Re: [GENERAL] Re: [MIRRORS] Revamp'd Web Site... - Mailing list pgsql-general

Having spent about one year on revamping my own site, I am very
appreciative of the efforts you made.  However, I would suggest ditching
frames if at all possible.

If for no other reason than that frames make it virtually impossible for
search egines to comprehesively index your site.  The search engines will
now see only the frameset page and whatever keywords you put there.
search engines like excite ignore keywords entirely because lamers started
spamming the keywords tag.  so search engines like excite won't turn up
any relebvant info on postgres from your site.  bad for publicity.

secondary reasons to ditch frames are the navigation difficulties they
present (back button backs out of only the frame which has current focus
and that scrollbars eat up valuable real estate on a browser window; not
lynx friendly etc etc.

i recently learned a design trick from a friend who is a real pro at this
stuff (www.peterme.com) and I am working on version three of my site that
will incorporate this

global navigation starts top left and moves across from lef tto right
local naviagation starts top left and moves top to bottom

so if you have a hierarchical site such as:

index.html
  friends
    mike.html
    joe.html
  foes
    jack.html
    john.html
....
 and so forth,

the home page would offer

HOME FRIENDS FOES
across the top.

When you got to the FRIENDS section, you'd have
HOME FIRNEDS FOES across the top and
MIKE
JOE

going down the side.

This works very well and is aform well understood and liked by many
people.  so the idea is to create table templates
that has at least two rows and two columns laid out as follows:

 ----------------------------
| global nav buttons/links  |
 ----------------------------
| l |                       |
| o |   Content goes here   |
| c |                       |
| a |                       |
| l |                       |
|   |                       |
| n |                       |
| a |                       |
| v |                       |
 ----------------------------

at that point, you just have to decide whether you wnat to use the table
percent feature to control the width of tables or the pixel definitions.
since NS doesn't render tables correctly, it is better to choose the pixel
definition, and based on large generalities, allowing a table to be 612
pixels wide will allow it to fit nicely in most users screens, and some
users with big screens and/or high pixel denisty will see only part of
their browser window filled with content.

just my two cents,
steve doliov