aarone
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Mar 28, 2003, 3:41 PM
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Govt Standards Issue with Frames &DocBuilder
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I am working on a website for a government department in New Zealand. There web guidelines regarding frames are as follows. Does anyone know how I can use DocBuilder and comply with the standard?
Frames
It is tempting to contain common navigation links in separate frames, which need only be downloaded once. There are several reasons why frames must not be used. Well-designed navigation should not greatly increase the size of a document. If you are considering frames to reduce download time, you should probably be using more economic ways to do the same thing. Frames are containers, not documents. From both an historical and a legal point of view it is important that a URL refer to a web document, complete in and of itself, rather than a container for web documents that may no longer exist. Putting content and navigation in separate documents is the antithesis of what a web document should be. Unless the frameset document travels with the navigation document and the frameset and navigation documents travel with the content document, in the long term no one will have a complete picture of what was presented or why. In the short term, frames make it difficult for people to say where a document is by referring to an easily identifiable URL. Requirement Frames must not be used on publicly available government websites. Common navigation elements Most web documents start with a block of global navigation that links to the site home page and to the main sections of the site. This block may also link to important pages that describe the purpose of the site, who to contact in the organisation and a search page. There is then a block of navigation specific to the section of the site. Following this is the content itself (sometimes mixed with navigation). Finally there is a block of general navigation linking to pages that describe privacy and security, contact information, other related sites and the site.s home page. Not all sites are like this, but most are. Various techniques are used to lay these elements out for as an aid for visual users of mainstream browsers, such as placing the links on the left and the content on the right in a table. Similar consideration must be given users of screen readers and Braillers or users of browsers (on hand-held devices) that ignore tables so that the links and content are presented in a sensible order.
(This post was edited by aarone on Mar 28, 2003, 3:42 PM)
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