Need JavaScript for "blink"

Please. Reconsider. There is a very good reason why IE does not support the <BLINK> and it has nothing to do with a programming error. Blink sucks. Period. There's only one design element that says "clueless designer" more forcefully that using blinking text. That's having 4 or more frames. And no, I'm not going to help you with the code for that either <G>

Seriously, don't use blinking text. No matter how cool you think it might be, your visitors WILL NOT agree. I hope there's a special place in hell awaiting whomever decided that <BLINK> would be a good idea.

John - Thanks.

Mav - Thanks for the insights, seriously. I'll take that into consideration.

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ArtsNFlies.com
"It's not really a flyfishing shop, more like a Martha Stewart goes fishing thing!"

Original art, hand tied flies, unique books and gifts, free sweepstakes and MORE!
Come see what everyone is talking about!

I agree with Maverick. I think it's one of the 10 deadly sins that a webmaster can make.

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Justin S.

And by the way:

Netscape 5 wont support <blink> either.

Malte

My vote: blink is annoying. How can you possibly make something worse than just blink alone? My friend's home page had text that BLINKED, other text that went side to side (marquee), and flashing gifs as well. Add to that a little animated gif of a letter going into a mailbox.

Really, trust your fellow webmasters. Say no to BLINK. I as well, could tell you how, but am choosing not to. Sorry.

Hey Justin,

What are the other 9 deadly sins?
(I probably use several. )

What about:

• An animated gif of a letter going into an envelope (mentioned by Chicken)
  
• Something like "This site is best viewed with 800x600 IE5" . As a good designer makes a cross-browser site.
  
• No right mouse click function (Yes yes I use that one and have my reasons. I hate it though)
  
• A one page site with lots of info. That means scrolling for about 20 miles. That's not what HTML is ment to be for, I guess.
  

And more...

Jack

...Oh I forgot the use of a scrollbar when there is absolutely no reason for it. This is mostly seen in small frames with one large image in it. Hate it.

[This message has been edited by Jack Michaelson (edited 02 February 2000).]

Thanks for the tips.

Jack - Your bullet #3 (no right-mouse clicks), how would you disable that functionality? Thanks!

------------------
ArtsNFlies.com
"It's not really a flyfishing shop, more like a Martha Stewart goes fishing thing!"

Original art, hand tied flies, unique books and gifts, free sweepstakes and MORE!
Come see what everyone is talking about!

Jaiem,

For the no-right-mouse-click-script check:
www.dynamicdrive.com

But notice my tip:
D O N ' T U S E I T
It really anoys the more advanced visitors who'd like to open a link in new window and stuff.

Jack

more deadly sins ....

forgetting to include image height and width attributes so that the page jumps around all the time while loading.

forgetting alt attributes for images (for people who actually surf with images OFF)

using a background image/texture that makes it almost impossible to read the text

.. the list goes on

Just a quick thought: If you really must use the blink idea you could make it work in both browsers simply with an animated gif.

However, I do agree with the others about the annoyance factor of blinking text. It just messes up the eyes.

(Aside)
This is turning into a good discussion on things people should look out for when designing a site, some really helpful hints have been posted here.

A few other things. None of these might be a "deadly sin", but they're all annoying.

1) Doing anything that mucks about with the status bar on a mouseover. Let people see where the link they're considering is going to take them.
2) Background sounds that can't be turned off.
3) Any "under construction" graphics or excuses. If your site isn't under constant construction it's dead.
4) Graphics-only navigation systems like image maps. If you use graphics in that area, you need to provide text-based navigation somewhere.
5) Anything that a 13 year old mails you to get the code for cause he thinks it's "kewl".
6) Any links to any area in your site that doesn't exist yet. Nothing is more annoying than following a link and hitting a page that says "coming soon". If the page you're linking to isn't ready yet, don't add a link to it YOU MORON!!!
7) Entry pages that say "click here to enter this site". Anyone on that page already tried to enter the site and you just made it harder. When you change channels on a TV do you get an interim channel that says "click your remote again to enter the channel you were looking for last click"? Of course not, even TV execs are smarter than that and they thought the Chevy Chase Show would be a hit.

To all - Thanks again for the opinions. I've since removed most of the <blink> from my site. However, I still think that occational prudent use of <blink> or similar JavaScript can help draw the visitors attention to something important, help emphasize a point or warning, etc. (like the GOTO in programming - everying says how bad it is to use - and I agree - but sometimes it does make sense). In that light, I would still like to have the JavaScript for blinking. I promise to use it sparingly.

Mav - Great points! Especially #2 (I hate that sooooo much!).

About #7 - Isn't that a doorway page? I thought framed sites need that to get good search engine listings.

------------------
ArtsNFlies.com
"It's not really a flyfishing shop, more like a Martha Stewart goes fishing thing!"

Original art, hand tied flies, unique books and gifts, free sweepstakes and MORE!
Come see what everyone is talking about!

Oh yeah, that reminds me. Don't use frames!

99% of the sites using frames don't need them and could benefit from getting rid of them. The other 1% of the sites that use frames don't need them, but are so poorly designed anyway that even eliminating the frames wouldn't help. There's nothing that frames accomplish that non-frames can't accomplish with a little creative design work.

And the doorway=position argument is a fallacy. I once used frames in my younger and stupider days (although I never used <BLINK> thank god) and managed to acheive #1 rankings on WebCrawler and Lycos simultaneously without an entry page. Good <META> tags and proper wording in the <NOFRAMES> sections eliminate the need for empty doorway pages.

Dont talk about frames when you dont really know aht you are talking about. This seems a little harsh but frames do, indeed, have a purpose.
1.) Usually the only thing a company wants to do with their website (unless they do e-commerce) is to have the vistor see their logo at all times. This can only be done with frames.
2.) Frames can highly increase loading time. We usually use very complex navigational menus. Frames save your visitor from loading 10k extra HTML on every page.

There are some more arguments to use frames but these are the main ones. I think the reason why so many people dont like frames is that they are used badly most of the time.

I can give you guys some examples where I think we used frames in a wisely manner:
www.hellermanntyton.de www.parma-aurel.de/frames.html www.totalvital.de/html/

The first of these sites has over 500 pages with at least 50 navigational menus on 3 layers of navigational. Tell me how to do that with SSI without getting a lot trouble.

Now, to the topic of this thread: blink does, indeed, suck because you cant read the text which is blinking because its gone for such a long time. Thus blink doesnt follow its purpose. Your view is directed in the right direction but you cant read it.

I never place an alt attribute unless I want to positively influence the result of a search engine to my advantage. That, of course, if an unusual high percentage of the site's target audience has their images turned off I would use it. But normally, its too much work to justify the time it takes just because some fundamental software developers who still use their 9660 modem from 1987 are happy then. Especially not, if you measure time with $100/hr. I also dont like text alternatives to links cuz they dont look good.

goto is does not have a purpose, I'm afraid, its highly dangerous.

You may use a doorway page to let the visitor decide between for example the flash and the HTML version of a site.

my death sin: stealing somebody else's design

Besides that, I agree with the death sins although I'm against capital punishment

Later,

Malte

Malte,

Although I agree with you about the use of frames, I have to tell you a company-logo can be visible all the time without frames.
Check out the Site Logo Script in the 'Image Effect' section on www.DynamicDrive.com
I don't use it though.

Jack

Of course, you can use dHTML for that but the logo would probably not be integrated into the design then.

Malte

Malte - I agree that using <blink> for a large area of text is very tough to read. I too have seen sites where a full line, sentence, even a whole paragraph was blinked and it's a pain.

But as away to draw attention and emphasize a point, blinking one perhaps two words, can be useful (IMO). Besides, using the JavaScript instead of the <blink> tag I assume you can adjust the blink rate (the timing) so you can make it blink slower to be more easily read.

------------------
ArtsNFlies.com
"It's not really a flyfishing shop, more like a Martha Stewart goes fishing thing!"

Original art, hand tied flies, unique books and gifts, free sweepstakes and MORE!
Come see what everyone is talking about!

Malte,

I quite agree that people that don't understand frames should not talk about them. I just wish that people that dispense that advice (not naming any names) would actually follow it themselves.

Please explain this to me because I seem to be too ignorant of frames to understand it. The purpose of navigational links is to make your site EASIER to navigate. Yet you're using frames, which make your site harder to navigate, merely to support your complex link structure. That bass-ackwards. If your linking structure is so bad that it requires frames to make it work, then it should be redone. You're not going to win any friends by letting a designer show how clever he is with javascript rollovers (seen it all before, yawn) when it's screwing up the site. Until frames allow individual pages to be bookmarked, they're a detriment, period. If you reread my anti-frame posting, you'll see that I said "creative design work". Anybody can just throw up his hands in frustration and say "I need frames, I can't get the logo to show up otherwise", but a clever designer can come up with lots of ways to do it. DHTML as discussed above, logoed backgrounds, miniature logos as bullets, etc.

OK since we have established that BLINK stinks and moved on to the frames/no frames argument someone that is anti-frames answer me this.

When I am using a top navigation system I can use SSI to put all my coding on one page. (I use include file="nav.inc") However I don't know how to do the same thing when my client request a side navigation system.

The way I get around having to code the navigaion into each page I use frames.

I am currently working with a team of 15 volunteers on a Boy Scout Council site. I was outvoted on using top navigation and am now working on putting the navigation on the side. Many different people will be doing the content pages. IE. our camping chairperson will be doing the camping pages. Advancement chair doing advancement pages. etc.

We have set guidelines for the look of the pages but I need an easy way to do navigation.

Lots of feedback on this would be appreciated.

------------------
My goal in life is found in Phillipians 4:8-9

Frames - yes, where necessary. And by that I mean using a nav frame instead of putting text links to everyplace on every page When content may be several levels down from a content topic -- frames are a very nice navigation tool allowing a visitor to quickly get somewhere else, as opposed to back, back, back, back keypresses.

Enough.

Jim - have you thought of using a single menu created through document writes and saved as an external js file, then 'included' in each html page?? That will bring uniformity in the table at least.

One of the sites I run accepts written reports from a variety of community reps, schools, clubs, etc. All I ask is that I receive the content as text files, WP docs, MS Word docs, etc. and then I paste the content into a standard page. Everybody writes whatever they want to and I just copy and paste ... I take care of common format, colour, font, etc.

Andy,

I'm not real familiar with document writes. Could you give an example please?

------------------
My goal in life is found in Phillipians 4:8-9

[This message has been edited by Jim Shilt (edited 04 February 2000).]

Why would frames make it harder to navigate through a site. You have the same navigational menu at the same place at all times. I agree, that if somebody is to stupid to turn of scrolling in the navigational frame it sucks cuz there is an extra unneccessary scroll bar.

Its the secret of good frames that you dont notice them. Its takes little bit of a learning process to reach that level.

Mav, your site could gain a lot through good use of frames, and maybe some other cool features, too. The web is a medium that requires adapting new technologies as fast as possible. Otherwise, you'll eventually fall behind development.

Or are you also anti-rollovers?

Malte

I'm not anti-rollovers, but they accomplish very little. I'm a substance over style guy and if your rollovers are creating such a problem that having them is the sole reason for needing to use frames then you need to rethink their benefit. Almost anything is okay in moderation, but those same things can be killers when overdone (trying breathing 100% pure oxygen). Rollovers definitely fall into the "overdone" category. Been there, done that. I'll take content and ease of navigation over stupid javascript tricks any day.

Frames DO make it harder to navigate through a site, but only on repeat visits. Pages within a framed site are NOT bookmarkable, so repeat visitors have to drill through whatever layers of crap stand between them and the content they desire. That's bad design. A little extra effort could make the site just as attractive, just as fast and far more user-friendly for people that don't like wasting time navigating to content buried deep in a site structure when they should have been able to bookmark that content directly. It's a misconception that you can institute frames so "that you dont notice them." You can make them invisible to the naked-eye, but you cannot make them un-noticable. They'll be noticed the first time anyone tries to bookmark a page 6 levels deep and winds up being force-fed your <frameset> page instead.

Maverick,

You still haven't addressed my concern of ease of updating a multi page site with navigaion on the left side. Show me how to include the navigation without writing the code into every page and I will gladly give up frames.

------------------
My goal in life is found in Phillipians 4:8-9

Mav,

one can easily turn your argument around. Most companys dont want a visitor to bookmark a page which is somewhere deep down inside the navigational structure. They want the visitor to see the homepage upon each visit. However, if there happen to be other entry pages. Those can just get another frameset. (BTW: you CAN bookmark individual pages with a frameset. At least with Netscape)

There are no links without rollovers. If you dont specify your own roll over, you will always get the hand cursor upon moving over a link. However, this is only a very small visual feature which often goes unnoticed and it thus makes your own rollovers neccessary. I do agree that one shouldnt use all JavaScript or even Java toys but you should if it serves its purpose.

Jim, of course you can use SSI to put a navigational menu to the side of your page. You only need to have the same table on each page which a cell on the left or right in which you load the menu. However, this menu will move when you scroll together with the rest of the page.

Malte

Jim - sent e-mail with the whole story on external javascript to generate a standard nav-bar/links table.

Hope it's useful

Jim, the navigational info can be updated easily via included files with SSI, PHP or ASP. You edit the one included file and it shows up on every page.

Malte, 1st, you cannot effectively bookmark a framed page, even in Netscape. Sure, you can use "bookmark frame" or open the frame in a new window and then bookmark it, but that's useless. The navigation info is lost, so there's no way to go from page to page. That's not an option that anyone with half a clue would rely on.

And I have no doubt that many companies want visitors to hit the home page and drill down through 6 levels to find the info. I'm also sure that every car dealership wants every customer to test-drive every model and that every grocery store wants every customer to walk up and down every aisle. However, they're never going to FORCE the customer to waste time like that because they know the store down the street isn't forcing them. There's an adage in business that says "take care of your customer or someone else will" and that holds true on the web as well. There's a site one click away offering exactly the same prices, services, or information that you're offering. If your site isn't better than theirs, you lose. The web is a buyers market and the customer rules all. What companies want their visitors to do is meaningless. If your site is not set up in the most user-friendly manner possible you're tossing away traffic. If I can't bookmark the pages I want and avoid the crap that some company is trying to force me to view, I won't be back and I'm not the only one that feels that way.

Ok gonna throw a spanner in the works here! Here is my first home page I ever made! It uses frames! http://www.rsc.co.uk/johnny/
no I am not advertising the page cause it is nothing to advertise. Point is A frame menu always looks simple to a novice user! I mean my best friend did some degree in something to do with natural human instincts. One of the things he mentioned to me that I never thought of before is: Why is the handset of the phone always to the left side of the phone when most people are right handed? Perception my friends! Human brain works from left to right that is why we write from left to right and that people is why a menu system that sits snuggly in the left frame works!!! If you want to bookmark a page within a frame just right click on that particular page instead of going to the favourites in your browser! There is nothing more annoying than coming to a page with junk scattered,flashing,blinking,rotating all over the blimming place! I want a uniformed menu and frames does just that and it is not complicated at all!

~Vy~

I, personally, dont like frame menus in which you have to scroll. I always set them scrolling=no, so there wont be any annoying scroll bars. I also always turn off frame borders and try to integrate the frames so much that they are not obvious to be there (see examples above).

I think we wont come to a conclusion on this since this seems to be more of an emotional discussion just like "which religion is better: the christian, the jewish, or the mohamedian?" There isnt an answer to this one, except the famous ring-parable. All of us enlighted people should know it. If you dont, do a web search on it.

I guess we can just postpone the decision to this discussion for 10 years, and then have it again. We will all be a little smarter by then, and some of us might have made a little fortune. As for myself, I already work in a pretty large web-design company making very good money while still being a student, and we use frames on all pages we do, so we will see if we still exist in 10 years.

Later,

malte

arhhh ! I didn't spoil it for everyone did I?
I just said .... Never mind!! Ahhh ok I agree Malte!

okay...
I have to say that I'm not very good at programming because I own my PC for 3 weeks - but I'm trying to learn it somehow.
Well, to say something about the frames/no frames - problem: If I surf to a page I want to get the information I wanted to have. And I want to see this information in a way that I find the info as fast as it's possible. There's nothing uglier and more senseless than a homepage with 3, 4, 5 frames or more. But I say nothing against - for example - a navigation-frame on the left (or right) and a main frame. Sometimes such a design can be very useful. But if there are no frames - no problem. I think it doesn't really depend on frames if a site is good ar not. It depends on how easy it is to navigate, design, information, loading times etc.
So that was the "young surfer's point of view

Last but not least I have a question: Can someone please tell me which books I should buy in the next time (concerning programming, of course). I already know the most important things about html and JavaScript but I'd like to know more

------------------

Cysansity: You hit the nail right on the head there my friend! You tell em!

~Vy~

An idea I had while reading these posts that I may consider using... A way to use frames so somone CAN bookmark an individual page.
I'm still relatively new to using frames, so this might not work.
My idea is to make a seperate frameset page for each page... and then have each link on the Nav bar break out of the frames using target="_top" to a new frameset page. Sure it makes more work for the webdesigner then a standard frame, but this way you can change the content of the navigation bar easily.
When somone bookmarks a particular page this way, they will bookmark a partiular frameset that goes directly to the page WITH the navigation bar.
Also, this way you can control what pages someone can bookmark and those you don't want them to (like a page that is only up for a limited time, such as a month long sale page...)
Any opinions on something like this from somone who know more about frames than I do?

Well, this doe saway with most advantages of frames, especially the loading time. It actually increases loading time. Its better to have a page which is invidualiy loaded create its own frameset if there is none.

if(!parent.frames) document.write.....

Malte

Well my main site has an entry page and 4 frames.

I am only a novice, but I don't see how they hinder my site at all.

I guess you would have to see my site to really know what I am on about (site is not open yet but most all links work).

The entry page is all about expressing a certain style. I want to express the 'culture' of the site with some visual flair as soon as the person gets to the site. It's all about making a good first impression.

The 4 frames are for the border I have around the page. I don't see how I could have done it any other way with HTML and Javascript. I also don't see what is worng with it.

I am making a site for people like myself. I don't care if a site is not PC with other web designers. If it looks cool while still being low on bandwidth, and the content is of quality, I will love the site and go back again and again. Isn't that what it is all about?

Nathan, heavy bandwidth hogs affect the whole of the web. If you don't believe me, look at the recent hacking problems and the resultant slowing down and crashing of various areas of the web.

Regardless, you could do the bordered effect without frames very easily, though not if your content is going to scroll at lower resolutions.

Tables (9 cells) with the outer eight cells coloured, with backgrounds, whatever and set to a specific width and your content in the middle will do the same thing.

It depends on your application. For your page, it works fine to keep the decorative elements in the viewer's eye at all times.

You say you are a newbie, which is fine. Everyone starts as a newbie. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that the issues you don't understand fully don't exist at all.

witchhaven you can certainly have the frames easily bookmarked by having each page a frameset (differently named) and loading the same header/footer/sides into the new framesets. Of course, you can also do the same thing with cgi and ssi.

***

Wasn't this thread about the evils of the <blink> tag? *shudder*

Cheers!

Suzanne

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Zero Cattle
Suzanne
Tables DeMystified

Suzanne, doing it with tables as you said can not be done with my site because I need the vertical height.

About the bandwidth, erm... What are you talking about?

"If it looks cool while still being low on bandwidth"

My whole site is less than 250k. That's the front page, main page, and two sub sites inside.

And using tables would dramatically increase the bandwidth of my site.

While I said I was a novice, I do understand well the use of frames and tables. I would consider anyone who does not know cgi, java, ASP to be a novice.

Nathan read my post again. That's what I said. Frames work for your application.

About bandwidth -- when there is a heavy pull on resources in one location, or a bunch of heavy pulls on a bunch of locations, the whole web slows down. www.internettrafficreport.com

My apologies for any insult you took from the newbie comment. It wasn't entirely directed at you, more a generic statement. It could be well directed my me, as well. Just because we understand a little doesn't mean we should think that we understand all there is to know. Me, included. Again, my apologies for that sounding barbed.

However if you fully comprehend tables and frames, why are you confused about why others may have issues with them?

Suzanne

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Zero Cattle
Suzanne
Tables DeMystified

[This message has been edited by Suzanne (edited 20 February 2000).]

Hi Andy,

I am working on the same thing. Is it possible to send me that info as well?

Thanks,
AB