I cannot see blind people using sites devoted to molecular graphics, I think you can continue to use frames with a clear concience. Browser support for frames is not likely to disappear in the next ten years. In contrast I agree strongly with the previous posters in suggesting that you graduate from transitional markup and move to css and, as far as is possible, HTML strict. Despite the problems of learning new stuff and then finding out it doesn't work on all browsers, there are good reasons to do this. First it is 'right' to separate structure from presentation, and not to continue using deprecated aspects of HTML. From a practical point of view it makes sites far easier to maintain, and, with modern browsers all moving towards support of the modern standards, one is increasingly assured that one's site will 'work' in the future. It is much easier for oneself and others to read the code (which is one reason to restrict tables to tabular data, if at all possible.) In answer to a previous query of Eric, examples of my own sites in which the jmol applet is laid out with css are: <http://doolittle.ibls.gla.ac.uk:9006/david/ProteinMotifDB.html> (The jmol pop-ups after one has run a query.) and <http://doolittle.ibls.gla.ac.uk/6b/jmol.html> There is a problem with validation (which one should do to check the structure of one's page), in that the <applet> tag itself is deprecated, but has to be used for jmol because there is unsufficient browser support for <object>. This means it is difficult if one attempts to make the rest of one's page html strict compliant to check it on the W3C validator. One can either ignore the applet-related 'errors' or use a custom DTD (as I do) and validate against a validator that understands custom DTDs (e.g. <http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/> ). Sorry to go on so long. I'm catching up on things. David |