home | books | articles | gleanings | case studies | hire
other sites: widgetopia | blueprints for the web | metafooder


 


 


« it's that time again.... | main | interesting paper »

bad practice

While getting prepped for an upcoming conference, I did a quickie google search on flash+usability, looking for a wonderful article on fitts law on flash I'd found before. Look at the first result



is this how you'd like your page to be displayed on google and yahoo? Time for frame users to go out and rewrite their noframes messages.... What's sad is if you do follow the link, it's fine (assuming you have a frames-enabled browser, as most of the browsing population has) so the link only appears to be useless.

Posted at August 06, 2001 11:55 AM


Comments

 

Wouldn't it be nice if web browsers had a 'bot simulation mode' we (web designers) could could see what they see? I guess we could just use Lynx...

Posted by victor at August 6, 2001 08:13 PM


~~~

ugh. so i go to download MacLynx for this very reason, and the description reads, 'Frames, forms, cookies, proxies, and more are all supported...' But I don't want support! I want 1992!

Posted by victor at August 6, 2001 08:17 PM


~~~

http://browsers.evolt.org/

Posted by Jess at August 6, 2001 09:25 PM


~~~

At least on the copy of MacLynx I have, "support for frames" means that when you look at a frameset page, you get links to the component pages, not that Lynx attempts to display the frameset as if you were viewing it in IE or Netscape. It also displays the NOFRAMES text. So you get 1994, but you don't get trapped there. This is also true for the UNIX version of Lynx.

If you want 1992, you'll need to download a copy of the CERN line mode client. The Mac version of that is at http://browsers.evolt.org/index.cfm/dir/macwww/1.03/ .

Posted by ralph at August 7, 2001 08:54 AM


~~~

realize this:

google's automated bots often referred to as spiders view the web through the eyes of netscape 1 capable browsers... hence the frame message...

The link displayed within google's search results is the original page... there is no way to correct this... google and many other search engines do not follow redirects...

However, macromedia should have client and server side redirects so that if the user does follow the link they will eventually be driven to the correct version...

The bigger issue here is not the irrelevant frame capable browser warning... Its the lack of meta tags to convey to the user and the search engine what the site and page are about.

Posted by surfmoc at August 12, 2001 11:20 AM


~~~

But will the user follow the link? Isn't it important to write a user friendly no-frames message to avoid this sort of trouble?

Posted by christina at August 17, 2001 04:12 PM


~~~



Post a comment
*Name:


*Email Address:


URL:


Remember me?

Comments:

bold italic underline link


posting can be slow; please wait a few seconds before hitting the button again.

The extra-fine print
wording stolen by the more-eloquent-than-I kottke
The bold, italics, and link buttons (and associated shortcut keys) only work in IE 5+ on the PC.
Hearty discussion and unpopular viewpoints are welcome, but please keep comments on-topic and *civil*. Flaming, trolling, and ass-kissing comments are discouraged and may be deleted.
All comments, suggestions, bug reports, etc. related to the comments system should be directed to me.


mail entry to a friend

Email this entry to:


Your email address:


Message (optional):




« it's that time again.... | main | interesting paper »

 

 

 

home | books | articles | gleanings | case studies | hire
other sites: widgetopia | blueprints for the web | metafooder