When to use Frames

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

Try it out here
Read about it and see the page's source code here
(written 2005-02-19, updated 2006-06-05)

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W507 - Web and Intranet - Frames

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Some other Articles

YOUR application and YOUR data
There is a function in PHP to do that
Who are all these visitors?
Lunchtime Drink
When to use Frames
Some unusual features
Golden Nugget
Use of time
Cheap purchase - votes paid for with selfish promises
Open Source becomes mainstream

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This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

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