«

Hi...
I always use frames... I found them useful in writing/updating a website
relatively fast at hand.
However, I know about the possible problem in the crawler indexing.

I do not have trouble a page inside a frame is linked because I programmed
the dynamic page in order to realize this and load itself in frames.
I did not make this by javascript because I remember reading could give
trouble with indexing too.

My questions are:

1) does the ASP response.redirect has trouble with web-crawler as could have
javascript?
2) Do you suggest to abandon frames or do you think the solution I adopted,
together with a linked sitemap, could avoid problem with bot?

Thanks
Ale

On Wed, 3 Aug 2005 11:38:08 +0200, Ale
<_cutbetweenunderscores_theopps75@ya_ho_hoo.it> wrote:

> I always use frames... I found them useful in writing/updating a website
> relatively fast at hand.

> My questions are:
>

> 2) Do you suggest to abandon frames or do you think the solution I adopted,
> together with a linked sitemap, could avoid problem with bot?
>

This has been discussed many times:
<http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22frames+are+evil%22+group%3Aalt.html%2A >


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> 1) does the ASP response.redirect has trouble with web-crawler as could
> have javascript?

No, this is the right way. A crawler that can't follow this is having
real problems.

> 2) Do you suggest to abandon frames

Yes.

The problem (for your case) is the old problem that frames aren't
bookmarkable. A crawler may crawl your site, but it then finds URLs
that are to child frames, not to the parent page. It may then hand
these out to users of the search engine (or whatever). The extent of
the problem with frames depends on how your site responds to these URLs
and how easily navigable your site is.

If you code your site carefully, then it can respond to an internal
frame URL by auto-wrapping the target in the right parent frameset and
also navigating the target frame to the correct page. This is quite
easy, so long as you bothered to do it ! It also means that every page
needs to be scripted, rather than being static HTML (unless someone
knows some Apache cleverness that I don't). This pervasive scripting
may be a problem for some people and not others.

Stick with frames if there's a good reason to use them - i.e. the user
can see them and uses them as an independent scrolling mechanism or
whatever. If you're only using frames as a way of sharing a common menu
bar between pages, then get rid of them.

ok thanks..., the reason to stick on frames for me is to use the scrollbar
always having a header and a footer.
I know I can do this with script... but I want to keep the website simple
because I do not have time to manage the website.

I am trying to solve the indexing problem by the use of noframe tag in the
entry page framset... here I generate the sitemap. Furthermore I sbmitted
the sitemap to google and in one of the initial frames I linked the sitemap
too...

I this point I guess that, if really as you assured me response.redirect
does not give trouble, a crawler will find linked all the website.

I do not have the problem of wrong referencing... In fact, I have a session
variable that is flagged only and only if the main index page (the one with
the framset) is open. If not, the page redirect the website to index.asp
posting its reference to be reopen in the right place.

As I mentioned I wanted trying avoid to much javascript.

Well, thanks for your comments, I feel more safe

yes... I know... I was mainly asking if you think the solutions I adopted
can avoid the problems I read about...
cheers

Ale wrote:

> ok thanks..., the reason to stick on frames for me is to use the scrollbar
> always having a header and a footer.

In the vast majority of cases the loss of vertical space for content greatly
outweighs the benefits of access to the header and footer without
scrolling.

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

> From: David Dorward <> Ale wrote:
>
>> ok thanks..., the reason to stick on frames for me is to use the scrollbar
>> always having a header and a footer.
>>
> In the vast majority of cases the loss of vertical space for content greatly
> outweighs the benefits of access to the header and footer without scrolling.
>

This is correct. So OP should make sure the header is little in height,
ditto the footer. If the main reason for frames happened to be for a
reasonable left nav col then this would be little loss of valuable space for
most contents...

dorayme

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Ale"
<_cutbetweenunderscores_theopps75@ya_ho_hoo.it> writing in
news:dcqmf6$42g$:

> ok thanks..., the reason to stick on frames for me is to use the
> scrollbar always having a header and a footer.
> I know I can do this with script... but I want to keep the website
> simple because I do not have time to manage the website.
>
> I am trying to solve the indexing problem by the use of noframe tag in
> the entry page framset... here I generate the sitemap. Furthermore I
> sbmitted the sitemap to google and in one of the initial frames I
> linked the sitemap too...
>
> I this point I guess that, if really as you assured me
> response.redirect does not give trouble, a crawler will find linked all
> the website.
>
> I do not have the problem of wrong referencing... In fact, I have a
> session variable that is flagged only and only if the main index page
> (the one with the framset) is open. If not, the page redirect the
> website to index.asp posting its reference to be reopen in the right
> place.
>
> As I mentioned I wanted trying avoid to much javascript.
>
> Well, thanks for your comments, I feel more safe
>
>
>

Don't feel safe yet, you still have problems:

1. Sessions are not available to those who do not have session cookies
enabled, or available, that would be web crawlers and people who have their
security set to even medium when there is no machine readable privacy
policy.

2. Some browsers will not redirect if they are set up that way. That's no
good if someone is coming in from a search engine into one of the orphan
pages.

3. I fail to see why you think that using frames addresses your issue with
managing the web site. Use an include.

<% option explicit%>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

<html>
<head>
<!-- the following include file includes the stylesheet and favicon -->
<!--#include file="linkrel.asp"-->
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<!--#include file="header.asp"-->
<!--#include file="menu.asp"-->
<div id="content">
<h1>Page Title</h1>
<p>Some content.</p>
</div>
<!--#include file="copyright.asp"-->
</body>
</html>

*** header.asp ***
<div id="header">
<img src="logo.png" height="height" width="width" alt="">
<!-- leave alt null because this is for decoration only -->
</div>

*** menu.asp ***
<div id="menu">
<ul>
<li><a href="index.asp">Home</a></li>
....
</ul>
</div>

*** copyright.asp ***

<div id="copyright">
Copyright &copy; <%=datepart("yyyy",date())%>
</div>
<% 'clean up and close any open connections %>

--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

ok... I see that the most diffuse opinion is this... therefore I guess is
the correct one
At this point I will try to migrate the website from one structure to the
other.

However, I still did not get two points:
1) The ASP session variable reside on the memory of the server and not in a
cookie. Thus, the browser, or in this case the bot, does not have to be
cookie enabled. All happen at the server side. Therefore, when a bot visit
my index.asp, set the session variable (at the server side) flagged. Then,
here can happen a problem. When explorer (even not cookie enabled) access a
website, it active a session on the server side till it goes in time-out, or
the browser is closed. When a crawler access my index.asp activate this
session, but all work only and only if the same bot proceed in the indexing.
If crawler, once reached the index.asp start to crawl the website with
multiple bots my approach does not work
2) The ASP response.redirect it is interpreted server side... thus, the bot
does not see it and see only the page that the server send to it...
Why it should not work with a bot, if this happen server-side?

Ok... let me remind that in my index.asp I have a frameset. But I use also
the noframe tag which it is supported by bots. There I generate the sitemap.
Thanks to this discussion I found a problem (see point 1). I am going to
abandon the session variable for the bots in the case multiple bot are used.
Each link in the sitemap will post the target page a variable (posting
should be supported by bots) which will stop the reframing of the website...
Those links should be indexed, but when used from browser, not passing
through the index.asp (here the session variable works for sure) the single
page will redirect to the framed versions...

I think could work...

Thanks

thanks for all suggestions...

"dorayme" <> wrote in message
news:BF178A03.1531D%...
>> From: David Dorward <> Ale wrote:
>>
>>> ok thanks..., the reason to stick on frames for me is to use the
>>> scrollbar
>>> always having a header and a footer.
>>>
>> In the vast majority of cases the loss of vertical space for content
>> greatly
>> outweighs the benefits of access to the header and footer without
>> scrolling.
>>
>
> This is correct. So OP should make sure the header is little in height,
> ditto the footer. If the main reason for frames happened to be for a
> reasonable left nav col then this would be little loss of valuable space
> for
> most contents...
>
> dorayme
>