Frames... Help!

[Jools]

I'm trying to put frames into my site so I can have a navigation bar that stays on the left. I can get it to work great on my computer, but once I upload it to the server, it wont' work correctly. The site is www.shaddowdomain.com, and the frame page is under mainpage.html. The navigation page can be seen alone at navigation.html, all preceeded by www.shaddowdomain.com, of course.

Thanks so much for any help that you can give.

[paulhiles]

Hey Jools,

What is the name of your frames page? I can see your navigation page and mainpage separately... but you need a page to hold your frameset together. Maybe you haven't uploaded that page yet?

Check the pages used on your local setup

Paul

[Jools]

The frame page is at www.shaddowdomain.com/mainpage.html.

[paulhiles]

Hi Jools,

mainpage.html at the moment is calling itself and the navigation.html, hence the funky page display. The simplest setup you can have with frames, uses at least three pages. One of these is your frameset "holder" or frames page, usually it would be called index, main or somesuch name.. then you would need one frame for your navigation, which you have.. and another frame (usually to the right or below) in which your content is loaded. This content frame can be called anything you want, but NOT the name of the 'holding' frameset page.

Here's a basic tutorial link, if you're still confused after what I've suggested above.

[Jools]

Thanks so much for your help. I am beginning to wonder if frames is really what I want. I originally wanted to just use a java navigation, so I'm thinking of going back to my original plan. Do you think that would be a better idea?

[matauri]

Jools, I think the best type of navigation to go for is predominently CSS menus. Javascript menus are OK if you have a site map link separate to them, but no good if they stand alone. Many businesses and users have javascript disabled for security reasons, when they visit sites that have javascript menus... they have no where to go.

There are some links on this thread that have examples of CSS menus, and some good tutorial sites.

Alternatively, why not just have a menu in a table or container on the page (like maybe you were doing in the frame). Did you want the navigation to stay static in relation to the content?

[Jools]

I was just hoping to get all of the navigational information in one place so if I decided to change something, I would only have to change it in one place.

I think I've finally just thrown my hands up and I'm just going to try to go back to tables and put nav on each page. Will the CSS help to make this look more professional?

[matauri]

Yeah...navigation can sometimes be tricky to decide on. All forms have their 'fors' and 'againsts'. The best you can do is opt for one that will suit yours or yours clients purpose the best.

I think CSS is great for nearly everything. The less clutter I have on my html file the better. IMO everything like formatting/functions in an external file is the way to go. I wouldnt say from the front end that there would be much diff in whether it made you look professional or not, but from the back end (the coding & validation) it will. Pages also load a lot quicker, and are better for search engines to read.

If you are concerned about changing items in your html menu (if its static), have a look around your editing program & see if you have a 'find & replace'. This would allow you to make changes in all/or selected files, so the job wouldnt be as tiresome.

If you think you will be adding links, or images, put a comment out tag marking the place (format how you want it to be first). I might put something like ... then I would do a 'find' for & 'replace' it with whatever.

Likewise if its an image, I would have , then replace it with the code for the image file.

Somtimes you might have to comment out a table for formatting purposes, then I put the table in commented out tag (but with it all written on one line for ease of use) i.e.

then 'find' it & replace it with whatever.

If you knew you were going to be changing it regularly, then maybe an 'includes' file. Never used one, so someone else more experienced with using them as such might be able to help with those.

Hope this helps :-)

[Jeff Colburn]

Hi,

Be careful about using frames. Not only do some older browsers have trouble seeing them, and search engines can't index them but I just heard a rumor that some browsers will no longer support frames after their next one or two upgrades. As Matauri said, look into CSS. However, some older browsers can't deal with CSS either.

Have Fun,
Jeff

[imvain2]

Wow what a small world, jools. I actually have your site bookmarked from a long time ago, I visit it around once a month.

I was going to buy something for my sister for Xmas but couldn't decide so I just got her something locally.

My favorite for this is Server Side Programming (ie. ASP, Perl etc..)
Where you put your website layout/navigation on one page and just include that file on the rest of the pages. One change and it stays the same on the rest.

Now I visited your host, and I don't see you getting much for your money. For $25/month we provide much more then your current host, including ASP, CF and Perl.