Question

I'm trying to have Frames in my Wiki site. It is not accepting Frame and Frameset of html. How can I make my site take Frames?

• TWiki version:
• Web server:
• Server OS:

-- PadmajaChundupalli - 13 Feb 2001

Answer

This is a consequence of TWiki's design - it's using tables to place the title, icon, color bar etc, and HTML doesn't allow a frameset inside a table.

Changing this would require modifying the templates in the $TWIKI/twiki directory (and any copies that might exist in subdirectories). You'd also have to make sure that the URLs used in the frameset themselves go to cgi-bin addresses, so that TWiki will have a chance to see the frames and generate HTML for them.

The original templates will put the header information and the Edit link into every single template, something that you won't want.
To get rid of this behaviour, you'll have to take all the templates apart, look which part of what template is responsible for what screen area, throw away what's already taken care of in standard frames, split up the rest into frame texts, and move every frame text into its own template; the original template file will just contain the frameset.

This looks like a whole lot of work. It also looks like a great opportunity to refactor TWiki's standard templates, which are quite redundant and repetitive.

Hope this helps.

-- JoachimDurchholz - 22 Apr 2001

Before you implement frames, please read http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html - this explains why (most of the time) frames are not a good option. I am currently trying to get our intranet sites to move away from frames, largely because it makes linking to a specific page impossible without breaking the navigation model. I frequently want to link from a Twiki page into a conventional intranet web page, and can't do this if the intranet site is frames-based.

As long as this is an option, and not the default, I don't have a problem with Twiki supporting it, but I think any Twiki administrator should think very carefully before trying to use frames. Non-Twiki intranet sites may want to link directly to a Twiki page, which would be impossible of course.

-- RichardDonkin - 23 Apr 2001

I'm just bringing up this question again to see if the general sentiment about frames remains the same (now a year later). I've read Jakob Nielsen's page on frames which was written in 1996 and am wondering if the issues about linking to pages with frames are still a major problem. I have thought of a couple of enhancements to TWiki that would seem to lend themselves to frames but the linking issue would pretty much outweigh any benefit. Comments?

-- LynnwoodBrown - 03 Jun 2002

Well, I still feel the same way about frames :)... The browsers haven't changed the way they hide the URLs of framed pages, either. My company's public site has moved away from frames, which is a big improvement.

If you want frame-like features as an option on your site, without interfering with bookmarks and linking, you might want to look at the various browser sidebars, e.g. InternetExplorerSidebar - these are implemented as TWiki pages, so it would be quite easy to customise them to provide navigation and other site-specific links. (The IE sidebar now has an easier installation method whereby you just click on a link to use it, no registry updates required.) Another advantage of these sidebars is that they are easily hidden when required, and can be called up even when someone is browsing another website.

Alternatively, just use CSS and perhaps DHTML to provide a navigation bar where you would have used frames, i.e. all within a single page - with DHTML, you can even make this stay on-screen as the page is scrolled, though that requires a bit more HTML wizardry than I'm capable of!

-- RichardDonkin - 04 Jun 2002

Thanks for the response, Richard. I am utilizing the the sidebar as I described in MacIESidebar. I'm actually thinking of a couple of different applications of frames. Let me take one as a "for instance." What if one were to develop a skin that placed the header components in one frame (for the sake of this example, assume they are the exact same elements that are in the current default TWiki skin) and the body in another? It seems like the data structure would be pretty much the same as present, so would the search problems of frames still be an issue?

-- LynnwoodBrown - 04 Jun 2002

Frames would still be an issue here - the Jakob Nielsen article goes into this in more detail.

-- RichardDonkin - 05 Jun 2002

OK, I thought perhaps I was describing a case that falls under Nielsen's discussion of "When it's OK to use frames." But I'm over my head here and will return to this when I've studied it some more and can perhaps offer a prototype. Thanks again for the feedback!

-- LynnwoodBrown - 05 Jun 2002

Basically, frames is a bad answer to a good question. Frames was just a quick hack set up by netscape in their browser wars, without any thinking of how this would fit in the web big picture.

My opinion is that frame functionality is provided by other things:

1. the fact that pages are not hand-edited anymore, but generated from databases, template engines... or even wikis :-). You only write the navigation bars, menus in one place, and it is "pasted-in" server side by the engines, not via frames on the client.
2. more "positional" aspects of frame (having the menu always visible) are provided by CSS2 in a clean way, and will be more and more supported

-- ColasNahaboo - 08 Jun 2002

Alternatively, just use CSS and perhaps DHTML to provide a navigation bar where you would have used frames, i.e. all within a single page - with DHTML, you can even make this stay on-screen as the page is scrolled, though that requires a bit more HTML wizardry than I'm capable of! - Richard

Actually, I did this and it was easier than I thought. I saw a stationary/hovering menu on the w3c CSS page (http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/), and thought it was the coolest thing. there are a few files you'll need to grab from w3.org (banners.css, others). then I just put the code in the template (view.tmpl) and it was applied globally.

-- ChrisWolske - 18 Jun 2002

Although I'll probably be unpopular, I wrote up a page discussing frames at UsingFramesInTWiki including an example of MinimalSkinUsingFrames.

I'm not averse to frames - more of the browsers I use support frames than CSS - but I agree with most of the posters here that frames cause problems.

I agree that frames should only be used in skins. I restrict myself to vertical frames, one atop the other, with minimal info in one, to increase readability on my PDA.

MinimalSkinUsingFrames does not have link following problems (that I know of) because of use the _top target in the base specification.

It is integrated with TWiki's template system, because it uses a template/skin for each frame.

-- AndyGlew - 26 Jun 2003

Just thought I'd put my 2 cents in. I am just learning and thought I would post what I was able to do with some basic javascript in order to create a frames page in Twiki. See TwikiIframes

-- MatthewMcCormick - 24 Oct 2006