design question

[Hanter]

Hello friends
I am desiging a site and I asked this other guy for help and he said to use frames before I use Flash, Applets or JavaScripts. What do you guys think? I have a long page that I am using a static menu on but he suggested using frames cause he says it would load quicker. Do you think that is correct?

thanks in advance

[bdominick]

Hi Hanter. I assume you're talking about having a menu frame vs. a menu applet or a JavaScript menu?

I can't imagine that load time is a factor between HTML frames and JavaScript. We're talking about miliseconds, if anything, depending on the user's computer. I mean, if they're running an ancient browser on an ancient machine, javascript can pose problems, but I haven't heard of it being a significant factor in a while. Depending on the applet or the Flash code, that could be a bigger factor, but, again, I'm not sure load time should be a major consideration.

There are some sizable concerns with frames. The most significant one is with bookmarking. Most users won't even know how to bookmark a particular page on the site (they'll generally just end up bookmarking the frameset itself, which isn't so helpful). There are issues with search engines, as well -- they may not crawl properly, or they may link searchers to frameless pages inside your site that have no menu at all (bypassing the frameset).

Then again, there's nothing mutually exclusive about using JS/Flash vs. frames. Assuming you're talking about having a JS/Flash in a menu that carries over across pages, you could also just have a menu frame that uses JS/Flash.

I would personally avoid frames except in very specific circumstances where they may make sense in terms of design (like if you want to display multiple sites at once, or something clever like that). They're not so good for navigation.

[bdominick]

Oh man, did I just respond to a bot? I got pun'd!? Matt, can't you delete these posts instead of just giving them a "banned" tagline? I'm obviously not a tagline reader.

[rlhanson]

Hey B -
I'm getting to the point where I'm afraid to respond as I keep having conversations with spambots! LOL
Glad to see I'm not the only one!

[bdominick]

Well, Lynne, as long as our advice is good, maybe non-bots will benefit down the road ;-)

[rlhanson]

At least it boosts my self-esteem amongst all these brainiac programmers! The spambots ask questions that I can actually weigh in on when I am absolutely brain dead at the end of the day!

[Matt]

Actually, I am not entirely sure some of the latest posts are spambots per say.

Some are definitely paid posters. That means your responses are not entirely un-useful

The person that posted it might learn something useful?

We delete MUCH crap on here, but some of these last 10 "questionable" posts are tough calls, and some actually provide legitimate conversation pieces. We do not want to piss off *possible* new forum users...

Last person we accused of Spam was actually a real person.

Now we are looking for solutions like no more signatures until someone has 5-10 posts. What do you think?

We will not let it get out of hand. Just looking for ideas right now.

[bdominick]

Last person we accused of Spam was actually a real person.

I saw that. Kind of funny -- I don't think you guys overreacted. What do they expect? It's still abuse of YOUR resources.

Now we are looking for solutions like no more signatures until someone has 5-10 posts. What do you think?

Hmmm, sounds like it could backfire. You get 5 spammy posts in 5 minutes, then the sig appears on all of them, right? Sounds like a lose-lose. But, yeah, at least some of the questions are generally useful/interesting. Someone's getting their money's worth out of these paid posters!

Brian

[Matt]

Well 5 spammy posts in 5 mins are always deleted and the user ends up banned.

Typically a legit user posts over the course of a few days or weeks. Questionable users post over the course of a few days, and bots usually do it all at once. I am sure now that I said that the bots will be updated to post every 4 days to get past the measures.

Now we need to find a forum mod to do this automagically.

[rlhanson]

Now we are looking for solutions like no more signatures until someone has 5-10 posts. What do you think?

I think this is a good idea. I personally have been encouraged to actually participate in a forum in order to achieve the signature link ability and do respect those requirements.

...as long as our advice is good, maybe non-bots will benefit down the road ;-)

If they are not posting relevant material then they are just as unnecessary as the spambots but if they are and we are able to offer some suggestions - maybe we can help other "real" people later.

I'll participate with what I know - if you all will!