Still using framesets for browser based games - why

Posted Wednesday 24th June 2009 00:29:02 by Mike Hayes

Hello readers :) One question we get asked quite a lot is why we still choose to use framesets for laying out our browser based games, why not "move on" and throw all content into one page layout? I mean, content includes can be done server side of course and bandwidth isn't always much of an issue. We choose to use framesets for the main layout still for various reasons, but this doesn't cut us off from staying up to date and using Javascript in the right places for modal boxes or AJAX.

In our latest development, Themepark Manager, we've chosen to stick with the basic frames layout once again:

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Frames were excluded from the XHTML 1.1 specification, with room being made for XFrames (which as far as we know hasn't made much movement). This isn't really an issue, only the frameset has to stick to the 1.0 XHTML spec and you can continue how you like with the pages that are actually displayed within the frames.

One obvious benefit to framesets is that certain content only has to be loaded up once - such as menus, header areas and so on. With caching in place this isn't saving your server resources but isn't it nice for players of the game? People who play browser based games tend to be clicking around alot, certainly alot more than the average website - by framing menu and header bars away from content their browser doesn't have to be rendering this on each and every click.

A second point would be the scrolling benefits, now anybody who develops websites knows that scrolling can be setup on other elements using CSS pretty easily, but is this really the same? If you have a long menu, but you want it all to be accessible with out drop downs etc, it is certainly easier to have a frame in place. This way the player can scroll to a certain menu point and on main content page loads this point isn't reset each time back to the top of the menu.

Framesets can certainly make web pages look ugly, and cause issues for search engines perhaps.. but as far as browser based gaming they're just brilliant - they make your work easier and upon some quick research we find that most players prefer a setup using frames for these sorts of games.

One worry some people may have is Javascript calls between frames, for example launching a modal box in the main area based on a click made from the header area. We've had no trouble tackling this, basic Javascript and any modern browser is currently supporting it.

So, that's why we're "still" using framesets in our websites, for browser based games they are a gem (y)

(P.S. The example of Themepark Manager was really just to give everyone a sneak preview of our initial development %))