XFrames explained
XFrames was an XML format draft for embedding HTML pages into one page which handles the layout without the problems of HTML Frames. This technique has been especially popular for navigation bars. While HTML Frames are still supported for legacy websites, today websites combine the page on the server instead.
Differences from HTML Frames
Traditional HTML frames that were introduced with HTML 4.0 were useful for their ability to combine several distinct Web pages into a single webpage view. However, several problems arose from the implementation and as such, frames have been removed from the W3C XHTML 1.1 standard. XFrames was supposed to address some of the following problems existent in HTML frames:
- a Web browser's back button failing to work intuitively
- the failure to bookmark or favorite specific documents on the Web page easily as well as the inability to send an individual a reference to a specific document or collection
- getting trapped in a frameset
- the production of different results at times when a Web page containing frames is reloaded
- the "Page Up" and "Page Down" keys being difficult to use due to the pointer focus being on another frame within the page
- security vulnerabilities caused by the fact that a user has no way of knowing the original source of each framed document
- Since frames are not supported by all agents, and the necessary <![CDATA[ content is not popularly implemented, agents that do not support frames (such as search engines) fail to render pages correctly and at the same time prevent any <a href="../search_engine_optimization/" title="Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web ...">search engine optimization</a>.</li>
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<p>XFrames overcomes the bookmarking problem by encoding the <i>population</i> of the frames into the URI, thus making it possible to bookmark/add a favorite of a page successfully.</p>
<h2>XFrames Implementation</h2>
<p>Similar to other <a href="../markup_languages/" title="A markup language is a text-encoding system which specifies the structure and formatting of a document and potentially the ...">markup languages</a>, XFrames supported a number of elements and respective attributes.The following is a simple demonstration for the proposed implementation of a frames webpage:</p>
<p><syntaxhighlight lang="xml"><frames xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/06/xframes/"> <head> <title>Home Page</title> <style type="text/css"> #header #footer #nav </style> </head> <group compose="vertical"> <frame xml:id="header" source="banner.xhtml"/> <group compose="horizontal"> <frame xml:id="main" source="news.xhtml"/> <frame xml:id="nav" source="nav-menu.xhtml"/> </group> <group compose="vertical"> <frame xml:id="footer" source="disclaimer.xhtml"/> </group> </group></frames></syntaxhighlight></p>
<p>The <frames> element acts as the containing element of the collection of frames. This collection is what is being referred to as the 'frameset' of a webpage. Similarly to <a href="../XHTML/" title="XHTML is part of the family of XML markup language s which mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup ...">XHTML</a> and <a href="../HTML/" title="HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser.">HTML</a> markups, the <head> elements contain meta-data primarily used for search optimization and document description. The contained <style> element is used to include any content and layout styling - <a href="../CSS/" title="CSS is a cornerstone technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and JavaScript.">CSS</a> is being used here. <group> groups a single or several frame elements together and can be styled accordingly. If no group style is specified, the <i>compose</i> attribute should be used to specify how the grouped frame elements are to be composed. Lastly, the <frame> element acts as the placeholder for the content of a webpage specified by <a href="../URL/" title="A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifier, although many people use the two terms interchangeably.">URL</a> through the <i>source</i> attribute.</p>
<h2>See also</h2>
<ul><li><a href="../XML/" title="XML is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data.">XML</a></li>
<li><a href="../XHTML/" title="XHTML is part of the family of XML markup language s which mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup ...">XHTML</a></li>
<li><a href="../Framing_(World_Wide_Web)/" title="Frame is a part of a web page or browser window which displays content independent of its container, with the ability to ...">Framing (World Wide Web)</a></li>
<li>HTML element#Frames</li>
<li>IFrame</li>
</ul>
<h2>References</h2>
<ul><li><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xframes/" rel="nofollow">W3C Working Draft</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>External links</h2>
<ul><li>XFrames Resources at W3C<ul><li><a href="http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/" rel="nofollow">The XHTML2 Working Group</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xframes/" rel="nofollow">XFrames</a> was a <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-xframes-20020806/" rel="nofollow">W3C Working Draft on 6 August 2002</a></li>
</ul>
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