Comment by alganet
13 hours ago
> History doesn't work right
> Bookmarks don't work right -- this applies to link sharing and incoming links too
> Back button doesn't work right
Statements that apply to many JS webpages too.
pushState/popState came years after frames lost popularity. These issues are not related to their downfall.
Relax, dude. I'm not claiming we should use frames today. I'm saying they were simple good tools for the time.
They were never good. They were always broken in these ways. For some sites, it wasn't a big deal, because the only link that ever mattered was the main link. But a lot of places that used frames were like the POSIX specs or Javadocs, and they sucked for anything other than immediate, personal use. They were not deprecated because designers hated scrollbars (they do hate them, and that sucks too, but it's beside the point).
And, ironically, the best way to fix these problems with frames is to use JavaScript.
> They were never good
They were good enough.
> For some sites, it wasn't a big deal
Precisely my point.
> POSIX specs or Javadocs
Hey, they work for me.
> the best way to fix these problems with frames is to use JavaScript.
Some small amounts of javascript. Mainly, proxy the state for the main frame to the address bar. No need for virtual dom, babel, react, etc.
--
_Again_, you're arguing like I'm defending frames for use today. That's not what I'm doing.
Many websites follow a "left navigation, center content" overall layout, in which the navigation stays somehow stationary and the content is updated. Frames were broken, but were in the right direction. You're nitpicking on the ways they were broken instead of seeing the big picture.
Directionally correct but badly done can poison an idea. Frames sucked and never got better.
Along with other issues, this gave rise to AJAX and SPAs and JS frameworks. A big part of how we got where we are today is because the people making the web standards decided to screw around with XHTML and "the semantic web" (another directionally correct but badly done thing!) and other BS for about a decade instead of improving the status quo.
So we can and often should return to ancestor but if we're going to lay blame and trace the history, we ought to do it right.
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