• Framesets
  The Armadillo Associates Web-site is a deliberately frame-free environment. Current plan is to keep it that way. Armadillo Associates uses liquid tables instead of framesets, because we want our readers to be able to name/return to/easily bookmark specific pages on our site. A Year as President of the Coastside Mothers' Club was one page that drove us crazy for, like, a year or so. We wanted that menu to run down the left-hand column. No way were we going to do it in frames though. Well, one morning, around 2 am, we realized that there was a right way to implement this page in PHP. One hour later, voila.

  One lesson we had to internalize was: "Liquid tables are not an exact science". (An eternal frustration to us control freaks.) And another: "It may take recursion to make a PHP program right."

  Another lesson experience in technology has taught us: There is no such thing as the perfect technical solution. There are always trade-offs. We realize that someday we may find we have to use frames. Perhaps we will discover that our use of tables is causing real issues. If that happens, we will use framesets, as we used to do in the years when nested tables seemed too daring for us. We are not religious about our tools. Rather, we try to stay well-informed and choose the right set of compromises for each project.

Computer-based technologies are evolving at an exponential rate. Just when we've figured out what a buzzword means, what one particular technology is good for, either that technology changes or else a new, improved technology emerges. Every choice has benefits and costs. Specifications are promises; not every emerging toolset lives up to its promises. It takes experience with a tool to learn what it does well and what it does not do well.

We have the experience.