[whatwg] framesets

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 2:47 PM, Peter Brawley <pb at artfulsoftware.com> wrote:
> Right, the point is that the use case specifies tree navigation to be
> entirely independent of navigation to and from the page, that tree and
> detail subwindows be independently scrollable & resizable, and that tree
> nodes not be externally linkable. The response that the client ought not to
> want this is, well, beyond W3C's brief.

This is actually the WHATWG list, not the W3C.  But in any case, both
organizations think it's completely appropriate for them to pressure
authors to avoid bad features.  I guess you can feel free to argue
that they shouldn't, but I don't think you'll convince them.

> I'm arguing that framesets have been part of HTML4, developers used them in
> good faith, and removing them from HTML5 unfairly & arbitrarily imposes a
> Hobson's choice of keeping existing functionality while foregoing new HTML5
> functionality, or re-architecting existing functionality in order to use new
> HTML5 functionality.

You aren't *forced*.  You can make a document that uses both frames
and HTML5 features.  It will work, it's just not valid HTML5.

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Peter Brawley <pb at artfulsoftware.com> wrote:
> It's not your brief to decide what's beneficial for a client.

As defined by who?  For instance, the W3C's mission is "To lead the
World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and
guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web."
<http://www.w3.org/Consortium/>  That includes prohibiting things it
considers harmful.

> You are arguing for imposing one way of doing things. Ugh.

Well, yes.  The WHATWG and W3C are standards bodies.  Standards are,
by definition, things that impose one way of doing things.

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 2:57 PM, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky at mit.edu> wrote:
> I don't see how they wouldn't.  Everything you can accomplish with
> <frameset> and <frame> you can do with <iframe> plus gobs of javascript to
> make the drag-resizing work (probably badly, unlike the UA-provided resizing
> for <frameset>), no?  Oh, and more hacks to get the initial sizing right and
> such, of course...

Ah, I didn't understand how navigation in iframes works.  So why *are*
frames banned, if you can easily replace them with iframes and get the
exact same lousy behavior?  Because iframes also have less evil uses,
and frames don't, I guess?