Are FRAMES acceptable in a XHTML/CSS based design?

[SimplyArun]

hi folks,

I really hit the wall with this one - it's a site for a singer and it has a simple flash-based music player. (link) (http://www.simplyarun.com/solveig) The problem is when users navigate to other pages within the site, the music naturally starts playing back from the beginning. But the client simply wants it to play continuously, without restarting.

The only way out is to use frames but we all know the drawbacks of doing that. But are frames really acceptable in a xhtml/css standards compliant layout?

Are there alternatives in flash, like flash cookies for instance?

Thanks!

[SimplyArun]

yo come on people
surely there must be someone who knows a way out

[Digitalosophy]

I don't know.

But if you really wanted to, pass some parameters and just have the song start at the time period a button was clicked. What you would have to then do though, is somehow get the duration of the mp3 when the button was clicked. Only thing is there would be a pause and it wouldn't be seamless.

It would suck to have to use frames just for that.

According to W3C frames are acceptable http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/

[simplistik]

frames have nothing to do w/ "standards" or validation, they simply aren't SEO friendly. so yes you can use frames but many people in design world would cry about it, but the general public won't know the difference. same as a fullscreen popup site, nearly 80% of the people where will prolly say, eeew it's invasive i hate that someone is controlling my browser, blah blah blah, cry cry cry, STFU. it all boils down to the end-user/target market experience and not what we (the design community) think is right. sometimes it's unavoidable.

[SimplyArun]

whoa THANKS guys! finally got some input! thanks very much indeed. It was helpful! :fab:
will keep ya posted on how i get on with it

[ajcates]

you can make the site ajax, and just dynamically load the info for each page.

[SimplyArun]

you can make the site ajax, and just dynamically load the info for each page.
wow! that sure is an idea, never thought of that.
still a noob wit ajax tho, but worth a try nonetheless
thanks man!

[denizengt]

you can make the site ajax, and just dynamically load the info for each page.

There's a possibility that this is a worse idea than frames. If people have client side scripting disabled, you will not be able to load the info where you want it (I assume a div), where as a frame will be almost universally supported.

It's true, sometimes there is no choice. Puritans will whinge, but who cares about them, they should find something better to do.

[SimplyArun]

yo i admit this might sound dumb - but are frames supported on mobile devices and are they accessible - by screen readers and such?

[prc]

Many music sites have the option to open the player in a pop-up. This way they can listen to the music while they browse any page.

You can detect if the popup is open to avoid the 'normal' page playing the music by javascript and cookies.

[SimplyArun]

Many music sites have the option to open the player in a pop-up. This way they can listen to the music while they browse any page.

You can detect if the popup is open to avoid the 'normal' page playing the music by javascript and cookies.

:thumb:
cool! by far this seems to be the BEST solution. Thank you very much man - I owe my gratitude. Big cheers to all the others who tried to help as well! You rock guys! :thumb:

will keep ya posted