[uk-netmarketing] RE: The Rules

[Felix Velarde]

I would have thought that two compelling reasons not to use frames 

are firstly; that web users resize the font in their browser at some 

time or other. We all do, all the time, mainly because northern 

European design favours fonts we can't read, or a font has been 

specified that we don't have on our mac, PC, UNIX box, Linux box or 

other machine the developer didn't use. The consequence of resizing 

the text is that sometimes it will mean the visitor will have to 

scroll to read the (navigation/text or whatever) content of the 

frame, the graphic below the text, and so on.


A further gremlin appears if you have switched off scrolling in the 

frame specification of the page, rendering parts of your frame hidden.


Secondly, it is difficult to organise a frame-built site so that it 

can be indexed by search engines. Which means that even if your 

target visitor has the same machine, screen resolution, browser and 

font size as the one the site was built in, they won't be able to 

find it unless you throw additional cash at the site to make an 

alternative search engine friendly  version (a further consequence of 

which is that updating the site will be twice as complicated). In 

which case, why not throw said cash at designing the site properly in 

the first place.


felix



At 12:15 am  +0000 on 26/1/01, James Cridland wrote:


>

From: <leedjindex [dot] com>

>>>  Correct me if I am wrong but legally we are not allowed to use frames

>because ALL sites have to comply to disabled access laws and, as explained,

>frames are no good for the visually impaired.<<

>

>Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it's not _frames_ which are no good, it's

>the software that the visually-impaired browsers use, in this instance.

>Ergo, if their software won't read out "I have found two frames - pagemenu

>and pagecontent", then that's a software issue and not the problem of the

>website author.

>

>Perhaps more obviously, nasty things like Flash or non-resizable screen

>fonts _are_ worth worrying about for visually-impaired users. Removing the

>Flash, and making the fonts re-sizeable (size=2 rather than size=10pt) is

>pretty easy. (Though I currently sit in a greenhouse. Put those stones down.

>We're working on it.)

>

>Is this getting off-topic? Mmm, thought so.

>

>--

>James Cridland, Editorial Director

>MediaUK.com Ltd

>62 St Martins Lane, London WC2N 4JS

>Tel: 020 7257 8520  Fax: 020 7900 3461


-- 


Felix Velarde, CEO, Head New Media     office  + 44 (0)20 7737 7579

http://www.head-newmedia.com            mobile  + 44 (0)777 557 2000