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Re: Frames and Compatibility (was: web admin duties)
Subject:Re: Frames and Compatibility (was: web admin duties) From:Tom Murrell <trmurrell -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 19 Jan 2001 10:22:16 -0800 (PST)
--- Dianne Blake <write-it -at- home -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Tom,
>
> I decided to go "no frames" but to use tables to make it "look"
> similar to a frame site.
>
> I broke up my site into smaller chuncks to make updates easier
> (because I use tables and it is sometimes a pain to update them with
> longer pages).
>
> Also, smaller chuncks forces me to be brief within each topic, and
> each topic basically has it's own page. This makes it easier to
> delete
> a topic or replace a topic as well.
>
> What do you think?
I use layout tables as well. I generally test them with the Amaya
browser, which allows me to get a 'text only' look at the page. As I
understand it, you need to make sure that your layout is still readable
when say the left cell is rendered first, the middle one next, and so
one. What you don't want is something where the sense of the layout is
lost when it's not rendered side-by-side.
I also agree with the idea of 'chunking' the pages on a topic-by-topic
basis. My personal opinion is that people don't like to scroll a lot.
I'm also of the opinion that they don't like to do a lot of nested
clicks to find what they want. So it's always a balancing act between
putting too much information on a page, making it too long and
requiring a lot of scrolling to see everything, and making users click
through more than two links to get to the information they want.
So I don't have too many magic rules. A site, or pages within a site,
have to be readable in a variety of ways and by a variety of user
agents (i.e. browsers) and they have to be perceived as useful by the
users.
I will say that I look forward to the day when browsers will support
CSS2 with TEXT POSITIONING. The ability to render side-by-side
divisions, rather than use tables, will be a boon, IMHO. <g>
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