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Using CactuShop with frames
Question
Is it possible to get CactuShop to run in frames?
Answer
CactuShop is not designed along a frames-based concept. The idea is that all elements are incorporated into the single page.
Moving some items such as the minibasket or category list to separate frames is a complex task. The only way to get CactuShop using frames without huge amounts of recoding is simply to create a plain looking template and run the whole CactuShop within a frameset. But all elements such as the minibasket and category list would appear within the main content pane.
Frames are less widely used on the web than a few years ago and most major ecommerce sites avoid them because they have a number of disadvantages. Firstly, users cannot bookmark specific pages, only the main frameset. Furthermore, many search engines will not go through framesets indexing and users cannot post links to specific pages.
More recently, users have found problems when the frameset is on a different domain to the scripts. Cookies are rejected as 'third party' ones, and hence the basket does not work.
All in all, we would advising avoiding frames unless you really need to.