Dumb web design question #6502

Post by **Geebs** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 8:22 pm

So, I've agreed to sling together a few pages for my stepmother's PR company in a very corporate sort of fashion, and I've already done an extremely corporate layout; but I haven't done much web stuff in ages. What I'd like to ask is, are frames still the done thing these days or is there a better way of doing (a bunch of pages with a navbar on one side) now? I was never very fond of frames but they seemed to work....ish.

Suggestions?

Post by **Foo** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 8:25 pm

Frames if you're low-tech. Make sure if you use them there's no scrollbar. Apparently that's very unprofessional.

The most common way of doing it now is generating the pages in PHP and attaching a menu via the code with include statements, but I suspect you'll not be getting that complex.

BTW for a PR company, I would have expected a bigger web budget. No offence.

Post by **Geebs** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 8:28 pm

None taken. Small company, small expenditure

Post by **Dave** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 8:35 pm

Frames are gay. I figure that if I use them, I failed. At the very least use tables

Post by **Foo** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 8:36 pm

Tables are ok if that's all you can afford...

Post by **Geebs** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 8:39 pm

Dave wrote:Frames are gay. I figure that if I use them, I failed. At the very least use tables

I've got it set up with tables at the moment, but maintaining links is a bit of a pain in the arse as soon as you have more than about 3 pages.

What's a real pain in the arse is that I keep forgetting that most people don't have a huge widescreen monitor.

The main aim is actually to make the whole thing "past-proof" rather than "future-proof" - most of the potential clients are UK small-to-medium businesses and therefore are quite likely to still be running Win98 or OS9, so it's meant to be as basic as possible.

Post by **Grudge** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 8:55 pm

Real men only do validated XHTML.

Frames are basically an obsolete technology when you've got things like PHP, ASP and JSP. Tables are used to display table data, not to define an overall page structure. That's what div's are for.

Post by **Geebs** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 8:59 pm

Geebs wrote:The main aim is actually to make the whole thing "past-proof"

edit: nvm

Post by **Grudge** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 9:03 pm

crappy code isn't going to help you with that

Post by **shiznit** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 9:18 pm

frames are very lame, use tables or even better css.

Post by **Geebs** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 9:24 pm

Grudge wrote:crappy code isn't going to help you with that

True

Migod it's been a long time since I did any of this stuff. CSS tutorial here I come :icon26:

Post by **MKJ** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 9:57 pm

stay clear of frames as much as you can.
and do everyone a favor and run it through the w3 validator every once n awhile. xhtml is where its at

Post by **+JuggerNaut+** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:41 pm

hey, i was going to say something about frames

Post by **dzjepp** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:46 pm

Post by **Geebs** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:58 pm

Fuck me, this CSS stuff is pretty good actually. My head hurts, someone get my pipe and slippers :old:

Post by **FragaGeddon** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 5:10 am

Geebs wrote:
Dave wrote:Frames are gay. I figure that if I use them, I failed. At the very least use tables
I've got it set up with tables at the moment, but maintaining links is a bit of a pain in the arse as soon as you have more than about 3 pages.

What's a real pain in the arse is that I keep forgetting that most people don't have a huge widescreen monitor.

The main aim is actually to make the whole thing "past-proof" rather than "future-proof" - most of the potential clients are UK small-to-medium businesses and therefore are quite likely to still be running Win98 or OS9, so it's meant to be as basic as possible.

I got a program that can do a nav bar if you want it.
Then you basically link to the nav bar file in the table.

Post by **FragaGeddon** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 5:11 am

Not all browsers support frames.

Post by **FragaGeddon** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 5:16 am

If you want the program send me a p.m.

Post by **Geebs** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 10:41 pm

Hmm, new question. Why is it that all browsers still display the elements completely differently even if you are writing validated css?

Post by **mik0rs** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 10:59 pm

I think it's that IE doesn't completely follow W3C standards whereas other do, or at least they support them moreso.

Post by **Geebs** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 11:08 pm

So much for the opera nerds. Doesn't interpret z-position correctly

Post by **4days** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 11:28 pm

Geebs wrote:Hmm, new question. Why is it that all browsers still display the elements completely differently even if you are writing validated css?

maybe the box model thing, http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=BoxModelHack

or the font thing,
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/elastic

neither of those are especially good links, just the first hits on google.

basically for the box thing, ie puts paddings and borders inside the width/height of an element, and mozilla puts paddings and borders outside the width/height.

for the font thing, ie4/5 defaults to a larger size than other browsers (or the other way around, i forget).

using ems and percentages can give really good results, but it's a lot of fucking about, so if you're just making this one site - stick to pixels, use container elements (so that it doesn't matter which sides the borders and padding are on) to get positioning the same across browsers and use inheritance wherever you can because it makes for easier maintenance/tweaking later on.