Hi Thierry, thank you very mutch!
I still dont know how to "extend the DTD", but you are giving me very good reasons not even to try it. (I hate when things get "weird" :) ).
That's quite helpfull! There is always a good reason why experienced designers do not use some structures, I think I'll stick to the safe frameset doctype.
Now about dumping the frameset, it would be nice, scripting cross frames is far more complex than within one document and would save me a lot of work. It would also permit me to give more flexibility to the layout witch is important to me (as long as at 1024x768px in default text size things look the same they wouldn't even notice it) and frames will keep me from doing that.
On the other hand, the top frame has actual content, heavy one, that will change from time to time, but that will stand on top of every page at the site.
If I made it a single page, the content of the top frame would be reloaded on every page. And the company loves nice heavy blinking banners. To avoid loading heavy banners every time I would have to make them backgrounds on the css (to keep it cached). That would subvert the function of the css files, not to mention I would need to update the css to change the pages content.
Also users are used to that vertical scrollbar (however hugly it may look), they do not need to scroll all the way up a long page to get to the seach form or the navigation bar.
So it makes all the sense to keep the frames system: it saves bandwith and time, and keeps the navigation experience of the users untouched.
Although I do not appreciate frames (probably for not being used to code with them) I must agree with the company, on that they should stay.
Thank you, best regards,
Isabel Santos
On 9/24/05, Thierry Koblentz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
If you keep the frames-based layout and go with a frameset DTD for the
frameset and a Strict DTD for the framed documents, you'll run into these
problems:
1. IE will create an horizontal scrollbar in your top frame. The fix for
this is to use "scrolling=yes" (I know it's weird).
2. To use "target" with a Strict DTD, you'll have to extend the DTD or the
markup will not validate, but doing so - in my experience - will make your
CSS fails validation (I know it's weird).
You could use the DOM to plug the target attribute where needed, but I don't
think you want your navigation to rely on JS. You could also try "base
target=" if all your anchors target the same frame (I guess that would pass
the Validator).
I would dump the frameset and go with flat pages. That would have the other
advantage of removing one of the 2 vertical scrollbars.
Regards,
Thierry | www.TJKDesign.com
Isabel Santos wrote:
> Ok, maybe I'm being lazy, I'm googling for a good tutorial or
> exemples on the subject, and all I find is theory, so here it goes:
> I recently got a job as a web designer in a company whose site has
> previous decades markup.
> Apart from that I do all the companys graphic work, so time is short.
> The site has a ancient php seach engine, with a quite large data
> base, and the rest seams more like php output saved by the browser.
> It has tags for marqees, atributes like blink, links inside a flash
> movie, lots of heavy animated gifs, a script running at the status
> bar, an interface completly unrecomended for epileptic users well, I
> think you can imagine, or visit it at:
> http://www.ocean-wings.com/
> The site is updated every day, since new models como in all the
> time, and has a quite large and loyal audience, wich by the stats
> includes users with FF, IE 5 to 6, IE ad Safari on mac (actually not
> bad at all). The updates are made directly on the markup, update
> dates are written by hand and the data base is updated separatly, so
> not only the error risk is significant, but also tasks are
> unnecessarilly repeated. Such a heavy site is running on frames
> witch makes all the sense, and some deeper links use the target
> attribute. I intend to rewrite the site completly to simplify the
> updating tasks and to make the site faster, more relyable, usable and
> accessible.
> I also intend to do in in standards mode.
> The company intends to keep the look and feel of the site, for it has
> already a very good emotional boundage with the users, so layout
> changes should be minimum, only to permit some features they intend
> to offer, like automatic alerts on updated items for subscription
> users. Since time is a short resource, my idea is to do it in two
> fases, in my spare time:
> First rewriting the site as a template in decent code, then turning
> it into php buiding a new database and using the template as an
> output container. So now I'm looking for a doctype I can use to
> include a frameset and target attributes in xhtml strict mode (not
> only to trigger standards mode, but also for me to be able to track
> any markup error).
> And I'm rulling out transitional doctypes as an option.
> W3C presents a lot of information on extending xhtml, but nothing I
> can learn or understand in a quick way.
> There are also several discussions over the matter on very good
> blogs, but all I need right now is an example doctype, or a tutorial,
> on how to extend XHTML strict to include frameset and target external
> modules, and I cannot find one.
> Can some of you folks help me, please?
> Thank you, best regards,
> Isabel Santos
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