Safari is being annoying on my website.

[Mrious_be]

Sniff....

My website marceldaems is growing into "Alpha" state since this weekend. But when I also tested it out in Safari I found a really annoying bug on how Safari handles my website. All works really well till... you accidentaly scroll or use the scroll function on my website. I can't really explain what it's doing, it just seems like Safari takes the entire "mainframe" and slides it to the left leaving only the red colored background to see. When you scroll back the frame comes back also.

Maybe some of you can try it out on my website (follow link above or in signature) and even maybe some can tell me why this is cause I have no idea why Safari is doing something like this? There is absolutely nothing that can trigger an effect like this. I did added some CSS code to make my drop-down menu appear under the red line (as it looks better then just having the black text boxes appear over it), but when taking this out, it doesn't help... Safari is still doing this annoying thing.

I feel bad about this since Safari is about the standard on Apple (and recently also on Windows). A good thing is that this behavious is not happening in Camino, Firefox and Opera (latest browsers). Haven't tested it on others.

I hope anyone can point me at least in the good direction... or maybe it's just a bug in Safari?

[Xairbusdriver]

You have "scrolling=NO" in all the frames. Safari is honoring that command, exactly.

Apple ( and many other ) wish frames would go away. Try using iFrames instead. BTW, frames are not usable with Safari on iPhone. Nor can any of your pages be bookmarked if they are accessible only in a frame.

[Paddy]

Marcel, I second Jim's response - kill the frames. There is no earthly reason to use them, IMHO. Can't bookmark pages with them, printing can be problematic and search engines have a tough time indexing them unless you jump through a few hoops.

http://htmlhelp.com/design/frames/whatswrong.html

http://web.mit.edu/cwis/frames/

http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/frames/goodorbad.html

Use a template - just as easy.

[Mrious_be]

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Aug 12 2007, 02:16 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You have "scrolling=NO" in all the frames. Safari is honoring that command, exactly.

Then why is Safari scrolling the entire site if it's honoring the setting that much
But thanks, I took that code out and it is acting as it should yes.

[Mrious_be]

QUOTE(Paddy @ Aug 12 2007, 03:52 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Marcel, I second Jim's response - kill the frames. There is no earthly reason to use them, IMHO. Can't bookmark pages with them, printing can be problematic and search engines have a tough time indexing them unless you jump through a few hoops.
Use a template - just as easy.

The earthly reason is, iFrames will never give me the acuracy that I have with normal frames. Positioning an iFrame you have to use percentages or fixed numbers just like CSS, but depending on the viewers browser you never know where your site is going to end up and that's exactly why I use frames. I hate it when my browser window rescales to some setting that the designer put in, even worse when the setting is bigger than my resolution. iFrame will not do what I want, but maybe different CSS will, I'll think about that.

Bookmarking a page might be one good reason to give up frames yes, but my website is not designed to bookmark just one page.
 
About the search engines, not sure where you got that but even at the point where there wasn't much online from my website, it was already in top 10 on Google when people searched at my name... all I did was adding the keywords in the meta. I really didn't jump through hoops for that one. BTW, I just checked it and I am number one now.

Templates are not frames. A template is a fixed design where you can start to build your pages on. Changing a link (or whatever) in the template will change it in all the pages you have based upon that template. I am using templates.

[Paddy]

Er...still don't know why you're using frames, but whatever. Unless you start putting more info on each page, requiring the user to scroll within the frame, you could do exactly the same thing you've done with a template. The frame doesn't change either - same as the template; generally I set my templates up so the content areas are editable - just as the content/frame source is in frames, but there is plenty of flexibility. In Dreamweaver, I use components within my otherwise templated areas to change menus for different areas of the site, without having to create another template.

Using a template with a set width is just about the same as what you've done, since the central portion (which let's face it, IS the web page) is a fixed width. Only the areas around are variable.

I wasn't suggesting iFrames - again don't think it's necessary. (iFrames are more typically used for things like ads)

Anyway, to each his own. I don't like or use frames and avoid them because they basically "break" the web. (bookmarking and other issues I linked to before)

As for the search engines - yes, they'll find your site just fine, but as for finding specific content within your site, they could have a tough time. Also, Google ignores meta tags in general; it's no doubt finding you because your name is in the URL.

[chriskleeman]

Ok Paddy, Ok!!!

After I get my kid off to California next week maybe I can figure out a way to get the frames out of my website... there's got to be a simple way to get all that stuff that are now in frames migrated over to CSS or plain old pages, not to mention some re-design... hint-hint....

But at least the site behaves well on most browsers, frames or no frames.

Marcel, your site is clean on Mozilla SeaMonkey, fyi.

Chris K

[tacit]

QUOTE(Mrious_be @ Aug 12 2007, 04:42 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

About the search engines, not sure where you got that but even at the point where there wasn't much online from my website, it was already in top 10 on Google when people searched at my name... all I did was adding the keywords in the meta. I really didn't jump through hoops for that one. BTW, I just checked it and I am number one now.

Templates are not frames. A template is a fixed design where you can start to build your pages on. Changing a link (or whatever) in the template will change it in all the pages you have based upon that template. I am using templates.

Google does not look at or use meta tags, with the exception of some specific Google meta tags that instruct the Google spider not to index your site. Placing information in meta tags will not in any way affect how your site is ranked; at this point, no major search engine uses meta tags, and hasn't for years.

[Mrious_be]

QUOTE(Paddy @ Aug 13 2007, 02:24 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Er...still don't know why you're using frames, but whatever. Unless you start putting more info on each page, requiring the user to scroll within the frame, you could do exactly the same thing you've done with a template. The frame doesn't change either - same as the template; generally I set my templates up so the content areas are editable - just as the content/frame source is in frames, but there is plenty of flexibility. In Dreamweaver, I use components within my otherwise templated areas to change menus for different areas of the site, without having to create another template.

Paddy.... I obiously are missing something here cause I don't know what you mean with using a template and not frames?
How can I use templates in such a way my mainframe is always in the center of the screen?
Sorry... probably a function I have no idea about

But I am thinking to change it actually.
If people here say frames are getting absolute and/or annoying that I guess more people feel like this.
I am thinking to start my website on a fixed positioning on the left and top,  have it a fixed width and height (like it is now basicly) and have the rest of browser window filled up with the background colors.
That way, the site is not centered anymore, but it will be all one page, and I can do it all in CSS also.

I don't have to change to much to do this actually
Delete the Index.htm, rewrite the CSS just a little (more like adding a little bit of code) and that should be it.

BTW, noticed that I added password protection to my Private section of the site.
That was soooooooooo simple... amazing.
Done with .htAccess, but the good thing is that HostExcellence has .htAccess control in it's control panel

Thanks for the advice Paddy, Jim and Tacit.
Also thanks for checking the site in SeaMonkey Chris

[Mrious_be]

Woooow....

Thanks to the power of CSS it was a real eazzzze to change the website
So now the entire page is just one page... you can check it out using the link in my signature
Based on my resolution on this iBook (1024x768px) and my browser (Camino with Tabbar) the website is almost centered in height, but unintentional.
On other systems and browsers I know the background colour will just go on but that is ok for me

Now I just have to find a way to hide the full url addresses in the addressbar, don't really like that.
I think to remember there's a way to hide them, just have to look it up, that will be next quest.

[Paddy]

Marcel, re: centering the page in the browser window, check here:

http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/thebox/deadcentre4.html

There is more info on Webmaster World's forums too. http://www.webmasterworld.com - CSS forum is probably the best bet.

(And why do you want to hide the full URL? Again - breaks the web. Not standards compliant etc.)

[sandbox]

Google

The <meta> element

The meta element has few attributes:

http://code.google.com/webstats/2005-12/metadata.html


M_B you may want to add a description <meta>

[Mrious_be]

QUOTE(Paddy @ Aug 13 2007, 09:23 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

(And why do you want to hide the full URL? Again - breaks the web. Not standards compliant etc.)

Thanks for the links guys
I can see what you mean with the "deadcentre" page but it's one thing to centre a simple ellement like this with text in it, and to centre a page consisting of multiple ellements... still... considering all, I do think it is possible to work like this.
I'll check into it later.
 Also thanks for the Meta information

And to answer the question Paddy.
That is really more of a personal thing.
I don't really mind it showing the entire url, but when I create something, no matter what or how, I want to have it as clean as possible.
And that's the reason why I don't like it that the url changes in the address bar one page to another.

If I really think about it, it's not something that is a must for me, after all we are still on the internet.

[kimmer]

QUOTE(Mrious_be @ Aug 14 2007, 09:47 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

QUOTE(Paddy @ Aug 13 2007, 09:23 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

(And why do you want to hide the full URL? Again - breaks the web. Not standards compliant etc.)

I don't really mind it showing the entire url, but when I create something, no matter what or how, I want to have it as clean as possible.
And that's the reason why I don't like it that the url changes in the address bar one page to another.

As a visitor - and this is just my opinion - but as a visitor to any web site, I find it flat out annoying to find the real url hidden. Sometimes I want to send the real link to someone, or I want to bookmark it so that I can go back ... and when the url is hidden I can't do those things. So I have to poke around to find out what the real url is ... and then I get annoyed and the end result is ... I never go back and I'll often tell pals to avoid web sites that do this.

Just food for thought for the designers around here.

[Xairbusdriver]

Marcel, I really think you need to reconsider the requirements you are placing on your viewers. Basically, try to remember that you may own the site but your control over how the user views it is almost completely out of your control. While it will be very easy to limit what they can do or see, they will often decide the effort is not worth it. When you decide to make some aspect of the site different than most other sites you should have a very good reason for do that. I would suggest that "because I like it that way" is not sufficient on a public site, especially one that is offering a service that depends on first impressions. If you make it difficult or unconfortable for the new comer, they may not stick around long enough actually see that you might be of help. :dknw:

The actual site looks quite nice, not too cluttered, fits in a 'normal' window without any scrolling, etc. It's a great start, I hope you'll back up your work with some study of good design methods, programming standards and maybe even signing up at some professional html/CSS forums. But most of all, have fun and learn from everyone you can! Even when someone disagrees with you! Even Smiley may do that!