Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-02-19 16:09:31 - Graham Ellis
Frames are an HTML feature that people seem to love or hate. They do provide an extra power to how information can be navigated on a web page by allowing partial page refreshes and partial page scrolls BUT there are a number of things on the "downside" too. Gary White will tell you all about the downside on his "rant" page.
I'm not a great fan of frames and you'll find that we don't use them on our main web site nor on most of the addition sites and client sites, but they do have their uses. Indeed - the subject has come up twice in the past two days with two different customers ... the general consensus is "best not used in most cases, but there are a few occasions".
Coding of frames is non-trivial and testing needs to be carefully and thoroughly done over a number of browsers. So I have written a PHP example where Frames ARE useful ..
* A file selector window on the left of the screen
* A feedback window on the right of the screen
* Upper and lower frames to give instructions and extra buttons