Frames vs No Frames

I am looking to make a site with out frames, but I already have a huge site with frames. My goal is to have an entrance page where you can choose between frames and no frames. What is the quickest way for me to do this?

The quickest way is...

Delete all of your pages that have frames and start from scratch building your NEW IMPROVED website without.

If you don't, you'll have two SEPARATE homepages to manage which will pan out to be a major pain in the ( | )

Don't use frames. They're bad.

ya frames are evil . I learned today that tables are pretty evil too. Leave the darkside forever

Seriously, you seem to be planning on doing a no frames site anyway, you might as well ditch the frames one once you are done. It would be a pain and a chore to maintain both, unless you worked out a clever server-side scripting thing that gets both sets of data from the same source (and isn't really worth the effort)

Plus a lot of people would not know what the difference is when they first see " frames or no frames"

Plus it means people have to make an extra click to get in. People are extremely lazy.


To actually answer your question, I'm not sure what the quickest way to produce two sites is. possibly copy then paste lots of times

The quickest/easiest way to maintain two sites is to write a two serverside scripts that will both take data from the same source but output in different ways. Therefore, update source = update both sets of pages.

I still say ditch the frames though.

You can do it like Leo Laportes page: http://leoville.com/ how you can select frames/no frames (maybe just make an intro page with the selection choice.) But the main idea is just to have the same web pages, just with frames it has the side frame.
That idea won't work if with no frames you want a side bar....

Anyones, I agree with the other guys, frames are evil and 99% of the time they are done bad, and make the site look horrid.

yup, frames suck, i used em for about a day and though... why the **** did i use frames... i should have shot myself there and then...

Before UNFLUX says anything, allow me to give you two of his site designs that use frames effectively:

http://www.cloud9studios.com
http://www.evanstylez.com

You can read his actual comments about them here:

http://www.ozzu.com/website-design-forum/why-don-you-like-frames-iframes-t1711.html
http://www.ozzu.com/general-discussion/frames-iframes-t1536.html

Here also is a page from another designer friend of mine:
http://westportleasing.com/

She took some tremendous time to do the frames so they were seemless. Although it's not the most visually appealing site most of us have seen, if you didn't look at the source, you'd be hard pressed to tell it was frames. And her job isn't even to design web pages. She did a respecatble job because she made some effort.

Sonire

To answer your question, right now your pages are already built. To make your "non-frame" pages quickly and easily, you just need to add a navigation to them and rename the pages so they don't overlap any of the framed page names.

The thing about frames is that if you get to a page through a search engine, you're stuck.

Cloud 9 is a great looking website and frames have been used very effectively. However, what would happen if I came to the following page through a search engine?

http://www.cloud9studios.com/contact.htm

I'd be stuck.

Quote from Bigwebmaster

you can write a jscript that (I assume) checks to see if the window is contained within a frame, and if it is not, redirect the user to the frame - if that makes sence. That way, when you link to a page that should be within the frame, you can redirect to a framed version. I've seen this done and the script shouldn't be too hard (you can probably find it for free if you try.

Hmmmmmm.......
maybe you could have a jscript that detects if the window is within a frame or not, if it ISN'T then make some navigation at the top. If it IS inside a frame, don't create the navigation as this will be on the frames page.

This way you should be able to have a single page for each of the content pages. What do you think peoples?


Another reason why not to use frames is bookmarking. I am making the assumption that the site is an informational site. If a user wants to bookmark a frames page, then this tends to go all screwwy.

Another idea is just to avoid using frames altogether! Then there's no need for a JavaScript hack. I'm sure there are workarounds for just about anything, but it just makes more sense to me to do things without frames since you can make your page mimic frames simply by using css.

Then, you've got no search engine problems, no bookmarking problems, no display problems, etc. The list goes on. And best yet! No need to create and maintain a frames and no-frames version of the exact same website!

And by the way: you MUST listen to every word I say now that OZZU has upped my status from Graduate to Expert! Wohoo!

rtm, by the way, cool signature. Nice quote!

It looks like a typical frames website to me. Being that she's not into web design, she did a good job. But I wouldn't use this as an example of the pros of frames.

Here's an example of horrible use of frames (and other bad things): http://www.militarysalesjapan.com.

I designed that site a long, long time ago and never got around to doing a redesign. One of these days I'm going to fix the site up better for the client, but he wanted things to look exactly like the official volvo website, so I was restricted to using frames due to client demands... But that was then. I think I might just take on an overhaul pretty soon.

A REFOCUS post:

This was the original question.



Note what Sonire said. He/she? didn't make the site with frames -- it already exists. I go back to what I said:



Sonire doesn't need an alternative to frames. He has the solution to it -- he's just trying to find out a good way to give an "option" for users to make the choice between a framed site and a non-framed site. The key here is to read what his question was. Sure, I added a post to reply contrary to those who prefer not to have frames, and about 3 minutes later, also told Sonire how he could quickly change the original "framed" HTML files to work in an unframed page. Combine that with Tom the Great's answer, and you have the solution.

Its also worth mentioning that frames arent good accessibility and should be avoided at all times according to the W3C (WorldWide Web Consortium).