You know you feel old when you remember framed links…. Digg users don't

The world of the web can be innovative, fast-moving and exciting. However, there are some old ideas that just keep coming around again (usually bad), including Digg "framing" outbound links. You click through from Digg (a large social sharing site) and instead of getting the website as it should be you get it with a frame (like a toolbar) on top - taking about 50 pixels away from the website.

I felt old when I was chatting to a colleague who is slightly younger than myself about the frames issues, "wow, thats come around again, I remember the first time ..." and how webmasters had "frame busting" code in their sites, (long ago directories and some search engines would frame outbound links) "for the users of course". It seems that anyone a bit younger than myself don't remember when frames were popular... In fact a lot of Web 1.0 (or probably web 0.9) seem to be lost on the "younger generation" and for the first time I am starting to feel like a web 'veteran'.

Anyhow, back on point - In the end webmasters and web users generally tended to agree that framing outbound links was not the done thing and the practice was pretty much unanimously dropped, there were issues with usability and accessibility, plus generally people didn't like the fact that their well-designed site was being invaded and that valuable screen real estate was stolen.

There are many good reasons for using frames, but framing other people's content was considered a bad thing 10 years ago and I don't know why Digg people think things have changed today. Of course most of the Digg population are too young to recall this...

Engadget knows the answer; they have restored their frame busting script - and you can too by putting this in your page.

<script type="text/javascript">
if (top !== self && document.referrer.match(/digg\.com\/\w{1,8}/)) {
top.location.replace(self.location.href);
}
</script>


Although if you're not using frames you can probably modify it to anyone, not just Digg!

<script type="text/javascript">if (top !== self )
top.location.replace(self.location.href);}</script>

I think this is right... I am not one for writing JavaScript that actually works!

Gerry