As many of you are aware, some software, like phpBB and IPB, use frames in their admin areas, I'm wondering what people feel about the use of frames in admins areas...
I'm not trying to turn this into a blog purely in existance to ask questions, but some like this, just need to be asked, and be approached for discussion :D
Personally, I often use frames, as a time saving device, as it makes it easy to create an admin page, and just add a link to it in the navigation bar frame, and you'll find this in many scripts I have created, my wishlist included :P ... I am, however, under no circumstances, saying frames should be used outside of an admin panel, very few people are going to see the admin panel, and thus, it is less of a problem to use frames, although you see shouldn't... unlike me :P
Comments
Ollie says…
January 14, 2005 05:02:10+00:00
I can see what you're getting at here, but I don't completely agree with you...
While administrative panels are mostly used by only a handful of people, that doesn't necessarily mean that they should be using "bad" code. Just because many panels use frames, font tags, and an assortment of deprecated elements, doesn't mean that others should WordPress has an extremely easy to use control panel; and it still works fine with the styling or images switched off.
I know most people that use admin panels probably have a decent browser and a fairly good internet connection (many admin panels are run locally, so that's not always an issue), but couldn't we argue the same for lots of sites? Why should we start using CSS and XHTML if the crappy sites with font tags still work in IE? Why should we switch from code that isn't even valid HTML 3.2 to clean, crisp XHTML 1.1?
Because we care. As web developers, we should be pushing the web forward; not holding it back because it's easier, or because you're a lazy sod who only makes half-arsed attempts to learn anything new.
You've got good points for using frames, but to be frank, I think you've got problems :P .
Geoffrey Sneddon says…
January 14, 2005 05:04:49+00:00
I'm not saying we shouldn't cut down on standards, my admin panels are XHTML 1.0 Framesets, and the pages within XHTML 1.1...
Ollie says…
January 14, 2005 05:09:34+00:00
It's not just about standards though; it's about accessibility. I agree with you if you're talking about you're software, which is used exclusively by you - if it's released software though, I'm not so sure...
Then again, many browsers that can't cope with frames probably can't cope with the input fields anyway. I'm losing ground here, so my previous post can go to hell; I think I agree now :) .
Jamie says…
January 16, 2005 05:35:33+00:00
Although as developers we are pushing the web forward in terms of standards, I believe that actual design should be focused heavily on aswell.
Geoffrey Sneddon says…
January 19, 2005 02:43:50+00:00
I should add a contact me button for things like this, I also found your post rather useless, as any sensible person would scroll down to get all the code, and I'm rather busy, so I just deleted it, sorry :(