Help with PicoSearch

What can I do about Framesets and Frames?

PicoSearch offers a variety of solutions for those websites which use frames, which are those cute little scrollable panels that can be used to divide up your browser's view. Frames work best if not used to excess, because they can be confusing to a user, who may have difficulty bookmarking and understanding the multiple frames which may be generated by a single parent URL (called the frameset). For this reason, many sites (such as PicoSearch) do not use frames at all, and just use repeated information across all documents, with long documents featuring quick "jump to top" links partway down. However, frames can also be used very well if done correctly, usually for maintaining a sidebar or two of choice information, while a central panel gets "targeted" to display and scroll the main content. With a minimum of extra planning on your part, PicoSearch will be able to index, search, and display perfectly for all your framing needs. In this FAQ we will describe exactly what you need to know.
 
Your Basic Tools
 
If you don't know how to set up a frameset and child frames, hold on and we'll show you how with a clear example. But just so you know, these are the PicoSearch tools and techniques that are useful for frames:
  1. Adding target="main" to the PicoSearch cut-and-pasted code : You get the PicoSearch calling code from the cut-and-paste boxes in your Account Manager, under the link "How to Add PicoSearch to your web pages." Whether you choose to launch PicoSearch from a standard search entry box, or from just a one-click button or text link, you can use the HTML target attribute to launch PicoSearch into the panel of your choice. The "main" refers to the name of the desired panel in your parent frameset (it could be another name as well). The target goes either within the <a ...> tag for buttons and text links, or the <form ...> tag for the search box.
     
  2. The Bring up clicked URLs target choice in the Configure Search section of your Account Manager : Once the user is within a PicoSearch results page, you can control the targeting of the results links by selecting from the Configure Search option for this in your Account Manager's Designing topics. The default is to keep bringing up the found documents within the same frame, and this is fine for what most people will expect.
     
  3. The <meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX" /> tag : Since framesets are the master files that divide the browser into panels and then point to the individual files that will fill those panels, you will want to tell PicoSearch to skip the frameset's content but still follow its links. The robots tag for NOINDEX does just this, as is documented in the page on PicoSearch's document skipping techniques.
     
  4. The special PICOREDIRECT tag : For those files that should always appear within a frameset, PicoSearch can be instructed to redirect the user to another URL whenever that file is clicked in search results. This means that you can enforce the routing of your users into the parent framesets, and never have to worry about panel pages getting selected out of context again. In practice, you will want to launch PicoSearch into the correct panel for most of your files anyway, so that you don't have to worry about adding PICOREDIRECT to most of your documents. Then the PICOREDIRECT can be added just to problem files, like a sidebar that itself has important content, but must appear on top again. For this reason, the PICOREDIRECT's implied behavior is to target back to _top, which is the outermost frame. You can also target other panels. For more details, see How to redirect search result URLs.
     
Now that you have seen the pieces, here is the step-by-step example which we promised you for the most popular use of frames in PicoSearch, which is the side navigation bar that launches searches into a right hand panel. See our FAQ for How can I put the search box in one frame and have the results appear in another frame?
 
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For paying accounts with really complex situations in which many framesets may load recursively, we have even devised a templated solution. With the PicoSearch templated framesets, you can re-create a user navigation experience of arbitrary depth with just one click, without writing a redirection frameset for multiple frame path combinations.
Please Note: The PicoSearch templated frameset solution comes in 2 varieties (recursive and non-recursive), and it has made some very demanding customers very happy. At this time we would ask you to contact us for the details. We will ask you to sign a simple license agreement before shipping you full documentation, including a CGI-script and examples. You will need access to your website's server and a minimum of ability to install software.

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