web site design

Hamsterpants

Hi All,

Really silly and prob stupid question, but could someone have a look at http://www.makesolutions.com and tell me how they get the only the main content section of the page to refresh when a link is clicked, i.e. only that parts refreshes. Hope I am making sense.

Thanks
Dill

Nixon

Use frames?

csousley

Ya, frames would do it. But why?

Hamsterpants

I didn't think it would be as simple as frames....didn't think anyone used frames anymore.

Thanks
Dill
🙂

Diomedes

I think you'd better avoid using frames because they are deprecated by the HTML specifications. If you want to refresh the page at a certain time, You can send a header to do that. I don't think the refresh of the entire page would significantly slow the output respect the refresh of a single section.

synergypoint

You could use DHTML.

If you need to refresh with data from the server you can still use DHTML and JavaScript but it requires having an i-frame or 1 pixel frame on the page that can reload some data from the server and pass it back to the main page.

csousley

What's the goal here? There are a few ways to do it, some better than others, but I guess it would depend on why.

keith73

Originally posted by Diomedes
I think you'd better avoid using frames because they are deprecated by the HTML specifications. If you want to refresh the page at a certain time, You can send a header to do that. I don't think the refresh of the entire page would significantly slow the output respect the refresh of a single section.

Can you please point to where you saw that frames were deprecated.

I just checked w3.org and can find nothing that says that.

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/index/attributes.html

And there is nothing wrong with using frames, or iframes, if used properly. When they were first introduced they got overused and used badly by people who use Frontpage to do the work for them.

keith

Diomedes

You are right, keith73. FRAMES ARE NOT DEPRECATED like I have told. I got confused when I was writing because, in fact, the general suggestion is to use frames ONLY when necessary and properly, in order to let the web page be readable. Since frames have been often used in a bad way, I was only thinking of that abuse when writing the post.
Moreover, I forgot that, for example, Java documentation uses frames to explain the content of java packages. This is an example of proper use of frames.
In future I'll keep more attention in what I write.