Re: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
In other words sharing a problem you should solve with the visitors. Nothing was shared except solutions mate - I realize the thought that framesets might be useful has shocked you - but it's true! lol In our situation we had a really nasty application integrity problem. Here's the problem - 1. Online system for a leading car manufacturer 2. Some users (car dealerships in very remote locations) on 64k connections 3. If users click before page fully loaded, they get a event validation exception (bug in .NET framework 2.0) 4. Connections are not 100% robust / some pages don't get there 5. Business wants a 100% bullet proof solution So, using a frameset to marshal / handle weird partial load issues in the inner page gave us an easy **standards compliant** solution to the problem. The end result is optimal user experience, even for this sad minority of Outback Ute sellers, and that's what pretentious utopian HTML snobbery is all about - loving your visitors. : ) *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
-Original Message- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Hucklesby Sent: Friday, 29 September 2006 2:40 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout On Wed, 27 Sep 2006 09:15:47 +1000, Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] wrote: [...] However, with css we now have the ability to imitate frames in an accessible and search-engine friendly way for browsers that support it. So the question comes back to usability (and maybe aesthetics): wouldn't it be more user-friendly to always make the primary navigation available to users, no matter what part of the page they are looking at? Interesting concept Andreas. Your idea has already been realized to a degree in Opera. Opera has a navigation bar that users can turn on or off. It sits across the top of a page, and is populated by LINK elements in the HEAD section of a document. Do you happen to know any sites that work with this concept? So any sites that have LINK elements in the HEAD section that would show up in Opera? You may also be interested in PPK's revamped site. See for example the Blogs page, and activate the show site navigation link on the left. Is this what you had in mind? - Exactly. Well, I think there must be a better way to design it, so it doesn't overlap important content, but in the long run this is what I was thinking about. I guess I shouldn't have titled it frame-style - it took people off track with the discussion. But this is exactly the idea - why not provide navigation at all times to the user (in a standards compliant way of course)? *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
Opera has a navigation bar that users can turn on or off. It sits across the top of a page, and is populated by LINK elements in the HEAD section of a document. Do you happen to know any sites that work with this concept? So any sites that have LINK elements in the HEAD section that would show up in Opera? Mine does... http://www.gunlaug.no/contents/toc_7a.html ...with a few shortcomings: 1: Opera doesn't support hierarchical links all that well, so I haven't added any 'child' links. 2: Mozilla's support is better, but it is slightly complex to use with its many dropdowns, so I have not used its support as base. 3: Lynx is superior in its support for link-relations, but that browser isn't widespread enough to add the extra link relations for. More about link relations here... http://www.w3.org/TR/relations.html You may also be interested in PPK's revamped site. See for example the Blogs page, and activate the show site navigation link on the left. Is this what you had in mind? - Exactly. Well, I think there must be a better way to design it, so it doesn't overlap important content, but in the long run this is what I was thinking about. I guess I shouldn't have titled it frame-style - it took people off track with the discussion. But this is exactly the idea - why not provide navigation at all times to the user (in a standards compliant way of course)? I think this page present what you want... http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ It's as standard compliant as you may wish for, and I think even IE7 can handle it now. I use the same 'position: fixed' on my page (linked above), but the sidebar isn't populated with links since it's on a menu page. The difference is that even IE6 is apparently able to support it on my page, but that doesn't make IE6 standard compliant, I'm afraid. More about CSS frames here... http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200609/css_frames_v2_fullheight/ regards Georg -- http://www.gunlaug.no *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
I/FRAMES weren't removed because they are frames, I/FRAMES became obsolete by OBJECT, which offer and need the same configuration (width, height, overflow). In my opinion IMG should have too. In XHTML 2.0 the function of OBJECT as I/FRAME becomes obsolete by TAG, because you'll be able to give external content to any element. Point well takenit was not my intent to omit the OBJECT tag - thanks for the correction!!! Mike *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
On Wed, 27 Sep 2006 09:15:47 +1000, Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] wrote: [...] However, with css we now have the ability to imitate frames in an accessible and search-engine friendly way for browsers that support it. So the question comes back to usability (and maybe aesthetics): wouldn't it be more user-friendly to always make the primary navigation available to users, no matter what part of the page they are looking at? Interesting concept Andreas. Your idea has already been realized to a degree in Opera. Opera has a navigation bar that users can turn on or off. It sits across the top of a page, and is populated by LINK elements in the HEAD section of a document. The navigation is limited to predefined keywords, like Home, Index, Search, Glossary, Help, Previous ... You may also be interested in PPK's revamped site. See for example the Blogs page, and activate the show site navigation link on the left. Is this what you had in mind? - http://www.quirksmode.org/blogs.shtml Cordially, David -- *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
However, with css we now have the ability to imitate frames in an accessible and search-engine friendly way for browsers that support it. So the question comes back to usability (and maybe aesthetics): wouldn't it be more user-friendly to always make the primary navigation available to users, no matter what part of the page they are looking at? The key point here is imitate frames. As others pointed out, you have to go to some lengths to make an overflow page work cross-browser and avoid double scrollbars. The other issue is that in order to use a mousewheel you need to focus the overflow area first (or on some browsers you wouldn't be able at all). Showing a menu with position:fixed (and hack around with it for MSIE) is an option, and I have seen many implementations on blogs doing that. As with any usability idea and concern, there is one simple solution: Test it with your visitors or a group of totally disconnected testers. I found that a lot of times we solve problems with technology that aren't there at all. What I found increasingly with my readers though is that navigation repeated on the bottom of the screen works very well, as people do scan (read) through the whole document, scroll down and go from there. As others pointed out, too, the use of frames was most of the time not really a usability aspect (although it was handy to only have the content document refresh on a 28.8 modem) but ease of maintenance of the site and small document size. Usability is an interesting thing. On one project with a massive menu (which had to comply with a set taxonomy) we found that shifting the current section to the second position of the menu after a home link worked amazingly well although most usability gurus will flog you for messing with the menu order: http://www.onlinetools.org/tools/easynav/cnohome/index.php -- Chris Heilmann Book: http://www.beginningjavascript.com Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com Writing: http://icant.co.uk/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
frames are not needed anymore I think frames still have uses in GUI design - having a parent frame wrapper can be useful for maintaining state or keeping track of open dialogs, or showing a loading screen. You might also want to mask a url containing a temporary session IDs, so it can't be bookmarked. Also an easy way to achieve AJAX like affects in NN4. [joke] *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
I think frames still have uses in GUI design - having a parent frame wrapper can be useful for maintaining state or keeping track of open dialogs, or showing a loading screen. You might also want to mask a url containing a temporary session IDs, so it can't be bookmarked. In other words sharing a problem you should solve with the visitors. With Ajax, it is not really a problem to store state changes periodically on the server rather than relying on a frameset. -- Chris Heilmann Book: http://www.beginningjavascript.com Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com Writing: http://icant.co.uk/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
On 9/26/06, Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... However, with css we now have the ability to imitate frames in an accessible and search-engine friendly way for browsers that support it. So the question comes back to usability (and maybe aesthetics): wouldn't it be more user-friendly to always make the primary navigation available to users, no matter what part of the page they are looking at? ... I'd be curious to know what people think of that? Did our passion for Web Standards make us overlook the advantages of the frame-style layout? Or are there usability/accessibility issues I am overlooking here? On fixed positioning with CSS, you mentioned overflow:auto which is important. Some sites implement fixed content without overflow:auto and they assume that the viewport is large enough to hold that content... that doesn't always work. I have seen sites that use fixed content, and I do think they work well. Frames were not rejected because they were not usable (though, for many sites they are not the right way to go). They were rejected because they were inaccessible both to search engines and users, and because they presented a wealth of problems beyond that. The one problem I will mention is that it is important to avoid having more than one scrollbar on a page at a time. If a site has a fixed menu down the left that is very long and always has a scrollbar, and it also has the main body scrollbar for the content that is not fixed, then it loses the convention that the user can scroll the page with either the keyboard or the mouse wheel. They usually have to click on the area of the page they want to scroll first. May not be a big deal, but I do think that implementations which assume mouse use are not universal or convenient. -- -- Christian Montoya christianmontoya.com ... portfolio.christianmontoya.com *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
-Original Message- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Samuel Richardson Sent: Wednesday, 27 September 2006 9:40 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout There is nothing to stop you from fixing the navigation to the same place in your page design. I don't really work on a site like this per se. I guess I am just looking for an answer if the technology of the Internet shouldn't be used in a different way than what we do at the moment. We currently design websites in a very inconvenient way which forces users to always scroll back to the top of the page before they can continue to a different page. Personally I feel our minds are still stuck with designing for print and we haven't quite understood yet how to design big amounts of information for the Internet. That only leaves the other area of the page which is contained in an overflow, there's not much point in this either as it's only going to serve to annoy your visitors as they're scrolling a view port inside the browser rather then the browser window itself. Interesting point. In a way I see what you mean: users are accustomed to having their scrollbar at a certain position of their screen. The question is: would users be willing to accept scrollbars of different sizes and positions in exchange for a menu that is available at all times? Perhaps we would need a standard to ensure that the scrollbar of the content area is always on the right hand side of the browser window...? I suppose it does stop the navigation from scrolling off the screen but if that's really a concern then you're either not designing your page properly or trying to force the user to do something you shouldn't Don't quite agree with you here. The way we design pages at the moment you cannot prevent the menu to scroll off the screen. And there's no real way for users to continue browsing other than getting back up to the menu. Of course we can always put a text navigation at the bottom of the page, but there are two problems with that: 1. Who says the user is at the very bottom of the page? There might be that much information on the page that the user can't see the top or the bottom. 2. The text navigation at the bottom looks completely different to the menu button at the top which the user clicked on in first place. This means the user's mind has to switch between two different menus - that's not really intuitive. -Original Message- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] Sent: Wednesday, 27 September 2006 9:16 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout There was a time when lots of websites utilised frames, to provide the advantage of a static menu that is always available on the screen, no matter what area of the page the user looks at. I am sure we covered the topic enough to agree that frames are not the way to go, as they carry accessibility issues with them and can cause problems for search engines. So we all moved away from frames and are now accustomed to a page layout that contains the menu somewhere at the top (or top left). However, with css we now have the ability to imitate frames in an accessible and search-engine friendly way for browsers that support it. So the question comes back to usability (and maybe aesthetics): wouldn't it be more user-friendly to always make the primary navigation available to users, no matter what part of the page they are looking at? Let's not worry about the problem of aesthetics right now, but imagine a site that uses css to create this frame-design: our menu sits on the left hand side, our content on the right hand side. We have got a scroll bar that only moves the content areas (achieved through overflow). The menu is available at all times. Which means the users not only are aware of all of their options at any given point in time, but they can also be visually reminded of their current position in the page (e.g. through breadcrumbs or highlighted current menu item). A browser that does not support css would simply display our sample page the way we currently do it: menu static at the top, the scrollbar moves the entire page. No accessibility or search-engine issues. I'd be curious to know what people think of that? Did our passion for Web Standards make us overlook the advantages of the frame-style layout? Or are there usability/accessibility issues I am overlooking here? Andreas Boehmer User Experience Consultant Addictive Media Phone: (03) 9386 8907 Mobile: 0411 097 038 http://www.addictivemedia.com.au Consulting | Accessibility | Usability | Development *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail
RE: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
-Original Message- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christian Montoya Sent: Wednesday, 27 September 2006 9:43 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout On 9/26/06, Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... However, with css we now have the ability to imitate frames in an accessible and search-engine friendly way for browsers that support it. So the question comes back to usability (and maybe aesthetics): wouldn't it be more user-friendly to always make the primary navigation available to users, no matter what part of the page they are looking at? ... I'd be curious to know what people think of that? Did our passion for Web Standards make us overlook the advantages of the frame-style layout? Or are there usability/accessibility issues I am overlooking here? The one problem I will mention is that it is important to avoid having more than one scrollbar on a page at a time. If a site has a fixed menu down the left that is very long and always has a scrollbar, and it also has the main body scrollbar for the content that is not fixed, then it loses the convention that the user can scroll the page with either the keyboard or the mouse wheel. They usually have to click on the area of the page they want to scroll first. May not be a big deal, but I do think that implementations which assume mouse use are not universal or convenient. Very important point. I agree! *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
Well if your concern is always having the menu on the screen for the user to find then just use JavaScript to position it according to the view-port. If the user has JavaScript turned off then it will always appear at the top and not move. The user has a number of ways of navigating back to the top of the screen to use the navigation, scroll wheel, scroll bar, back to top links and the home button all achieve that. Wrapping the entire content area in an overflow div is not going to achieve a good result, you have to set a width and height on it and the scrollbar on the right-hand side is going to be slightly offset from its normal position. In all honestly, if it was going to improve usability of the website then we'd see quite a few more websites employing it. S -Original Message- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] Sent: Wednesday, 27 September 2006 10:02 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout -Original Message- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Samuel Richardson Sent: Wednesday, 27 September 2006 9:40 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout There is nothing to stop you from fixing the navigation to the same place in your page design. I don't really work on a site like this per se. I guess I am just looking for an answer if the technology of the Internet shouldn't be used in a different way than what we do at the moment. We currently design websites in a very inconvenient way which forces users to always scroll back to the top of the page before they can continue to a different page. Personally I feel our minds are still stuck with designing for print and we haven't quite understood yet how to design big amounts of information for the Internet. That only leaves the other area of the page which is contained in an overflow, there's not much point in this either as it's only going to serve to annoy your visitors as they're scrolling a view port inside the browser rather then the browser window itself. Interesting point. In a way I see what you mean: users are accustomed to having their scrollbar at a certain position of their screen. The question is: would users be willing to accept scrollbars of different sizes and positions in exchange for a menu that is available at all times? Perhaps we would need a standard to ensure that the scrollbar of the content area is always on the right hand side of the browser window...? I suppose it does stop the navigation from scrolling off the screen but if that's really a concern then you're either not designing your page properly or trying to force the user to do something you shouldn't Don't quite agree with you here. The way we design pages at the moment you cannot prevent the menu to scroll off the screen. And there's no real way for users to continue browsing other than getting back up to the menu. Of course we can always put a text navigation at the bottom of the page, but there are two problems with that: 1. Who says the user is at the very bottom of the page? There might be that much information on the page that the user can't see the top or the bottom. 2. The text navigation at the bottom looks completely different to the menu button at the top which the user clicked on in first place. This means the user's mind has to switch between two different menus - that's not really intuitive. -Original Message- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] Sent: Wednesday, 27 September 2006 9:16 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout There was a time when lots of websites utilised frames, to provide the advantage of a static menu that is always available on the screen, no matter what area of the page the user looks at. I am sure we covered the topic enough to agree that frames are not the way to go, as they carry accessibility issues with them and can cause problems for search engines. So we all moved away from frames and are now accustomed to a page layout that contains the menu somewhere at the top (or top left). However, with css we now have the ability to imitate frames in an accessible and search-engine friendly way for browsers that support it. So the question comes back to usability (and maybe aesthetics): wouldn't it be more user-friendly to always make the primary navigation available to users, no matter what part of the page they are looking at? Let's not worry about the problem of aesthetics right now, but imagine a site that uses css to create this frame-design: our menu sits on the left hand side, our content on the right hand side. We have got a scroll bar that only moves the content areas (achieved through
Re: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
... The benefit from frames didn't come from the fact that the menu was in the same place on every page, the benefit was that there was less content to load as the navigation page never had to be reloaded. In the age of ADSL and Cable this is somewhat redundant. ... Don't know about anyone else, but when I used frames (and when I still do for non-content based applications, a.k.a. apps that must act like desktop applications), I didn't do it to save bandwidth. I used it to achieve a simple effect (which didn't require 5K of JS): A solid, consistently placed nav menu, that was always visible. Simple. Done. But for some reason, this was considered bad for everyoneeven those of us who don't develop content-based sites. Alas, we all must sufferI have yet to understand why the standards committees have been 'pruning' the specs of all tools that were useful to achieve such affects (this includes the downplaying of IFRAMEs). I would like to think we are smart enough to know when to use something in our toolboxevery tool is not effective (nor appropriate) in every situation. Let us make the choice. Sigh... As I've commented before, there is another side to the web apart from serving up product/news/etc. content and the recent morning blog lists. The world I work in (now) is Internet based (specifically HTTP/HTML) applications (before that, it was the normal public content site stuff). In other words, the porting of older desktop client-server applications to the browser world. And the number one concern for my (my company's) clients??? It had better act like the desktop application it replaced. That's starting to get hard to do when the specs are being tailored to document-centric uses. Don't get me wrong...I don't mind using JS to achieve more complex effects, but the last thing I need is an additional 5K when a simple tag will do the job. Thanks for your time... Michael Yeaney *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
I agree with your sentiments, but frames are not needed anymore - all
recent browsers will allow you to add the nav content via the object
tag. E.g.
object id=nav data=nav.html type=text/htmlFallback navigation
here.../object
Combine with 'position:fixed' ('position:absolute' for IE) on the nav
and you have exactly what you want.
Cheers,
Geoff
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RE: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout
I agree with your sentiments, but frames are not needed anymore - all
recent browsers will allow you to add the nav content via the object
tag. E.g.
object id=nav data=nav.html type=text/htmlFallback navigation
here.../object
Combine with 'position:fixed' ('position:absolute' for IE) on the nav
and you have exactly what you want.
I think you may be confusing iframes with frameset/frames. I think
until someone rewrites the javadoc command, there will be a need for
framesets. As far as the object and iframe tags, they don't seem to
expand to accommodate the content. They also don't generate bookmarkable
URLs.
Regards,
Kepler
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